marketing lumber

[jdw]

Any ideas on how to market and sell the side lumber off ties. I've cut lots of oak and hickory and got some great boards. Are there wholesalers that will buy this lumber?

[Ron Wenrich]

We sold ours to several different wholesalers.  Some went direct to a user.  We had a market for casket lumber.  They like the 8' stuff, and they only look at grade on the good side.  Batesville Casket is in your neck of the woods.  We also sold to a dimension plant that made cabinet parts.  We sold to another mill that had kilns and acted as a wholesaler.  We also sold to a couple of wholesalers.  We didn't sell much on the retail end.  Too much time involved with small customers, which takes away from production. 

For the lower grade boards, we managed to sell to a flooring plant on occasion.  We also made 4" and 6" pallet boards.  We sold them, along with our pallet blocking.  Not the best price, but you can get rid of all the low grade.  We sold everything by the trailerload.

You will need to separate the lumber by length and species.  You should make your bundles so they are consistent.  Lumber needs to be well manufactured with a minimum of wane and well trimmed ends.  Usually, the minimum amount of lumber is 1 Mbf of a species. 

You can talk to other mills to see where they send their grade.  You might also get good information from you state forestry department.  Many of them have a sawmill specialist that has their finger on the markets.  University of Kentucky may also have a forestry department that can give you some advice.  We used a wide range of markets, which kept us running through good times and bad.  We had a constant cash flow, and we never got stuck for money.  We also stuck with our buyers and didn't try to jump from market to market looking for a few extra bucks.