The sawmiller's juggling act

[longtime lurker]

That's why I always say sawmilling is a disease.

I've got $15 k of logs on the ground, either in the yard or on the ramp waiting to come here.
I've got moren my mortgage in stock on hand tied up somewhere between the greenmill and the stuff that leaves this week most days of the year.
I've got enough cash on hand to run her for a month regardless of sales as a reserve.
I've got a pile of bills need paying, balanced against a pile of payments due in.
Other then that and the value of the gear, I've got about 10 cents and half a case of beer to my name.

And when Mary says "What's the solution?" I tell her "Get bigger".
It's a disease I tell ya!

[sandsawmill14]

thats how we got the 3rd mill :D :D :D :

[4x4American]

It never ends!   8) 8)


When you get sawdust in your blood, you might not know it, but the terms are til death do us part.
:D

[paul case]

I know a guy who got out of the sawmill business alive. He said that he finally got paid up as for 6 weeks after he quit the checks stopped coming in the mail. He said he never made any money until he quit.


PC

[4x4American]

Kinda like farming, the only guy who makes money is the one who sells the farm

[longtime lurker]

The guys I know who made real money out of sawmilling all did it pretty much the same way - land.

Buy low value undeveloped timberland, pull the logs out, put the bulldozers in. Then sell and go again, or hold it while land values appreciate for 30 years.
Either that or buy timbered rangeland and run the mill in conjunction with a grazing enterprise.

Either way the mill was the cash flow/ cover the interest / subsidiary component of the income stream rather then the investment itself.

Don't think I know a single guy that got rich actually cutting logs and selling lumber.

[WDH]

Yes, the old sawmillers here made their money buying land and then cutting the timber and selling the land. 

[4x4American]

There ain't much land around here for sale that has nice timber on it anymore...

[Gearbox]

How do you compete with a mill like Potlatch . They use 700 to 900 cord per day of spruce ,red pine , balsam and Jack pine . They make 2X4 and 2X6 8 and 9 ft.

[paul case]

I don't know who that question was for?

I dont consider it competing with anyone on logs or getting my lumber sold. Sometimes I buy logs from neighbor sawmills and sometimes they have me saw for them. It is a good arrangement.

PC

[paul case]

Well,

In less than a month I am knee deep in logs of all kinds. I have been getting some good oak logs from the neighbors place. The 2 different guys I have logging it for me do a good job of getting what I need. ! uses a backhoe to load and the other a bobcat. Both haul in on gooseneck flatbeds.

Then a retired farmer tells me he has 120 some logs he wants me to bid on. Sycamore, hard maple, kentucky coffee, mulberry, 1 walnut and some white oak.  I went over and scaled 15,000 ft of logs at his place and he took my offer. So now I have to get busy and haul them in. It is about 7 miles.

Things are looking up!

PC

[plowboyswr]

  8)

[sandsawmill14]

glad to hear its going good for you  8) 8)
  just keep an eye on the markets we got cut off today on ties (not the big mill i saw for but the buyer where we sell our ties cut on the other mill) and we called 3 other tie buyers and none would even come look said they aren't take any new suppliers :-\ but luckily we are only caught with one load and im sure i can move it before they damage but the worst thing was they didnt call so they were on the truck and boomed down when my partner called to tell them they were on the way and they told him to stop the truck they were full >:(  they could have called >:( so im not to happy with stella jones right now >:(
the thing i hate the worst is i have to call a logger and hope he hasnt started cutting an 8 acre tract we agreed to buy and tell him we cant take the logs :(  and worse than that the next track was 28 acres and i am afraid we might not get him back  :( if he has started cutting i will try to buy everything on the ground but there is no way i can buy all 36 acres and us not able to saw it and sell the ties  :(  36 acres  is not a lot of timber to some guys but this was a big deal for us about 3/4 red oak and should have been a good job for a while if the timber was sound and im sure most of it is :  but this is the 3rd time i've been through this cycle and we will be fine as long as they put the big mill on quota or something 

[ozarkgem]

Well,

In less than a month I am knee deep in logs of all kinds. I have been getting some good oak logs from the neighbors place. The 2 different guys I have logging it for me do a good job of getting what I need. ! uses a backhoe to load and the other a bobcat. Both haul in on gooseneck flatbeds.

Then a retired farmer tells me he has 120 some logs he wants me to bid on. Sycamore, hard maple, kentucky coffee, mulberry, 1 walnut and some white oak.  I went over and scaled 15,000 ft of logs at his place and he took my offer. So now I have to get busy and haul them in. It is about 7 miles.

Things are looking up!

PC

Hard Maple is a rare bird here. I don't know that I have seen one to be sure. May have to come and see a log so I can recognize it next time. Glad you got some logs.

[paul case]

I have only sawn hard maple 1 time that I know of. Best I can remember  it lived up to it's name.

Bring your pickup and I will sell you 1 so you can say you sawd it.

PC

[sandsawmill14]

I have only sawn hard maple 1 time that I know of. Best I can remember  it lived up to it's name.

