Given the following scenario...

[brucetp]

...what would you charge per bd ft?  :P

An opportunity is given to you to saw full time for a person that does select cutting.  He's got enough ongoing logs to keep you busy for as many hours as you want to work.  This is a continuous job, not a one time deal.  You'll be sawing only hardwoods and the output is expected
to be of gradable quality (the end customer is furniture makers).  Although no quarter sawn is expected, most all Lumber will be sawn at 4/4, 5/4, and 6/4.  The sawing will be done on his site but a building is being provided for sawing and to keep your mill.  Ok so the question is, what is a fair price to charge per bdft??   ???  Any thoughts on this would be helpful!

Thanks!

[sawguy21]

I don't know rates, kinda outside my area, but sounds like a good gig as long as he pays on time. Make sure you have a written contract so there are no misunderstandings.

[Dan_Shade]

that all depends on your local markets and local cost of living, it also depends on what you are sawing with (saw, support equipment, etc). 

look at it this way

what you expect to make/year (S)
days you want to work/year (D)
board feet per day (B)

and then calculate it all out which is S/(D*B) that will give you a ballpark.

[Gary_C]

There are so many unknowns in this situation that it would be hard to guess a fair price. My first suggestion would be to start with an hourly rate on a trial basis and adjust from there, that is if it works out well.

The unknowns are;

The capacity of your mill.
Helper available and how good a worker he will be. Someone that is thinking about staying ahead of the sawyer is invaluable and one that is thinking about his next break is worthless.
Do you edge on the mill.
Material moving equipment available.
What to do with sawdust and slabs.

Plus more questions you will come up with later.

It sure sounds like it could be a good deal, but be careful about jumping into this with unanswered questions. A bad deal will not be good for either party.

[Ron Wenrich]

Lots of questions to ask.  Who's doing the marketing?  When you say "furniture makers in the area", are you going to be drying the wood and selling or selling to brokers?  Are you sawing through and through or are you sawing ties and pallet cants?  Who provides help and support equipment?

If it was me, I would be looking at a mill that had some sort of production capability.  I would want something that I could do on the order of 10 Mbf/day at a consistent rate.  My sawing would be to pallet size cants or RR ties.  He provides the markets.  Sawing payments to be made weekly - very important.

Things that will kill your production will be small logs.  I don't care what you have, small logs will break you.  Trash metal will also kill you. 

Does your logger market logs?  If so, then forget about any butts coming across your deck.   They'll all go to the veneer buyer.  You'll be left with the knarly ones that no one else wants.  If that's the case, you better know your grade before you put a saw to the wood.

I have done exactly what you are talking about.  I charged by the foot and would have done OK as long as the logger had done what he said he would.  But, they didn't pay on time, and that put me in debt.  They also always came up short on logs.  Then, even though it was permanent, it was all the time.

I saw by the foot for my current logger.  He provides all the equipment, all the help, all the logs, and I charge by the foot for sawing.  I work less than 40 hours per week, and have a lot fewer headaches.  He makes money, I make money.

[DanG]

I would be asking a couple more questions.  Will he be bringing logs to your deck, ready to saw?  Will he be removing boards from beside your mill?  If not, you'll be spending a lot of time and expense digging logs out of the pile and prepping them, and you'll spend more time stacking lumber than sawing.  You need to take these things into consideration ahead of time.

Be completely up front with him in the negotiation.  Make your needs and expectations clear and expect the same from him, then get it in writing.  If he's being straight with you, he won't mind signing a contract.  If he balks at that, run like the wind!

[flip]

Two words...Contract & Hourly.

[brucetp]

Thanks for the advice and input...   Yea there are a lot of variables and this is a difficult question because of that.   The logs will be precut to length and brought to the mill ready to saw.  The idea is that he will be handling all logs and material but I will be removing it from the mill and stacking it on pallets beside the mill.  I have an LT40HD.  But all this is not in stone and surely not in writing yet.  I was just trying to get a rough idea on a rate and gather ideas and questions that I will need to sort out 'before' it goes to writing.

...calculate it all out which is S/(D*B) that will give you a ballpark.

That's a great starting point. I hadn't thought about doing that.

[Dan_Shade]

the board feet per day is the hard one to come up with. 

material handling is always the killer.  if you have 50 people tripping over themselves to clean sawdust, move slabs, load logs, pull boards, sticker lumber, and keep the saw clear, you can saw some lumber.  Also don't sell short the time it takes to do the saw maintenance, and other peripheral activities.  Working a 12 hour day on a saturday to wrap up a job, hitting 2300bf isn't a realistic day in and day out productivity number.

[SAW MILLER]

I ain't afraid to tell you what I charged.I had the exact same deal for seven months last winter and I charged my normal fee of .25/b.f.
   It worked out good and I got paid every week.The only differance was ,I was set up under the big blue sky.
   The loggers loaded me up with logs and removed my slabs and banded and took away the lumber.They liked the lumber so well that they bought a band mill so that ended that!
     

[rebocardo]

When all is said and done, costs accounted for etc. you do not want to take home any less then $30 an hour, in any trade. You should be making $50+ an hour and your bf rate should account for it.

When I supply the wood, working on a small scale, I paid people .25-.50 a bf or tried to. I like everyone to go home with $300 profit.

[Haytrader]

rebocardo,

Do you mean just for labor, or are you including the saw in the per hour price?

[DanG]

Ok Bruce, if he's gonna bring the logs and pick up the lumber, I'd just charge him my usual custom sawing rate.  That's what the deal is supposed to be anyway, ain't it?

Maybe you should just go in and cut for him for a week on that basis, and see where you are after that.  Both of you would have a lot more data to base your decisions on.  He WILL come at you about how much money you're making off of his lumber, so you need to be ready to point out how much money he is making off of YOUR sawmill.  If the two of you can't get together on that, you need to take the walk. ;)

[Ron Wenrich]

The problem I see is that of costs.  If you can't get the production, your costs are going to be much higher than the rest of the industry.  That means that the logger will be getting less for his logs by using your services vs that of selling the logs to a mill.  This is where the rubber hits the highway.

The break even point would be where lumber value - manufacturing costs > log value.  So, its important to know which logs you can put across your mill, and which ones you can't.   Production greatly influences manufacturing costs. 

The only way you can support high mfg costs is by having a high value market for the lumber.  The log value that you would use is the value of the log if its sold to another mill.  So, you would be in competition with other mills production costs, as well as their lumber markets.