walnut and oak log trends

[Kansas]

Got a call from a logger/timber buyer this morning. He just had the bids to him dropped. Good bur oak (4 side) got cut from 1.00 to .80 in the log. These are big logs suitable for quartersawing.  Walnut got cut 20 cents a board foot too. They had some excuse about trouble with scales trucking across Iowa. I talked with several other loggers. Same story; the market is suddenly softening. Excuses are all over the place. One excuse is that the weather has been so dry, way too many logs are coming onto the market. That may be. Its been the best fall/winter for logging in this area weatherwise for a long time. One logger told me the bids for veneer, especially bur oak, were either dropping or had dried up. I have a lot of timber to cruise and trying to figure out if its just a few buyers or what is going on. This is all happened within the last few weeks. These markets that we have had available tend to flow to Iowa or Minnesota. I am curious if anyone on east farther is running into the same thing. Missouri, Indiana etc.

[donny hochstetler]

I"m from ohio  its slowing up a lot here too I just started a cherry job I"ll probably get about one third what I could have got 5 years ago but it had been good all summer expect it to pick back up again in early summer lets hope