How much should I pay a full-time sawyer on my equipment?

[WV Sawmiller]

As our current arrangement is by bdft, I feel I am getting killed on days that are for a lot of 6 x 6s or 8 x 8s.   Do any of you have different rates for larger dimensions or am I a nut?

Why would this affect your bottom line? Are you selling these timbers/beams at a cheaper rate than the 1" and 2" boards? They saw out faster but are slower and harder to move and stack so there is a bit of a trade off. I typically saw by the bf so when I get a customer wanting thick cuts I am happy. They are usually happy because they are used to paying a premium price to get them so it is a good day for both of us. If you are selling them at the same or higher bf rate as your thin stuff you are doing well on them too.

  What does your sawyer think about the thick cuts?

   Still interested in log prep. Are you leaving him a good supply of ready to saw logs so all he has to do is turn them with a cant hook or is he having to drive your MHE to load them?

[UpInATree]

When my sawyer arrives in the morning his logs for the day are already in place waiting for him.  Prior day's slabs are removed along with sawdust.  I move the dead stacked piles to the center of the stacking/selling area.

In the future I agree, he should focus on sawing, and a helper can stack.  I pay 25.00 per hour for competent help on the firewood processor.  It has been much harder for me to find a competent sawyer so I am happy to pay him on the higher side of average....still trying to dial that in. 

[Joe Hillmann]

I see a couple issues paying by the bdft.

Yesterday at work we had a bit of an unexpected maintenance day we probably spent 7 hours working on fixing/maintenance on things we hadn't planed on.  And to anybody watching us it probably looked like we were being lazy, spending quite a bit of time looking things up in manuals or on line and two people spending a half an hour on a single grease zerk.  But they were things that in the long run are very important.  Even though it may take years of not doing that maintenance for problems to show up sometime down the road.  If we were paid by the amount we produced it would have been better to ignore those problems and keep the machines running.  And for a while maintenance can be ignored, but eventually it causes expensive problems.

Also when sawing a log I can get maximum bdft out of it pretty quickly,  some boards may have cracks, bad knot placement, sap wood, wane or other defects.  When paying by the BDFT doing that is a benefit to the sawyer but bad for the employer.

 Or I can saw the same log, take a few minutes to study it, maybe roll it a few times and then saw it to get fewer BDFT but high quality with very few defects.  When paying by the BDFT this is bad for the sawyer but good for the employer.

In the situations I gave it is in the sawyers best interest to saw fast and produce a lot just good enough lumber instead of taking his time and producing the best quality lumber.


Of course that depends on your market.  Maybe in your market quality doesn't make that much difference and high quality boards don't sell for anymore than adequate boards sell for.

If you aren't going to be there to occasionally check on his work you don't want to set up a pay structure that accidentally incentivizes him do work in a way that is working against you.

[customsawyer]

I pay my help by the hour with a production bonus figured in. Of course my situation is a bit different in that I run the mill and am in control of quality and production. However if you did something similar it would cover him when he is needing to do maintenance. Let's face it, in the long run it is beneficial to him to maintain the equipment that provides his living.   There never seems to be a perfect answer.