I ran a load down the other day to the local mill i deal with and i know it wasnt the greatest but i was in for a shock on the lowgrade, what was bringing $325 mbft is down to 275 or 200 on #3-#4 RO. The mill scaler, part owner told me to hold off bringing or cutting nice oak or maple for a while till stuff comes back. Any of you guys seeing stuff drop ?
nope........i don't like hearing this
Yeah I know guys around here have been dropping prices. Some are having a tough time moving grade lumber. And some of the pallet companies are starting to fill up as well.
Red and white oak flooring is down right now, the flooring planer mill has not bought any for about two weeks now, basically the Chinese have shut down at the moment. They were planning to start buying lumber in a couple of weeks and said give it a month or so and they would buy from me being I am new on the scene. They are installing triple the kiln capacity and plan to mill 12 million bft next year so I don't think it a giant bump.
ya hm sm ch oak all went down but ash went up 8) 8) have 2 ash jobs to do side by side
I also have been told the Chinese are not buying red oak. For a while our market are not even taking the lower grades.
Only the low grade where I sell to, everything else is holding so far.
There for a while last yr i was shipping it all. The price on the real good stuff is still up but i rarely get lots that have 100mbft of great stuff. I guess the plan is to knock some hemlock and firewood out and see how the cards fall. Get stuck on this boat much more and im going to scream. :o my "relief" is competent enough to add oil, i dont get paid to hold someones hand this much. :D
Our hardwood mill shut down for awhile blaming lack of logs .
Do you think it's just cause of mud season coming into play now? Most mills will stock up with logs to get through mud season, if it was normal weather this year we'd be in mud season right now, so maybe they're just stocked up enough and not buying anymore
Ash is still paying pretty good, the better HM and CH paying ok but 200mbft delivered makes the firewood pile grow alot quicker. :D Ive been dealing with Cooksburg / Indian Ridge and they have been very decent, i may get a touch more at B+B / Baileys but they dont really want the lowgrade.
Prices coming down here too.
I was told this morning that oak will continue to fall with all the ash that is being cut ash and oak are vary vary similar and after the two are milled and all the good stuff you cant tell the difference between the two
Try Hudson River hardwoods
It all seems to be holding steady here.
All the replies seem to be from hardwood country, but it's the same out here for Douglas Fir. Chinese have quit taking logs, which was near 25% of the market at times. Combined with such a mild winter here, the mills are full and taking very little. Add in the finished lumber from Canada, and prices have dropped significantly. Flip side is prices were really high for awhile, and people cashed in.
all this china not buying talk dosn't bode well.
monkey, i won't cut wood thats less than 300, we were getting 370 for common saw last i sold any.......hope it don't go under 300
What Brad said. I sold one load (a little over 2000 bf on a self-loader) of DF for a good price in February, but the prices dropped enough this month that I'm sitting on a third of a load waiting to see if they go back up enough to make it worth hauling. I may have enough trees to fill up a second load but I'm not going to have them cut if prices don't go up. I'll make firewood of it if it's still there in a year.
Most of the grades on the load were over $600/thousand board feet. About 1900 for the load, though I had to pay that much in road work alone and for the logging and hauling. If I sell another load this year for those prices I'll break even. I don't have enough trees ready for any more, yet.
just had the mills in yesterday and today to bid on some logs I just logged , I averaged $700/1000 sitting on the landing ,logs are ok but not great timber , I'm cutting alot nicer HM now , the mill pays the trucking so I think not to bad as I did have almost half in soft maple , it was nice and white and no worm , I got paid the most the winning mill ever paid me for red and white oak prime logs . everyone around here heres about the price dropping but so far at least I half not seen that and honestly hope it doesnot as I'm sitting on just over 2 million feet of hardwood timber I have already bought and paid for , big drop could hurt me and my piggy bank >:(
One of the reasons a hardwood mill closes in these parts is not having ample crown timber allocation. Not enough supply coming from private woodlots and probably a lack of volume contracts from loggers of private land. I see one hardwood mill in NS went down because they couldn't secure volume from crown land. Most of our commercial mills if not all are tied to volumes off public timber land. They do not have to go door to door beating the bushes for the next block of timber. Too easy. And if they can't have easy, they pull out.
The reason folks caution about putting all your eggs in one or two species if you are managing woodlots. You never know. Markets have a life if there own sometimes...
Some of the problem might be...
A currency risk, if their currency, Chinese yuan, is cheap compared to the U.S. Dollar why would I want to pay 30 - 50%( as an example ) more for the same logs I bought last year for cheaper prices? All exports have taking it on the chin this past year, King Dollar is part of the problem.
