Vermont firewood $$$$$$

Sawyerfortyish · October 05, 2004, 07:55:13 PM

My mom and dad are at there cabin in Vermont and used all the firewood my brother took up there last spring when he opened up the cabin. So we told them call someone and get a cord. What makes wood worth more up there than here in N.J.or anyplace else for that matter?. 200.00 a cord for seasoned or 150.00 for green wood

. At that price they might as well fill the fuel oil tank and run the furnace. I know fuel is high I'm in the wood business too but holy smoke.

Ron Wenrich · October 06, 2004, 03:56:11 AM

We're getting $120/cd for green, split wood. This goes to a wholesaler in Philly by the trailerload. He buys year 'round. He then resells it in smaller lots and delivers. I think he is at least $200/cd.

1 cord of wood = 100 gal oil. With oil at $1.75, wood can be a little pricey. The best buy is probably coal. 1 ton = 1 cord of wood.

Sawyerfortyish · October 06, 2004, 04:51:16 AM

You have a firewood processer don't you Ron?. I raised my price of wood to 120 thats seasoned. I've talked to others around and that seems to be the going rate localy. I know I can get more towards the city but I don't want to be in the trucking bussiness to. But in Vermont where every third person is a logger I didn't expect to hear those kind of prices.

HORSELOGGER · October 06, 2004, 07:04:35 AM

If the cabin is located in a weekend get away type area, that will inflate the price. I am in a area 2 hours west of Chicago, with lots of resorty subdivisions and it is used as a play ground-get away for city people. There are wholesale firewood buyers like the one Ron sells to, pay the same 120 a cord, and resell delivered facecords at 100 bucks each in the suburbs.Makes 185 a full cord delivered seem like us ignorant country folk are just given the stuff away. ;D We sold 2500 3/4 cubic foot bundles to 2 campgrounds this year, at 450 bucks a cord.I wont even sell my split wood this winter, its too profitable to hold it over for the camping season.

beenthere · October 06, 2004, 08:43:52 AM

Horselogger
Right off hand, I don't know the conversion, but at that campwood value per cord, it will be tough to not split a lot of grade 2 and grade 3 saw logs (maybe even top grade logs) into firewood. I'd think those prices (I realize they're limited by demand) would swallow up many a sawlog. How do you decide?

Maybe based on the labor hours that go into bundling firewood.

HORSELOGGER · October 06, 2004, 12:29:34 PM

Funny you should mention that....We ( wife and I ) just bundled what is most likely our last little order for the season on monday. We use alot of lumber cut offs in our bundles, as well as flooring shop scrap, and we were commenting that at the price we get for bundles, its more profitable to split the low grade logs instead of saw em up. I wish I could market as many bundles as the large quanity of low grade logs would make! The really good thing about the camp wood market is they have no problem taking soft stuff like basswood, cottonwood and pine, as well as bundles made up of edgings and lumber scraps. We get about 150-160 bundles per full cord, and sell for 2.35to 3.50 per bundle.Delivered.There is a really big convenience store market for bundles, and most of the ones I see come from Indiana and Wisconsin.I have not pursued these as they are chain store type gas stations, with headquarters somewhere else, and they want to take 30 days to pay.All our accounts are COD ;)

Ron Wenrich · October 06, 2004, 02:47:55 PM

The biggest problem with local, rural markets is that it is very limited. Most people have a source of wood, or they burn something else - like kerosene.

When you get into the larger local markets like small towns and cities, then you have to deal with all those independent guys. The ones that have a pickup and do it for beer money. They put an ad in the paper and have a ridiculously low price. That drags down everyone else, including the legitimate producers.

We have a processor, and trucks. It is basically something to do when a trucker is sitting idle. Good income though.

The bundling is done by a few people. They sell to the local convenience store, but I don't think they are gettting the same prices as you guys are. Store wood is going for about $3.50/bundle. And they don' t sell that much.

The only people who buy that type of wood only want a fire for the night.

Rob · October 06, 2004, 04:44:08 PM

Hey Fellas ,

In my area of NH cordwood is going for up to $250 a cord seasond and $140-$160 green . Mills are paying close to $90 a cord around here for pulpwood and people are buying the cordwood at $250 like no tomorrow around here fuel prices just keep rising fuel is already over $2.00 a gallon here and going up an up till someone gets the brains to stop it and lwer before to long we'll be paying 2.25 a gallon ..it's getting way out of hand as far as Im concerened.

Rob

karl · October 06, 2004, 05:49:24 PM

We are in the least affluent part of Vermont.
Been too wet to get in the woods until a month ago. Hard to get cause pulp is up too.
Have seen one local selling for $125 green.
We are getting 150 cd for 3 month "dried" (wettest summer I remember)
Log length is $95. cd delivered, $65. on the landing if you can find it.
KD Bundles go for $3-4 retail, $2.- 2.40 wholesale

Prob'ly be a lot of out of staters having to leave one snowmobile home to have room enough to haul cheap wood up here to their cabins this winter. ;)

Corley5 · October 06, 2004, 06:00:24 PM

$50.00 per 16" face cord for seasoned, split and delivered but not stacked hardwood. $35.00 if you pick it up. That's what I saw in this weeks classifieds.

