How much would you charge for 5000 brd ft of green pine, cut into 2x6, 2x8 and 1x whatever, If I brought it to your mill, and picked it up GREEN, several days later?
I have people trying to hire me all the time. I may someday take them up on it. For now, I don't do anything for others, except a few custom cuts and stuff they cannot buy from a lumber yard. Like a few FULL 4"x6" beams or a fireplace mantle.
Do you simply charge by the brd ft. Using a log scale, and then deliver?
Or do you charge by what you got out of the logs, including overrun?
Thanks,
Nate
I always cut by the board foot. It was rare for anyone to actually bring logs to me, but it did happen. If they brought them to me, I would allow for gas money for traveling... say $50 if it was a couple of thousand bdft of lumber. What ever their logs produced, that is what they paid for.
I charge at home .15 a bf. for soft wood and .20 for hard wood . On the road I charge $50 and hour. At home there too many phone calls and people stoping by charge by the hour.
We charge by the bdft also. What the log makes is what the customer pays for.
We are currently charging .25 cent a bdft.
Same as BSEAGO. 15 for softwood and .20 for hardwood based on actual yeild. That includes temporary stickers unless they leave a trailer to stack the lumber on. My experience says that if they don't leave their trailer it may take them much longer to pick up the lumber >:(
Bill
I charge strictly by the hour. Usualy, it's cheaper for them to buy from the big box stores when your talking common 2x framing lumber.
Quote from: sawman on November 14, 2007, 10:21:32 PM
We charge by the bdft also. What the log makes is what the customer pays for.
We are currently charging .25 cent a bdft.
When you do the bdft, say a 2x4, do you charge 5.3', for a 8' 2x4, or 8' which I guess would be lin ft?
charge by the hour at $50 first nail is free. However when someone wants 2 by material cut to finished size, like 1.5 by 5.5 for a 2 by 6, I call the local home depot and charge 80% of their price.
Stumpy
I charge by the hour for all jobs at the customer's site and for all jobs here when the customer stays to help pull slabs and lumber. My concern has been that the customer has no way of knowing how many hours I have into the job if I am sawing alone, therefore the bd. ft. rate. Besides, as slow as I am at pulling slabs and piling lumber if I charged by the hour the customer could BUY the box store :D
Bill
For 5000 bf I would charge .20-.25 bf depending on the quality of the logs. We go by the yield and not scale. But this leaves you exposed to crooked and small log yield, muddy logs and plain bad logs that have to be rolled off the mill after they are opened up and it's determined they are not worth milling. How do you handle the latter? Especially when the customer is not there to make the call.
I charge by the hour. The clock starts when I scan the logs with a metal detector if I still hit something in a log the clock don't stop I fix it as fast as I can and keep going. I have raised my prices to detour the custom sawing because I don't want to do it and just don't have time to do others logs and they still come.
i charge .25 a bdft. they bring me the logs, i call when i am done sawing. if after a few phone calls they still have not shown up, i began leaving messages about all the really cool stuff i am fixing to build with my wood. that will work every time. ;D
You guys are cheap. I'm going to bring my customers logs to you and pocket the difference. ;D :D ;D :D ;D
I get 30 cents a board foot for finished lumber regardless of the size boards. For lots of small logs I get $60 an hour. Most of my work is at the bf rate. My minimum charge is $250 to bring the mill on site. Customer MUST provide off bearers. If customers bring me the logs and I can cut at home at my liesure, it's 30 cents bf with no minimum. I'll cut a 50 bf log for $15 and they haul the lumber home with them. I'll also haul customers logs to my place or another place for milling. Usually about $100 a load up to 20 miles as long as I'm doing the milling. I won't cut trees down or haul logs out of the woods. I need to be able to drive right up to the pile.
98% of my milling is custom sawing.
If you have to do all the loading and off-bearing and disposing of the slabs, no less than .30/bf and whatever your chiropractor charges for your back and neck adjustments. ;D
$1400-$2000.