Along with supply and demand issues. Just my 2 cents.
Oak is in the toilet. Ash and maple are still paying good. Going to be a big firewood pile this yr.
I'm still getting as good if not better for my oak right now but that could change , Im to sell 16 black walnut trees tomorrow so will see how that goes
I was just told this morning by the log buyer oak is dropping 50 per thousand across the board around here
I'm sure you guys are getting more than we are to start with for good grade oak so maybe that is why your dropping , might have more to do with your dollar than anything else
Ours are 1200 for #1 veneer down to 800 for #4 veneer and 700 for #1 sawlogs down to 350 for pallet if I remember right it's been a month or so since I looked at a spec sheet
Quote from: Maine logger88 on March 30, 2015, 08:12:58 PM
Ours are 1200 for #1 veneer down to 800 for #4 veneer and 700 for #1 sawlogs down to 350 for pallet if I remember right it's been a month or so since I looked at a spec sheet
you will still be higher than us with your price drop :( ;D ;D
People tell me I crazy...maybe so. lol I have a feeling the price of logs has a direct tie to production. The faster and more we cut the less we get. Each year bigger and faster logging machines are being built. What use to take a crew of 3 or 4 all winter to do, these new machines do in a week. Face it...how much wood/logs can you produce before the market is flooded and prices drop? I know guys that shoot for 100 tractor trailer loads a week. That is a lot of wood...whether saw logs, pulp or chips, that is a lot of wood. Watch the buyers at a landing...Picky...I will say they are. A little bow was never too bad...now a little bow and it goes to the firewood pile. lol Machinery prices had just gotten way out of hand also. Big n Bad costs a lot. I love watching that big stuff work but the wood production is flooding the market.
We are dropping our log prices again. Down $10/ton for oak from last summer high. Pine logs are holding because of tight supply( 10" over on rain)
Quote from: HiTech on March 31, 2015, 08:36:50 AM
People tell me I crazy...maybe so. lol I have a feeling the price of logs has a direct tie to production. The faster and more we cut the less we get. Each year bigger and faster logging machines are being built. What use to take a crew of 3 or 4 all winter to do, these new machines do in a week. Face it...how much wood/logs can you produce before the market is flooded and prices drop? I know guys that shoot for 100 tractor trailer loads a week. That is a lot of wood...whether saw logs, pulp or chips, that is a lot of wood. Watch the buyers at a landing...Picky...I will say they are. A little bow was never too bad...now a little bow and it goes to the firewood pile. lol Machinery prices had just gotten way out of hand also. Big n Bad costs a lot. I love watching that big stuff work but the wood production is flooding the market.
I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. :D
I know it goes on here. As soon as efficiency increases, price falls. It also falls when the government sells below cost of production or true value and they don't need your private wood. Plus being able to tell the seller what the price is, instead of the reverse. Royalties here are not set by government per se across the board, it is based on surveys of what mills will pay landowners for wood stumpage and in areas where it is mostly monopoly and not along the border towns where we can export to close by markets.
Quote from: BargeMonkey on March 31, 2015, 10:24:20 AM
Quote from: HiTech on March 31, 2015, 08:36:50 AM
People tell me I crazy...maybe so. lol I have a feeling the price of logs has a direct tie to production. The faster and more we cut the less we get. Each year bigger and faster logging machines are being built. What use to take a crew of 3 or 4 all winter to do, these new machines do in a week. Face it...how much wood/logs can you produce before the market is flooded and prices drop? I know guys that shoot for 100 tractor trailer loads a week. That is a lot of wood...whether saw logs, pulp or chips, that is a lot of wood. Watch the buyers at a landing...Picky...I will say they are. A little bow was never too bad...now a little bow and it goes to the firewood pile. lol Machinery prices had just gotten way out of hand also. Big n Bad costs a lot. I love watching that big stuff work but the wood production is flooding the market.
I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. :D
x2
I agree that the main reason for the price drop is market saturation. I think personally one of main reasons is the cold winter and cold March, everyone has just been pumping the wood out. Had it been a warm winter with tight supply I think prices would have remained stable.
I want to say i feel bad for the guys with a huge skidder payment, but you cant forecast the future. :D Other than logs for ourselves, and FW we are going to scale back on cutting the decent stuff for a while. The price went down another 50 per mbft between tuesday and friday on the RO, any lower and the #3-#4 are going for FW.
You dont see alot of huge guys down here, but ive seen a few come and go quick, 100 loads a week to keep afloat your going to watch the bank load your stuff on the trailer.
the mill iv been sending quite abit to dropped hard maple across the board 75-100 a thousand. Leaving the nice stuff till the prices go back up.