Jeff · October 06, 2004, 06:19:50 PM

Greg, thats about the going rate here also.

Oldtimer · October 06, 2004, 07:00:49 PM

Anyone ever hear of "Ossipee Mountain Firewood" ? I worked there for a season bundling firewood. Our crew of 8 people bundled 26 cords of kiln dried hardwood a day for two and a half months straight. It went through an oven and got shrink-wrapped. Takes 3 days to dry 24 cords in the kilns! (In winter, it comes out piping hot! Great for the cold hands!) The co. is owned by HG Woodlands, Harold Geneen, former CEO of ITT founded it. They own some 50,000 acres in NH and maine.

Also, a local firewood producer is getting $165 per cord green, $205 dry, delivered. Holy Smokes! I buy my HWP for 10 bucks a cord. I need a processor.

woodmills1 · October 07, 2004, 03:41:58 PM

There is a guy selling designer firewood out of londonderry NH for outragous prices. He has an ad in the local market bulletin. 1/4 cord bug treated delivered and stacked for $310.

Engineer · October 07, 2004, 06:05:51 PM

I have about 30 cords of firewood - some slabwood, some pine, mostly good hardwood, all cut to stove length but mixed up. Most of it is seasoned 6 months or more. I offered two different people pickup truck loads of it for $25. They have to come get it in their own truck, no help from me. I think that's a good deal, works out to about $80 a cord or so. Haven't had any takers yet. I'm not in the business to sell it, just have way too much from clearing land for my house and I'd rather sell it cheap than have it rot. I'll only use 6 or 8 cords this winter,and my dad another 5 or 6. So I have a lot to spare.

I don't doubt that firewood is up in the stratosphere pricewise, even here in VT. I have seen cord prices ranging from $120 at the low end to $220 at the high end, depending on what has been done to the wood. If you want it split, seasoned, delivered and stacked, expect to pay $200 a cord or more. If you're buying log length and have your own chainsaw and splitting maul, it's probably more cost effective, but it'll still cost you $80-100 a cord.

Sawyer40ish - if your parents (depending on where they are) want some wood, I'll make them the same offer. $25 a pickup load, somebody's gotta come get it, but I'll help load the truck. I'm in the southwest corner of the state. E-mail me for a phone # and they can call me.

Sawyerfortyish · October 07, 2004, 08:38:24 PM

Thanks Engineer there in the northeast near St Johnsbury and are leaving for home after the weekend.
If hardwood pulp is 95.00 a cord that alone tells me why wood is so much. I'm in the wrong area not close enough to a big city for wood to be worth big money and not far enough out in the country for pulp to be worth anything.
Oldtimer tell me more about that kiln I already went through about 100 cord and only have about 150 left but have a lot of green wood to run through the processer.

GAV64 · October 08, 2004, 04:17:16 AM

Gentlemen,
I have been bundling firewood for about 4 years (small time) about 1200 bags a year. The wood comes from the thinning of my lot. I have been using plastic mesh (tube) made into bags by using hog rings. My 8 year old daughter helps me by putting the mesh bag on the plastic bucket and the label in the bag fot this she makes 20 cents per bag, 10 cents for her labor and ten for keeping me company. Plastic prices have risen and my cheap supplier of mesh no longer makes it.So my question to you is how do you package your firewood and or do you know of any plastic extruded mesh suppliers. thanks glenn.

Engineer · October 08, 2004, 06:14:59 AM

A lot of the "camp" firwood bundles I've seen are six or eight sticks of split hardwood, no rounds, bundled with plastic stretch wrap. Some of them actually wrap a length of rope somehow around the bundle and stretchwrap most of it so that you have a handle. The plastic wrap should be easy to get online or though a place like Graingers.

Murf · October 08, 2004, 09:15:08 AM

GAV, the Engineer is on the right track, a lot of the small 'bundle' producers up here have changed over to cling wrap, the industrial stuff they wrap pallets of stuff with.

I have even seen one who has a wrapping machine. It's intended to wrap boxes but will wrap anything you put in it. You can select either a one direction wrap or two.

In any sort of quantity that heavy cling wrap is only a couple of dollars a roll, and theres a lot in a roll, it's pretty thin stuff, but incredibly strong.

The machines that heat melt those plastic straps around cardboard boxes work good too, but wood is irregular in shape and doesn't bind well.

In the area around Toronto dry wood is averaging $100 (Canadian, US$130) a face cord, delivered and dumped.

