Milling and costs

[ArcFault]

I just needed someone to mill it for me. I went to the guy down the street from me. I asked him if I payed for fuel and helped him saw for the next few weekends if that could be an even deal for the lumber I needed cut. He wasn't having it. He wanted CASH. A lot to. You guys charge hourly or by plank when you do it? And how much? I was offering to help to. Not just make my order and leave.


Just curious. Would you guys of let me pay fuel and week ends of work?

[jdtuttle]

Tough question not knowing how much wood, what kind & size. Anything under 12" I charge $60.00 per hour. Otherwise I charge .30 per BF. As far as helping I always welcome it as long as your in decent shape & have some idea about what your doing. Maybe he needs the money more than the help. All this eqipment cost alot to purchase & maintain. I just spent $2,000 for a new motor on my mill & have alot of sawing to do to pay for it.
Best of Luck,
jim

[brdmkr]

Arc,

I charge by the bdft.  Whether or not I would saw in return for your labor would depend on what else I had to saw and how well I knew you.  He could be concerned about liability of having you at his mill.  He may also not have much else to work on and not have much need for your help.  It could really be a number of things.

[ArcFault]

Hmm, I did not consider any of those things. I guess it makes sense.. Milling is not his actual job though. He just does it on the side.

I think he is over charging anyways. If I understood him correctly he wanted like .70 per foot of board. Now I am not sure if that is how it is measured. But that is what I understood.

[paul case]

mine is all manual . i charge $30 bd. ft and on odd stuff like live edge  i get $40/hour.
if you aproached me with the same propsal i would likely turn you down as well. my mill is so that i can do much of my offbearing with the tractor and i dont have any hired help except my family and they dont count as hired plus they may be there 1 day a week or so. add to that the fact i dont have insurance for a helper. the way you presented it i thought you wanted to offbear your own sawing and pay for fuel and thats all . so i guess i took it wrong? think about this if the sawyer in question had to train you from scratch doesnt he have some invested in you?
why dont you try to build a relationship with the guy. go off bear for him for a weekend or 2 and make yourself some good help to him and maybe then talk about sawin some of your own lumber. i did this with a fella that had a sawmill down the road from me. it was a good deal for both of us. plus i slept like i had put in my full days work everytime i went to his place.

i think some sawyers here like magicman has to have offbearng help from the person he is sawing for,and they still pay so dont get disgusted . that fella has probably been burned before.   pc

[terrifictimbersllc]

A number of sawyers on this forum welcome help at their mill in exchange for the learning experience for the helper.  This poses only a possible insurance issue.    I might take a friend along if he wanted to help out just for fun, and give him something in exchange for his time, maybe a little sawing if it was convenient for me, off the books as a one time thing.  But I would still be nervous about what my insurance company would do if something happened especially if my friend was involved somehow.  So I don't.    What you are seeking for your sawyer friend may have other business issues for him.  First again,  the insurance policy of a sawyer sawing alone probably doesn't cover if his helper is involved in an incident.  Second is that a barter (your time in exchange for sawing) is a taxable transaction (sales and income tax) and if he is obeying these tax laws it should go down as such.  This then makes you his employee and if he employs you more than a certain amount he has to pay in social security and workmen's compensation on his quarterly filings.  Finally the help you are providing may not be that valuable to him as he may get all the help he needs from his customer, so in the balance there may be more negatives than positives for the sawyer.  Before I was in business, I used my mill as a hobby and looked for any excuse to saw.  I avoided taking any money ever during this period, and would have probably welcomed your proposal then.  But now being in business and trying to be profitable and "sustainable" at it, what you propose would pose all the problems I outlined above, the insurance issue being foremost.  There's just no reason I'd want to do it that way, unless I was entertaining the possibility of hiring you to help me part time.  Hope this is helpful and please don't take it as coming down to hard on your enthusiasm.  Best regards, Dennis

[Tom Sawyer]

I always welcome the customer to help.  Since I charge by the hour any help that the customer gives makes his bill less at the end of the day.  Some customers have 2 people there to help and I hardly have to leave the mill controls.  Other customers want me to pile and sticker their lumber while they sit there and watch.  Either way they pay my hourly rate.

I do sometimes barter (sawing for maple syrup, or freezer beef are two examples), but only when dealing with neighbours or friends that I know well.

The only time I would consider cutting on shares is if I already had a market for the lumber that we were making.  That's what works for me!

Tom

[red oaks lumber]

will the dentist do work if you pay the light bill for the day? no,  there is more costs in sawing than just fuel, also the liability of having someone green helping doesn't add up to a very good formula to me.now if the mill goes to your location the insurance deal falls on your homeowners policy so helping is ok .

[SwampDonkey]

he wanted like .70 per foot of board.

A board foot is 12" long, 12" wide,1" thick (144 in³). But he may saw 6" wide boards 1" thick, or other dimensions and then figure it up.

At 0.70 a board foot it all depends on whether it's hardwood or softwood, level of difficulty in sawing, equipment to handle the logs and so on. You can figure on roughly 2 cords of wood to saw out a thousand feet of lumber, a touch more for logs under 12" min top end. When we measure sawlogs it's from the top end and from edge to edge, but inside the bark layer. Not circumference around the log outside the bark nor but end.

Kilned and surfaced softwood random length lumber- #1 and 2 is around $380 a thousand maybe a bit less now in the Lakes Region. Now it's not that cheap at your Home Depot because of the middle man. And a portable miller is mobile as the name suggests . He does custom work and small jobs a good many times, has to deal with a lot of "public relations", ;) so you have to think about his end of the business. But if I had to pay more than $250/th this day for lumber from my logs I'd just drive over to see Crabbe Lumber and tell'm to deliver my order before I even took out my chainsaw to them trees. ;) Most local guys do well to saw 1000 feet a day, 1200 is a hard day unless it's decent sized logs, >12" top or so. Then maybe 1600, but I don't know many around here in my area sawing that hard. They are part timers, so why beat yourself up. ;)

I've never paid more than $180 thousand for pine sawing on a circular (my pine I cut), I hauled the wood to the mill, they off bore back onto my trailer, I picked up at end of day, cash in hand. My portable mill experience is limited and it didn't go well. It wouldn't be fair for me to judge my portable saw milling based on the guy I used. I won't go any further, but it was an interesting experience. :D :D :D

[ArcFault]

Okay cool. Thanks guys.

[Qweaver]

I have to be careful giving free or discounted mill work.  All of your "friends" will expect the same.  With over $100,000 invested in the mill and support equipment,  we have to make a profit.

[Tim]

I'm always interested in offer in lieu of cash if I can afford it. There are still things I need that I can't trade anything but cash for.

ie. One consistent supplier of shingle wood to me had been putting up a 4 side planer. He wanted a cyclone I had here. We established what the cash value would have been if he were to pay cash. As oppose to tapping into his dwindling cash reserves, I let him pay me in logs. I have a tri-axle float here that he would like to trade for. We've established a cash value for it and the lumber he has that he wants to pay for it with, so we have a deal.

As to the labour in exchange for product or service, I'm not as quick to accept. I'm basically a one man band. If I need help, I contract it from time to time for short periods and, have those that I call when needed. In my case, the distances I travel do not lend themselves well to such a trade. Locally, it would be something I might consider with someone I know but, training is the issue. I guy can ruin a lot of wood in an hour around here. Not to mention the finger detatchment thing with shingle mills...

[ArcFault]

Alright... Haha, I'll just pay the man. :D