Free Logs

[Qweaver]

I've found that free logs are often really expensive!  I recently felled two trees that were living side by side.  Both 30" +  dia and pretty straight.  A poplar and a spruce.  The spruce was free of metal and made great 2x10s and about half in 1x 10s.  The poplar  had two 1/2"  lag bolts with an ell for attaching  wire.  Deep in the logs.   Dulled  3 blades but I think they can be sharpened.  My great Grandmother probably used those bolts to run power and phone lines across the river back in the early 1920s.  The metal was pretty soft not like todays lag screws.   The lumber was still worth the sharpening fees.  But not near the value my cousin put on them.  Allowed me to finish the camper shed I am building.  :D

[charles mann]

NOTHING is ever FREE. It will cost at some point. 

[SawyerTed]

Sometimes there's a reason nobody else has taken "free" logs.

[PAmizerman]

Sometimes you get lucky and can find a good batch of free logs. 

This whole barn was built from free logs.
We had to haul them home but it can be worth it. The only logs we supplied ourselves we're a handful of locust to get the posts started.



 

 

[mike_belben]

The best things in life are free.  And free is for me.  

;D

[Ianab]

The tree might be free, but it's gonna cost from that point on.  :D

But sometimes you find treasure. My friend is making these serving trays to sell at the market, from some "free" Sheoak trees I was given. Told him if he came and helped, he could take some home. It's a bear to work with, VERY hard, but looks amazing. 

[caveman]

I got two loads of  free longleaf logs today for Jmoore and myself.  I thought this source dried up and a few weeks ago I got a call.  With only seven worn out tires on our trailer I was not comfortable hauling them and my tractor across town in traffic so I dropped them a few miles away.  I'll get six or eight logs at a time with my smaller trailer. The logs needed to be moved from the house lot though.  

The area where I am getting them is near the school where I work.  There are about 100 more acres that are to be developed with some very nice, old longleaf pines.  The road building guys will call me when they get some.  The good thing when they have logs is that they can load the trailer.  When I have to haul logs and the tractor to the home lots to load with it does not take many logs to make my truck unhappy.  

The homes they are building in this subdivision are huge.  Many have tile or slate roofs.  The guy that is developing it is one of the founders of the Red Lobster restaurants.  He and I spent an afternoon riding around while he gave me a history lesson of the immediate area a few months ago.  He also pointed out that the customers want to purchase wooded lots and then the first thing that they do before they build their houses is to have the lot cleared of trees.  There are some cherry trees, lots of longleaf pine, some live oak, water oak and a few others on these lots.  Some of the trees that have been left standing are water oaks - they would have been first on my hit list.

 

 

[caveman]

A good guy who I used to coach with called me last week and he was having some trees cleared out of his yard and asked me if I wanted the logs.  After seeing the trees the answer was yes.  I was scheduled to get the Monday after work but they were still standing when I got there.  Anyway, today he called and said they were down.  After work I rushed home and hooked up to my bumper pull trailer and headed that way.  After the guy working loaded a couple of logs we noticed my driver's side rear tire was very low on air.  I planned on getting four trees (10-12 logs) but I had him stop loading at three.  I slow rolled it to an 84 year old friend's place between where I was and my house to air up the low tire.

After getting home and unloading the three logs I headed back to drop my trailer so I could pick it up, loaded with the remainder of the logs, on the way home from work tomorrow.  Within a half of a mile of dropping my trailer my truck's clutch went to the floor and stayed.  A little creative shifting and slow driving got me to a good spot to look it over.  Not going to be a field fix so I called JMoore and he towed me the three or four miles home in traffic with a strap.

The logs are slash pine and have plenty of sap.  These were good sized pines.  The stakes are 42" high for reference.



 

[sawguy21]

Towing your truck and trailer on a strap would have earned a ticket here, some days it don't pay to get out of bed. :D At least you got some straight logs

[WV Sawmiller]

   I got a call from a guy today offering me a  bunch of yellow poplar he recently cut and needs to move so he can cut down some oaks. If he were closer I'd consider it but he is about 50 miles away and it would cost me as much to move them here as I'd likely get from selling the lumber. I tell people like that to find someone who needs the lumber then let them call me to come saw them for the person. 

