getting rich with a sawmill

[petefrom bearswamp]

Had a call last week from a young friend about buying a sawmill.
How many times have we experienced this?
He is buying 40 acres with 20 acres of woods and wants to saw his own lumber for his use and to sell.
I know him well and he is not afraid of hard work but has zero business sense.
There are a lot of Amish around here with mills and they sell maybe not cheap, but cheaper than I could sell when I was milling.
I DID discourage him.

[Dave Shepard]

Reminds me of the young man who bought a tri-axle dump truck from someone who was retiring. After a year of running the truck, the young man ran into the guy he bought it from. He asked him when you start making money with the truck. "When you sell it!"

[Walnut Beast]

I would say go for it and get a hydraulic mill that holds or exceeds it's value. Saw lumber and sell later 

[stavebuyer]

Wise words from a man with 60 or so year's experience..

[Magicman]

I bought my sawmill from a guy that bought it with the intention of making a living with it.  He sawed for two years and then it sat idle with a For Sale sign on it for a year after he got a real job and went back to work.

I have done quite well with it but I have never gotten rich nor made enough to call it a living.  For me it has been a very good side/part time business.

[Southside]

Just like farming, it's not a job, it's a lifestyle choice. For some it's not the right choice. 

[Crossroads]

Roughly 8 years ago when I bought my first mill, I had a bunch of cedar tree's on my property and I wanted to put them to use. After a while I decided to try to make a little money on the side with it. That started doing well, so I upgraded to a bigger better new mill. At some point I decided I could make a go of running it full time. Do I see as a way to get rich? Absolutely not! Has it been providing a good living for my family for the last year and a half? Yes! Will it continue? I have no idea, with all the new mills in the area, I have a feeling that it will slow down for a while. I'm definitely not putting all of my eggs in one basket. Between the mill, the excavator/skiddy and a contractor with an open invitation to work with him. I should be able to ride it out. 

[Acem]

You can make money with a sawmill however like anything most of the money is in marketing.

[thecfarm]

I have a manual mill. 
I want a building I start the chainsaw and cut what I need and start the sawmill up. 
The only trouble I have with a manual mill is the Honda motor on it. The fuel pump needs to replaced every few years.
Now if he buys a mill, he will need something to get the logs out of the woods.
It has started!!!!

[fluidpowerpro]

I have done quite well with it but I have never gotten rich nor made enough to call it a living.  For me it has been a very good side/part time business.

???? 
If I was someone wanting to try to make a living with a mobile mill, and I had followed this forum for any length of time, and having seen how much wood you can cut, this would scare the heck out of me. If you couldn't make a living at it, then I wonder who could. Maybe it's because the definition of "a living" is different depending on who you're talking to?

[KWood255]

For me, the mill is the easy part. The biggest expense is in the supporting equipment an maintenance. Blade costs are getting worse all the time, not to mention the price of logs and delivery. 

In my little bit of experience, it would be very difficult to produce enough lumber to pay the bills without having reliable and efficient machinery to feed the mill, and handle the finished product. 

I do not know what the perfect supporting equipment is...I have a 75hp Kubota tractor with several attachments as well as a 3.5 ton mini excavator, 20' flat deck trailer and a Timberjack 230 cable skidder. I still feel like I'm missing something, but I'm reluctant to invest too much more into a market which appears to be dwindling slightly across the continent. 

[fluidpowerpro]

Ignore my last post. I realize now that Magic wasn't say he couldn't have, just that he hasn't. Like Gilda said... Never Mind!

[Magicman]

If you couldn't make a living at it, then I wonder who could.

Tom, what I may "could" do and what I choose to do are two different things.  I decided after my first year's sawing that I would not buy logs nor saw and sell lumber.  Also I had no place to set up and saw customer's logs so I decided to only do portable sawing.  Both of these decisions limited my sawing.  I also pick and choose my jobs, more so now than in the past.

100Mbf seems like a good round number to shoot for but lets break it down.  1/3 for the sawmill, (repairs, replacements, blades, fuel, etc) 1/3 for taxes & insurance, advertisement, etc. and 1/3 for me.  @ $400Mbf = $40K so my 1/3 = $13K.  This year I will saw around 200Mbf so that kicks it up to $26K.  Good but it depends upon one's definition of a "living".

