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Small Firewood Business

Started by colincb183, April 12, 2013, 04:51:59 PM

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colincb183

I'm thinking about selling firewood to make a little extra money and keep myself busy.  I don't have a splitter and I plan on buying one hopefully by the end of the month.  Im gonna call the guy that hauls pulp for me to see if he could get me a load of hardwood just to start out.  I would like to sell in bulk and maybe make a few cords of bundles. Any suggestions for finding a market or any other info to get started?  Thanks in advance. Colin

MJD

I will say if you do bundles and plan on taking them to say a gas station/store they need to be tagged with the volume which can not exceed a certain amount, Im in Wis. also amd had the weights and checker people come down on me.I found it less of a hassle to just sell in bulk.

colincb183

Quote from: MJD on April 12, 2013, 06:21:22 PM
I will say if you do bundles and plan on taking them to say a gas station/store they need to be tagged with the volume which can not exceed a certain amount, Im in Wis. also amd had the weights and checker people come down on me.I found it less of a hassle to just sell in bulk.

I don't plan on selling much in bundles i think im gonna try to sell most by the face cord and cord. I've heard that theres more money in bundled firewood but i understand where your coming from. Less handling of the wood selling in bulk too

thecfarm

I have no idea how long it would take me to split a cord. Do you have a dump truck, trailer? I would not want to throw it in a pick up and than back out trying to make money. That's how we did our firewood when I lived home. But there was 4 boys too. Than I would think you would have to split it,put it in a pile to dry than reload it back into a truck.
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r.man

If you want to keep busy and not make much per hour you could do firewood the way I do it now, handle it too much. I saw a fellow do it the right way, he had it presold and loaded logs onto a small processor which cut split and loaded the firewood onto a tandem axle dump trailer. He knew from trial and error how much it held loose and then he dumped at the customers location. The only time he actually touched the firewood was to straighten a block in the splitter or level the trailer load a bit. He also gave a price break to established customers if they prepaid 6 months in advance. He used this money to buy a years worth of logs and made his profit on the other customers.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

clww

I've sold mine the wrong way since I started selling it:
Cut the trees, buck, split, the load in the truck.
Unload it at our yard and stack to season it.
Get the order then load it back in the truck (stacked again, of course).
Deliver to customer and toss it off the truck again.  ::)
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colincb183

I think im gonna have the wood delivered in pulp length, 101" around here.  Buck it into 16 or 17" length and then split and pile right where my hauler unloads it.  I'll leave it to dry until fall at least before i try to sell it.  I don't have a dump truck right now or a dump trailer but i'm hoping to save enough to buy an old 1 ton dump truck or a tandem dump trailer by the time i start looking to sell it.  Im still young and don't mind working a little harder if i need to until i have more equipment.
And if i get the wood and cut and split it so it can dry over summer, I know it wont be dry by september or october, so should i advertise it as green?

rooster 58

    When I sold cordwood, I did it the hard way as well. I would cut my trees in january and february when sap content was low, and buck everything in March, then split as soon as possible. In early October, I began to call my clients from my file. This seemed to work well, my customers were pleased with my wood and I had a good , loyal clientele.  Many were sorry to see me conclude my operation

r.man

Some people prefer to buy their firewood in the spring so that they know how dry it is, if you could promote that you might be able to save some handling and deliver fresh split wood early in the year.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

muddstopper

You can have a lot of money tied up buying wood and waiting for it to dry before selling it. In my area, a triaxle truck, with loader, worth of wood will cost around $450.  have seen some folks on this site say they have to pay much more. You get about 4-6 full cords. If you are bucking into 16in lenghts, you will have about 12 face cords. This would sell for about $60 face cord if they pick it up at your site. You can tack on a little for a hual bill if you hual it. At $60 facecord you end up with about $270 profit for the pleasure of bucking, splitting and stacking. One big truck load wont last long once it starts to sell, so you need several loads if you intend to let it season before you sale it. Depending on how much you plan to sell each year, this could mean several $thousand worth of wood laying around before you make a dime.

As an alternative to buying log lengths, look around and see if you can find blown down trees. After a big storm is a great time to pick up free trees just for the removal. Might even make a few bucks for removing them. This way you dont have to tie up all your money for a year waiting on firewood season before you can sell the wood.

As for looking for a market for your wood, I would go around to all the resutrants tha have large fire places with open fires. They will buy in bulk as long as you can meet they requirements for dry wood and proper sizes. Resorts are motels are another good markets that will by large quantities of wood. These are good customers to have, but can be fickle as they try to get the best possible price. The next option is simply just put an ad in the local paper. There are usually a dozen ads in my local paper at any given time. It takes time to build a good customer base, but once you are established, word of mouth will be your biggest advertising tool.

Corley5

You need to crunch your numbers.  It's not worth it for me to buy 100" pulp to process into firewood and I've got a processor.  When I buy it I'm making enough $$$ to buy more and pay for fuel but very little to put in my pocket let alone compensate for wear and tear on the machinery and trucks.  That's been my experience and I don't handle it anymore other than to load the machine with the Bobcat and dump it in the client's yard.  Cutting, stacking, then loading by hand and if necessary unloading by hand is way more work than firewood is worth.  IMHO and experience  :)
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