[Crossroads]

I recently was offered a yard full of ponderosa pine. It looked like maybe 2 log truck loads. I got all excited and said yes, then found out it was going to cost $500 per load to have them hauled. Then I figured in my list wages for the day bucking them and moving them with the skiddy to where the self loader could get them and suddenly these 2 loads of free logs were going to cost me $1500. I am of my word so I planned on following through. Then the guy got impatient and kept calling asking when I was going to get them. So, before I left to go move them I called and told him that I was on my way, but was only going to move them to the loading spot. That I didn't have the extra money for trucking at the moment and the logs were going to sit there for a bit. If that was going to be an issue, then he might consider just hiring someone to come take care of the logs. There ended up being 1 full load and he paid for the trucking. They still weren't "free " but at least they weren't expensive. 

[maple flats]

Not really free but....

This was one of the trees he cut without my permission!

The story on this log and 8 others  was my horror story. At the time, I owned a rental house and it had a fireplace insert with a new SS liner in the chimney. I identified about 8-10 trees on the property that the tenant could cut, and I marked them, so he could split and stack them for the next winter. At the same time, I pointed out trees he could not cut. About 3 weeks later I went to the house to find he had only cut 1 approved tree and 7 he was told not to cut. I brought my trailer back and loaded the logs and took them all (2 trips) and I gave him notice to vacate.
I hauled all but the brush home, that I made him throw over a steep bank at the back of the property. All of the unapproved logs were cherry, I used the ones I could for sawing and selling, the rest I cut and it heated my home for 1 season. I wish I could remember how many  BF, but it was significant to say the least.
There were 3 logs of similar size, the rest were smaller and or crooked.

[caveman]

I got a few trailer loads of free pine logs last night and this morning.  I missed out on about 80 acres of mixed timber last month.  It looks like they grubbed it all and burned it.  I have to go check on another 10 acre block this afternoon.  I talked to the foreman last week and he said we could have it and his guy would load the trailer.  They are still building on every piece of land here.  It is painful to see this land now compared to the way it looked when I was a kid.  It does give me some satisfaction to saw these trees into something useful rather than seeing them go up in smoke.


 

 

 

[SawyerTed]

I've spent a lot of money on free logs.... 

They aren't free unless they are unloaded at my saw yard.  Even then they can cost money on blades that hit foreign objects. 

[jpassardi]

Very true Ted. Some people think they have gold but much of most log's value is eaten up in getting it prepped and to the mill.

[sealark37]

My sawyer mentor, (rest his soul), told me that the sawmill business is simply a material handling problem with a head saw right in the middle.

[caveman]

I'll need to replace a tire due to a fender that got mashed over on it and I gave the guy a bit of cash for loading them, but we'll come out okay on these.  

A bonus is that I met some good folks today.  

[barbender]

I think that is the best way to look at it. The bottom line is how much does it cost to get the material from one side to the other, and how much do you get for it. 

 Case in point- I spent the morning sawing some small 12' Tamarack logs. I got them really cheap, but it took me at least 2 hours to saw 200bf. I followed those with a couple of decent diameter 16' Red Pine logs. I sawed 350bf in around an hour out of those. The Red Pine costs me $300-$375/1000, I probably had about $90/1000 into the Tamarack. I'm making way more money flying through that pine.

[Nebraska]

I got some free logs last night, they are sitting out on  the drive below the shed. They are White Pine, not a very common tree around here, that is  mostly why I took them. I just wanted to saw some. They would be classified by Southside as "bull pine" .  They are out of a single tree row, so big lower limb knots. Planning  to use them as knotty rough sawn paneling in a barn. Worth a try as I won't have very many chances to saw white pine.

[Southside]

Free logs are often worth as much as a free horse.  :D  If those knots aren't super big knotty white pine makes for a very nice paneling.  

[barbender]

Yes, free logs and free horses occupy the same space in my mind😊

[Magicman]

100% of my Cabin Addition was done with free logs. 

The only metal that I found was in one ERC log but even then, there was enough for the flooring, wall paneling, and ceiling in the mud room. 

[Stephen1]

Nothing is FREE in this world. When my son calls to say hello at different times. He always asks what are you up to today......"moving wood" because running a sawmill is %75 material handling. I am offered free logs quite a bit and even though I would like to say yes, I have learned to say NO.  

[Magicman]

Last week I watched 7 very nice 10' SYP logs go to the burn pile because I had sawn all of the lumber that the customer wanted/needed. 

[SawyerTed]

I have and likely will saw "free" logs in the future.   It's just "free" isn't if you have to load and haul them or have it done.  

Hypothetically, if you are loading and hauling, are you saving as much as you would make sawing?  I don't know the answer but right there is a potential double cost.  

Does it cost less to load and haul than to pay for loading and hauling free logs?  Again I don't know the answer, but there's costs to doing business.  It's important to identify if "saving" money is actually costing money.  

For the hobby operation none of that matters much, but from a business perspective sometimes free costs double.