Bring your pickup and I will sell you 1 so you can say you sawd it.

PC

we sawed hard maple all last week and it is hard used 6-7 blades per day and didnt ever saw over 1500 bdft a day   something else that has surprise me is how hard the ash logs i am sawing now are they have been down a while and are dry enough to start checking on the ends and are almost as bad as the hard maple was i had sawn alot of ash over the years and always thought it sawed easy enough but the logs were always fresh  less than 2 weeks old

[paul case]

I have had times when I thought some wood was a lot harder to saw than I had remembered and each time it turned out that it was my band sharpener needed the stone dressed.

PC

[paul case]

WOW what a difference a few weeks makes.

I am swimming in logs. I bought some logs about 9 miles from home 3 weeks ago and got all them hauled home. Since then I have bought at my yard about 25k ft of logs in the last 2 weeks. I actually sold 3 semi loads of them to a friend who is out of logs or at least isnt getting enough to keep sawing 5 days a week. I must have 350 logs stacked up around the front of the mill building.

It makes me think that we are in for a bad weather stretch when no one can get logs out of the woods and I am gonna have plenty to keep sawing.

I have got so much wood piled up around here it is starting to look like a sawmill or something!!!!

PC

[Magicman]

Keep on doing the sawmiller's juggle.   8)

[Peter Drouin]

Good for you, Sometimes it can be  feast or famine.

I like to run down the log piles so I can cut the old ones all up. I don't have a lot of room here.
But trying to get the new ones in just when I'm out can be a challenge. :laugh: 

[4x4American]

Glad to hear it.  I've got a straight truck of doug fir coming today from a forum member, supposed to have a few truckloads of pallet logs coming from the local pallet place soon, and I have a bunch of guys supposedly cutting me tie logs, they are hard to get around here.  I've had 3 packs of ties dead stacked since august, can't get enough logs to get 8 packs to get em out of here, pain in the hind end!

[4x4American]

Welp got the doug fir in, forum member millcreek40 brought it over.  Pretty sloppy out with the other logs in that clay so had him drop em by the entrance. 











There wasn't a whole lot, but pretty cool as we don't see it much out here.  Someone must've planted it, he counted and said approx. 80 years ago.  I didn't bother to count but it does have some tight growth rings.  He's keeping the rest to build a cabin with.  I have a buyer for around 1mbf of it, and the rest I will use for my cabin most likely.  He said that it was white when he cut it and then you could watch it turn red.  I'm looking forward to sawing it.

[longtime lurker]

WOW what a difference a few weeks makes.

I am swimming in logs. I bought some logs about 9 miles from home 3 weeks ago and got all them hauled home. Since then I have bought at my yard about 25k ft of logs in the last 2 weeks. I actually sold 3 semi loads of them to a friend who is out of logs or at least isnt getting enough to keep sawing 5 days a week. I must have 350 logs stacked up around the front of the mill building.

It makes me think that we are in for a bad weather stretch when no one can get logs out of the woods and I am gonna have plenty to keep sawing.

I have got so much wood piled up around here it is starting to look like a sawmill or something!!!!

PC

If you're like us then a yard full of logs means you're now broke, which means some really good logs are about to become available somewhere :D :D :D

Thats the other partof the juggling act!

[paul case]

If you're like us then a yard full of logs means you're now broke, which means some really good logs are about to become available somewhere :D :D :D

Thats the other partof the juggling act!

Yup just about out of log buying money. Thats why I have been selling logs too. I commited to buy the logs from my cousins place so I am doing what I can to be good to my word. Every time they bring some they say'' there is a bunch more''.

PC

[longtime lurker]

Same same here... between now and Christmas we intake a whole whack of logs to carry us through the wet season when we cant get much at all in, I try and have 4 mths supply either in the yard or on accessible hardstand elsewhere by the 20th December. After it starts to rain theres no logging for a few months.

Its always a gamble: wet might start in late November or mid February, might last for 3 months or 6, and while it doesnt mean supply becomes totally impossible the whole time it gets real difficult. Local supply is a fail for sure, we can sometimes sneak a few loads out the back side of the range but thats all dirt road country and good rain can mean gear gets bogged in for a week while it dries out and maybe it rains again in that week. Had a skidder and loader inaccessible for three months couple of years back... just left them parked out which didnt kill them but we schedule all our heavy maintenance work for the wet and later that year downtime for breakdowns near broke us.

So we choose between having too many logs or risk running out. And we gamble on it not starting early lest the log degrade bill get too high. And the one thing I can guarantee is that right about now... when I'm committed to buying logs from here, here and here, and the money is going to be real tight for a bit... thats when some farmer wanders in from out of left field with a patch of premium rainforest logs to harvest that are going to totally screw up my harvest schedule, and see me right to the back end of the overdraft along the way. Again. And my wife will be *pithed. Again. And I'll either run short and end up freighting logs for hundreds of miles or the sound of the borers gnawing away will keep me awake nights. Again.

You dont have to be mad to be a sawmiller right, but it sure does help. :D