[fluidpowerpro]

Yes, I realized that I misinterpreted what your post actually said. My apologies.

[Magicman]

Oh no, no apology nor retraction necessary.  You asked a legitimate question and we must realize that there are many members and guest that are reading both the question and the answer and trying to figure out how to get rich. 

It's a business and a tough business.  Everything done with a log is hard work, dangerous, and there are no simple rules because each of our situations and markets are different.  Each of us have to develop our own business and find our own niche.

[OlJarhead]

wait!  what!?  I can't get rich working part time?

 now you tell me! lol

[longtime lurker]

I know guys that made some serious money in this industry.

But none of them ever got there sawing logs, nor even marketing it (and this list of people I know includes some who were major operators back in the day). In every case they made that money off the real estate. Buy the timberland or commercial real estate... saw enough logs and sell enough wood to stay ahead of the interest for a few decades... sell the real estate. It's like farming... the money is in the land and the crop or critters are just a way to pay the bills while the land appreciates in value.

You can still make a good living in this business in you work smart and long and hard, but the kind of money you can retire knowing your grandkids are set with comes from dirt not saws.

[Ianab]

What's the old story?

How do you make a small fortune in "X"?




Start with a large fortune  :D

Can you make some money sawing wood? Of course. But if getting rich was easy, everyone would be doing it. 

[Quebecnewf]

Been sawing ( part time ) for 30 years . 
Get rich sawing ?   No not in my case .

Love sawing ? Yes 

Do it for free ? Probably 
Going sawing again today . Yay going to be a great day .

Quebecnewf 

[Bruno of NH]

It's a lot of hard work.
Marketing is a large part after you figure out how to make nice lumber.
I went through alot as a contractor wanting to stay small you can only make so much.
I enjoy my new life style the Woodmizer probably saved my life. If I didn't get it I was going down fast emotionally and fiscally. 
There is some new mills opening near me , I'm not worried about it.
I can do firewood, build stuff from my lumber .

[Peter Drouin]

I started back in the 80s on the road. all that traffic sucks. Customers can't pile logs. even when I told them where to pile them.
Now I saw from home. Best thing I did.
I make enough to pay all the bills and keep the Hot Rod in gas.
:D :D

[Cedarman]

My last day job was in 1982.  Bought a WM in 83. Started sawing cedar full time in 89.  Built a big building and bought a 1/4 million dollars in equipment with bank help.  At one time 1/2 million in debt. Built mill in Alabama for son, quit that after 8 years and Aaron moved to Ok where we started a mulch business.  Another 1/2 million in debt.  But today, 4 kids through college,  300 acres, nice house, new pickup truck,  who knows how much all the sawmill, knuckleboom, skidder, knuckleboom trailer etc.  I have plenty of cash to retire and am out of debt in Indiana.  Can't say that for Oklahoma as we just expanded for a third time.
Did I work my butt off for 35 years and little cash to spend, yes, but I enjoy every minute of it.
Still working most days.  Started today at 7 moving logs, sharpening blades, answering e-mails and will  be busy until about 7 tonight.  But breaks thrown in and a good nap in the afternoon while it is hot.  So I am not actually working all day.
My big break came when we quit sawing commodity cedar and started custom sawing for people.
The internet let the whole world find me.  I became a price setter rather than a price taker.

[Joe Hillmann]

Another way to make money with a sawmill is to mill things others don't/won't/can't and then charge accordingly.

At one time I was sawing logs that had a lot of curve in them into slabs and half logs for curved benches and corner counters.  I was selling them $100 to $300 each.  I think if I had tried I could have developed a pretty good market for them and modified my mill with a rotating table to make them easier to cut.  I think I could have made fairly good money that way but I had other irons in the fire and didn't pursue it.

I now modified my mill to be able to cut 40 foot long.  I have had several people ask me to to cut for them because they can't find anyone else to cut long enough for there needs.  I think I could name nearly any price and have more work than I can handle if that was the direction I wanted to go.

I am sure there are other specialty milling methods you can do that don't have you competing to be the lowest price, but those are two I have experience with that could work.

Another option could be to have unusual species of lumber and market it to high end woodworker. 

[booman]

How to make a million dollars with a sawmill?   Start with 2 million.

[mudfarmer]

Wait a second! You can get rich with these things? That doesn't sound right