Anybody out there buying lumber that they could be sawing themselves? I have my woodmizer all set up but don't seem to get much time to saw. Amish guy in the area sold me 4,000 bed feet of nice white pine. I have no immediate use or plan for it. Might just try and sell it. At 40 cents I just couldn't pass it up. Anyone else do random crap like this. Now for the stacking, what fun.
Last I knew, the price here at the local Amish mill was also $.40/bf!
Good deal. 8)
EDIT: That's for Pine or Hemlock
Just talked to a Amish mill last week, he was paying 26 cents a bf for pine, not much room for profit there, almost as bad as pallet stock. Steve
paying $.26/bf for what the logs?
If you can buy it for $0.40, so can everyone else. :)
Do you want to be a sawer or a lumber dealer? I should be both. The problem for me in this n.y. area is no one to buy from. I sell a lot of 1x12 rough but want to concentrate on hard wood. About 2 hours from here is a soft wood mill I could buy the 1x12 from but he uses a run around system with a band saw. My city customers like circle cut both sides and that's becoming a specialty I need. These high tax areas have no Amish.
Amish is a bad word up in this country if ya own a mill.
x2 Bags. So is Canadian. The Canadians buy logs for more than local mills can pay, and then sell lumber back for cheaper than we can sell for. I don't get it. The main pallet guy i sell to I hear can buy cutstock from Canada for 30% cheaper than from me. He buys from them occasionally but I can be fluid and provide what he needs for tomorrow or this afternoon.
Basic answer, Canada has a different government/economic structure for businesses than the US has. Currency exchange rate also changes day to day, you can actually gain/loose money just by crossing the border.
You can also bet the Canadian mill is not cutting the whole log into pallet material. They will be cutting, sorting and grading to make the max return on that log. The pallet grade is the stuff they can't sell anywhere else for more $$, and they may technically be selling it below cost. They have sold the better boards for a premium, so it all evens out in the end.
This is also why, when you look closely at commercial construction lumber, it's generally NOT great quality. It's good enough to get through the grading process of course, but the best quality stuff has been sorted and sold to someone else as a higher value product.
Same with NZ wood being sold into the US
I'm happy not to be competing with these guys as a part timer. Actually bought one of their wore out mills because I sometimes need a beam sawed and they are too busy to do it. Rumor has it that another Amish mill in the area is currently sawing more than any other mill in Wisconsin. Third or forth hand info from a paper mill log buyer so who knows. I just hope they are making a few dollars at the end of the day
I actually buy a lot more (green) lumber then logs. I don't have time to saw it all or to get logs so I buy the lumber, dry it, mark it up and sell it. Sometimes I have to hold on to it for a year or two but most will sell quickly. Also I get exactly what I want-just uppers. When I saw the log, I have to figure out how to get rid of the lower grade stuff. Slabs are different, I just slab the whole log and even the knotty ugliest stuff sells.
The local mill that we sell pine logs to sells most of his production to Canada.
Quote from: 4x4American on December 17, 2017, 09:09:20 PM
x2 Bags. So is Canadian. The Canadians buy logs for more than local mills can pay, and then sell lumber back for cheaper than we can sell for. I don't get it. The main pallet guy i sell to I hear can buy cutstock from Canada for 30% cheaper than from me. He buys from them occasionally but I can be fluid and provide what he needs for tomorrow or this afternoon.
Living near an International border can 'bite'.
Mama Pajama wanted to go across the border to North Dakota for a bit of Christmas shopping.
I took $1000 Canadian bucks with me, and as we crossed the border, poooof!
Now I've got $800 US bucks. :-\
. . . . .
Later that day, at the parcel service in Pembina ND. I met an American who loves to go to Canada to visit his favourite watering hole.
He pays for his beer with a twenty dollar bill. He's served his beer and gets twenty back, plus change! :o
Buddy likes it when he gets paid to have a few. ;D
Buying Instead of Sawing?
Yeah, both.
You've got to know the value of money in both countries.
4x4American; I think you nailed it when you said: "but I can be fluid and provide what he needs for tomorrow or this afternoon".
As small businesses, we've got to know where our niche market is.
On both sides of the border.
I was north of me and stopped at a circle mill that had his pine and hemlock prices posted....I definately thought my next big pine order would be a heckuva lot easier to pick up a truckload and sell it at my price than going thru the bother of milling it........
Same thing as buying 2×4 or sawing them. Hopefully you can saw the logs into something more valuable then sell and buy your 2x4 cheap. The perfect situation is to saw only high grade hardwoods. Just like WDH.
You still have to have a market for the low grade. Even a high grade log has a pithy cant in the middle.
I am finding it hard on business having Amish around. They only showed up a year ago, now they are circle and band sawing and the metal roofing family just showed up. They are sawing for .20 cents a foot and with a borrowed Thomas mill, they seem to be willing to borrow and use most anything you have but won't spend their money to buy the same thing, and doing carpentry for $12.00 an hour. How can you begin to compete with that?
Who did they borrow the mill from? That does not make a lot of sense, unless they borrowed it from a family member or something of that nature to make enough to buy their own.
I have not been around the Amish much, what few I was around, I found to be exceptionally honest and salt of the earth type folks.
What is it they do that enables them to saw for less money and still survive, or sell lumber for less money than the rest of us.
Maybe we need to incorporate some of their business practices.
They borrowed it from a guy that bought and used it some doing a few timber frame buildings. I believe they are good people, I have talked with some of them. Nice guys, but the business end gets you. They run no insurance, pay no social security or Medicare taxes, but do pay all other taxes. they pay got rides unless you offer to do it for nothing, they will used your electric tools if they are run by a generator. Some other what you would have to call cheapscate business practices.
The difference between the Amish and the rest if us is mostly lifestyle choices. They work hard and don't have some of the "luxuries" the rest of us "need." They don't "need" to make as much so they can sell at lower costs or work at a lower rate. Plus they provide an astonishing quality for the price. I'm not knocking them. It's how they choose to live.
I can't buy logs AND mill at their rates and make money. Of course I don't have a built-in labor force either.
I do both. I saw logs and buy green or sometimes kiln dry lumber from other mills. It all depends on if the math works out.