The Forestry Forum

General Forestry => Urban and Community Forestry => Topic started by: Dan_Shade on July 25, 2007, 11:00:07 AM

Title: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Dan_Shade on July 25, 2007, 11:00:07 AM
I've seen two examples of this: the homeowner/lot owner asks the excavator to set all the hardwood off to the side, and get rid of all of the pine.  The pile that I've seen left on both occasions is complete junk, heavy sweeped logs, and full of branches.  I figure the lot clearer is taking the saw logs and selling them to the local mill and the land owner is none the wiser.

Have any of you guys seen this?
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: sawguy21 on July 25, 2007, 11:11:26 AM
Probably the lot owner loves the beauty of hardwoods and is seeing $ signs envisioning high end furniture and flooring. You are right, the contractor is likely grinnin'.
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Dan_Shade on July 25, 2007, 11:32:38 AM
the stack I went to look at yesterday was a "we dont want them to go to waste, so we're giving them away" thing.  The first stack was a long time ago when I had my little saw, was going to saw on shares with him.
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: thecfarm on July 25, 2007, 09:16:24 PM
I shouldn't say anything,but I hate it when someone has to steal to make a living.No reason for it at all.Just put the buckshot to 'em and call it good.I have heard things and don't like it.I live in a small town and know the people that can be trusted and the ones you have to watch.The ones that need watching don't get no business from me.The ones that do the stealing have equipment and homes that are nothing special.The ones that do a honest job has nice homes and nice equipment.
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Ron Wenrich on July 26, 2007, 04:54:21 PM
Sometimes the lots don't have anything special growing on them.  In most wooded lot situations in our area, the timber has long been cut.  Usually its a diameter limit cut and all the junk is left back.  Then a someone goes and buys the lot and clears off the trees. 

The excavator is just doing what he's told, in most cases.  Thinking the excavator has taken the sawlogs may be a stretch.  Usually, there's a ton of neighbors out there watching what's going on.   Maybe not on the site, but they're watching. 
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Dan_Shade on July 26, 2007, 05:08:26 PM
I thought about that, Ron, it may have been logged out a few years ago, the underbrush was too heavy for me to look at the surrounding lots, not enough neighbors where this was for anybody to notice.  I'd hope that the contractor didn't take them, not sure it would matter if they did, since the owners just didn't want them in firewood. 

There are a few shady folks in every business.
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Striker on July 27, 2007, 03:45:44 PM
When we go in to clear a lot, it is understood what will be removed and what will stay. Most generally we remove everything we cut. We haven't gotten many good sawlogs from lot clearings. Most are too small in diameter, and anything big is hollow.

Jeff
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: rebocardo on July 27, 2007, 08:26:26 PM
In my experience, most lot clearings produce logs of poor quality, EXCEPT, the pine, because all the valueable stuff was taken decades earlier before it was split into lots. Basically log the good stuff, then divide the property into lots.

As an example, in Atlanta I was building a road into a lot. The "arborist" had one of the "leave" trees marked as a 14" cherry. It sure looked nice on paper. Except it was punky at the bottom, leaning heavily towards a major road, and was less then two feet from where the driveway was going in.

This tree was just looking to kill someone shortly down the road, why an arborist would leave a diseased tree missing 1/2 the bark at the bottom backside (which ended up being hollow when I cut it - which I thought it was) is beyond me. I told the owners it was fixing to kill someone and it never should have been a leave tree. He gave me the okay to drop it.

It was thrown next to the dumpster with the other spindly hardwoods while the dumpsters were filled with the pine to be dumped.

On small lot clearings you have to pay to dump pine, you can give hardwoods away for free to cut expenses.

> I figure the lot clearer is taking the saw logs and selling them to the local mill
> and the land owner is none the wiser.

Hardwood pulp is $3 a ton, pine is $6-$8. I think that is why you see narly hardwoods piled to the side. It is not even worth to do as pulp (it costs way more then pine to dump by the ton) and at least it can be given away as firewood for free or sold to a firewood processor.

I did one lot where not one single hardwood over 8" was solid in the butt end, even the 26-30" hickory and oaks were hollowed out by ants. You would think out of 40+ trees at least one would have produced one nice log. Nope.

I had one nosey neighbor come over and proclaim how sad it was all the trees were being taken down and surely they had to be worth SOMETHING and could be sold for lumber, when she saw the dumpsters! I told her if she could find anyone that would pay ANYTHING for the hard or softwoods, she could keep all the money from the sale  :D

I ended up giving most of the sweetgum, hickory, and oak away for free to customers and sold a whole $120 worth of firewood to CL people and the pines were sent to the dump. She never came back with any buyers  ;)


Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Striker on July 27, 2007, 09:16:24 PM
We have two papermills that take chips or pole wood. We chip the brush into a semi-trailer and sell it as boiler fuel.If we can get enough pole wood off of the job, we can send it to another papermill. We are lucky that we don't have to dump very much.

Jeff
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Dave Shepard on July 30, 2007, 07:34:42 PM
I have a friend that is in the land clearing business and any sawlogs are discussed prior to making the deal. This winter he was asked to come in and clean up a property with severe wind damage. Unfortunately the home owner didn't have the funds to cover the cleanup, so he suggested harvesting some of the nice pine further into the woods beyond the wind damage and selling it to cover the cost of the storm damage cleanup. The homeowner got her yard cleaned up and my friend was able to get the job done without having to sacrifice his standard rates. There was a lot of very nice pine off of that job. I tried to get some for our mill, but the Canadians came in and took it by the trailer load and graded it like hardwood. :D I hear that market has changed dramatically. No one is buying anything around here right now last I heard.

In my opinion, a responsible contractor would discuss the value of any sawlogs, and make their deal accordingly. I know someone who did a clearing job and the customer wanted all hardwood cut and split for firewood. He told the homeowner that anything over 16" was too big to split, and he would have to charge her for disposing of it. He disposed of about 5mbf of good to very, very good cherry for her. What a nice guy. ::)

Dave
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Warren on August 02, 2007, 07:34:08 AM
I have had several of the "We don't want the wood to go to waste" calls over the past couple years.  I still have not found a private individual clearing hardwoods where it was worth the time and effort to go get the wood and drag it home.

I have a friend who does excavating / lot clearing in the subdivisions in Northern KY.  Have a standing order with him for any decent oak, walnut, or cherry logs he removes.  When he pulls onto a site that has sawable trees, he negotiates on the front end to harvest and remove the logs. He operates every day that it is not raining,  but, only averages a couple good logs per month.

Warren
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: Frickman on August 04, 2007, 10:30:21 AM
I clear timber from building lots frequently. Sometimes I pay the landowner, sometimes they pay me. A few nice cherry can really make a difference. Many times I show the landowner the scale slips from all the loads taken out. It helps justify the dollars and cents of the job. Doing things that way I have no shortage of work and make a good living.
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: cheyenne on September 07, 2008, 10:40:34 PM
Around here it all gets chiped up & dozed in with the backfill. Cheyenne
Title: Re: logs from lot clearings
Post by: timberfaller390 on September 11, 2008, 10:08:46 AM
The only lot clearing job I ever done in a subdivision  was about a 2 acre lot. It yielded 4 hardwood sawlogs, don't recall the species, that were only about 14" on the small end and about 30 SYP sawlogs anywhere from 14" to 30". That was a good job and also an exception around here.