South Carolina Logging?

[treefarmer87]

what is the timber business like down there? is there a good short wood market down there? all i saw was tree length pine.

[WDH]

The shortwood market is a thing of the past.  Technology has by-passed it. 

[Okrafarmer]

The market seems to be a little worse for all or most wood in SC than in, upper NC for instance. People buy truckloads of wood from the logyards here and take them up to the logyards in NC to sell them. That's a crying shame. The logyard gives us about $200 / mbf for oak, cherry, tulip poplar, maple, and so on. They give $12 / ton for softwood pulp, and $20 a ton for hardwood pulp, and $22 a ton for chip and saw yellow pine. I've been told by people in North Carolina that that is terribly low.

A local hardwood mill gives about $250/mbf for tulip, and $300 for oaks and I think they quoted $400 for Walnut. IIRC, a local SYP mill gives about $225 / mbf for SYP.

They all seem to want it pretty long, the longer the better up to 16' plus trim for the saw logs. On pulpwood, the log yard is fairly lenient-- they officially allow down to 8' on the pulp and 4" for the small end but they don't get out and measure it, they just offload it quickly and they don't flinch when you sneak logs in there that are smaller, and if there are any obviously short pieces that "accidentally" wound up in the dump truck when I dump it, they pick those up too without comment and add them to the pile. We take them a lot of limbs from the trees we cut down, a lot of pine limbs, and such. They're real good people to work with, they just don't pay much!

[treefarmer87]

 All i saw when we were looking @ houses was tree length pine :(

[Okrafarmer]

All i saw when we were looking @ houses was tree length pine :(

Pickens is probably the biggest center of forestry in SC. They have about five sawmills, give or take. That includes at least one good-sized hardwood mill.

[treefarmer87]

O ok that sounds good