There is one company here that has a big truck with one of those piggy-back lift trucks on it. Seasoned hardwood, cut, split and stacked neatly on a skid then cling-wraped is US$130/face cord, but each skid is 1.5 face cords so it's US$195 per skid, set anywhere the lift truck can reach. If you buy 15 skids they drop the price by US$35 a skid.

Paschale · October 08, 2004, 12:08:04 PM

To you guys who sell firewood bundles, where do you market your supplies to? Someone mentioned convenience stores--do you just do some cold calls and see who's interested? I've seen them at gas stations too...for as much as $5 a bundle, and they seem to still sell.

Down here in Grand Rapids, I saw prices for $70 for "a third of a cord."

I ordered some "seasoned" firewood last year from a guy--he dropped it off, and most of the stuff was green. There's a bunch of charlatans in every line of work. >:( Next time I call a company, I'll tell 'em that I'll have my moisture meter there to confirm that it's seasoned, and don't bother coming to drop it off if you're trying to pull the wool over my eyes. ;D

Oldtimer · October 08, 2004, 02:24:02 PM

The kiln at Ossipee Mountain Firewood dries 24 cords (or more) in 3 days using steam heat. They buy HWP delivered in (They have truck scales) and separate the Poplar and rough bony stuff out for chips to fuel the kilns. They chip it on site. There are two processors that work in tandem filling a cord sized metal container. (They have 50-60 of them!) With good operators, the set up can do a cord in 10 minutes.
We bundled 20-24 cord a day there for 3 months straight. They have two 75'x100' cement floor buildings to store dried wood in in preparation for the season too.

In the bundling shack, we'd have a plastic person placing plastic shrink wrap sheets in a rack on the line, 4 guys would place the wood in just so, a sticker man would wrap the sheet over itself and hold it TIGHT with an OMFW sticker, it would go through the 500* oven and come out really tightly bound in the plastic. Then, a man would use an air stapler and 5/8ths staples to put on a nylon strap for use as a handle, then a man would remove the new bundle, place it on the pallet wrapper, and wrap the boogers out of it with the stretchy pallet wrap, 50 or 75 bundles per pallet. Then he'd take the full pallets out by electric forklift and load the semi trailers that sat two at a time at the loading dock. Two pallets = one cord of wood at 50 bundles per pallet. We used to get "incentives" to bundle over a certain amount. .05 cents per bundle after 16 cords.
I was the sticker man standing beside the oven, and I was cold every day in winter. COLD work. But the kiln fresh wood was toasty warm when there was some to be had.

karl · October 08, 2004, 06:39:23 PM

I use stretch wrap- 5" #80. Get it from Papermart- they have a website.
Made a .75 cu' cradle and wrap by hand- I don't sell lots or we would have a wrapper.
Not a real hot item- pun intended.

Sawyerfortyish · October 09, 2004, 06:52:37 AM

Paschale what % of moisture would you consider to be dry enough to burn? I have a meter we use for lumber but if you season wood in log form I imagine the reading would be quit high even for honest seasoned wood.
I store my lumber in a 100 yr old barn the lumber stacked in the barn gets down to 12-15%in about a year.I once stuck the meter in an interior wall of the barn and much to my supprise it read 28% for wood that had been inside for 100+ yrs. I figure it drew moisture from the wood I was drying I don't know. I don't think a meter will work for firewood. Fresh cut seasoned wood will give a false reading. In oak you will always have that tell tale season ring that can be seen by looking at the end grain of a piece. Or checking in the wood is a good indication of it's age. A lot of times the bark will come off when splitting true seasoned wood but not always.

Oldtimer · October 09, 2004, 08:35:09 AM

At OMFW, they checked the moisture content with a meter only to get a baseline of how long was long enough in the kilns. 3 days at 180* was good.

Firewood has a distinct "tinkling" sound when its dry. I think the sound of it rolling over itself is the best way to tell besides the weight. As for the bark comming off as a sign of "seasoned" wood, that can happen to oak and the center of the wood will be green as an apple.

HORSELOGGER · April 10, 2006, 11:09:52 AM

Wow... First day here and already pickin fights :

Where did woodmills say "ripped off"?

beenthere · April 10, 2006, 12:00:40 PM

A price can be outrageous, IMO, and still be as legitimate (not ripping someone off) as can be. The words are not synonymous.
Welcome to the forum, firewoodguy. You don't have to have a guilty conscience here

Buyers of firewood in some places just want wood, and paying to have someone get it for them, is not a problem and economics not an issue.

Willing buyers (look at the designer clothes market for a good example) are not getting ripped off if they are sold the goods they pay for. If the 1/4 cord kit of firewood for $525 ends up being 1/8 cord, then the buyer is getting 'ripped off', IMO. But I take your apology as well meaning and sincere. Glad to have you aboard. We have fun here.