Treebucker
I do get the customer with muddy,crooked,rotten,short & limbwood logs. Most times it is only a small amount and I chalk it up to the cost of doing business. I do point out the problems associated with these logs in a nice way in hopes they do not repeat I have found that these customers tend to be the ones that refer other better ones to me. A really large load I will either refuse or strike a different deal upfront.
Flip
I agree it is a pain in the *** but most times they leave the slabs. Free fuel for my outdoor boiler with less work than cutting trees, safer too.
Because this is a part-time semi-retired type of business I can afford the occasional job where it does not come out very well. You never know what will come of one of those jobs as last week I had someone stop and tell me " I'm back on my feet now and here is $20 for that nail you hit." I'll be bringing you some more logs in a few months". It had been so long I do not even remember his name. :D
Bill
I charge 38 cents a bd.ft. Plus 25 dollars to replace a blade , or
10 dollars to resharpen if I hit anything in there log. I`m one
of those retired part time guys, and try not to be the cheepest
place around. Guess I`m higher priced than alot of you. Am
busy all the time, and turn work away.
arj
I cahrge $500.00 to move my mill into a place around these parts and give credit back in lumber sawn, if they aint got enough bdft to reach $500 then its mine and I move out, if they wont pay me before i move the mill in how do they expect to pay me when the job is done or when the end of the week comes and they owe me another pile of funds on top? I have made eceptions, but once folks understand my point of view they give me my move in fee and we go from there.
Until recently i only charged .125 per foot, but last spring I upped to .15, and I am now gonna have to have .20 to make custom work go due to rising fuel costs alone making, parts, and travel expensive..... When i started out back in 1986, I sawed for .08 per foot and after about a year I was up to the ten cent mark and stayed there for a long time..... like 15 years, but my mill had been payed for a long time before..... many hundreds of thousand feet sawn at a dime a foot.....
As for how i charge, I use the lumber calculator book, and if the footage goes .33 i round down, and if it goes .66 I round up, it all pretty much comes out in the end of a job and has not be worth quibbling over a few pennies if it worked out in favor of a customer anyway....
Ive been offered forty cents to pull nails and resaw reclaimed wood into usable sizes...... it just sorta pencils out to fair wages, but i dont have the resaw to do the job proper..... I would consider a Baker model D but at over $30 K for the saw [let alone the infeed and outfeed rolls and shipping costs] that is a lot of wood to go through it to make it payout and the fella dont have that much to contract for sure..... but I still have not given the idea up totally.
"When you do the bdft, say a 2x4, do you charge 5.3', for a 8' 2x4, or 8' which I guess would be lin ft?"
I charge for the 5.3 bd/ft
If you are charging by the board foot, then charge the 5.3 feet. :)
Now are you talking about custom sawing or selling your lumber to a customer?
Quote from: Furby on November 18, 2007, 08:31:20 PM
If you are charging by the board foot, then charge the 5.3 feet. :)
Now are you talking about custom sawing or selling your lumber to a customer?
I'm thinking sawing someone's logs.
When charging by the BF, use the formula H"x W" x L' /12 to arrive at a sawing charge.
If you are cutting dressed sizes, you don't charge by the dressed measurement, 1.5" x 3.5" . You charge by the nominal size 2" x 4"
When you want to give the customer a break, you don't call it dressed, you call it 6/4 (six quarter) x 3.5"
Some customers will have you cut framing lumber to dressed sizes. That's when you have to judge the job yourself as to what you charge. Knowing the difference is all important. You don't want to over charge a customer, but you don't what to be taken advantage of either. Just make sure that you are being fairly compensated for the work and that your customer is happy. That's the bottom line. :)
What Tom said! :)
$85hr :) Their logs are sometimes full of defects, so the yeild can be lower than the scale. I will always work hard to get the most out of a log though. I will take their logs as credit also if they don't want everything and the wood is of value to me. I give the logs a value and that is how much credit they get in dollars. If I were to saw by the bf I think I would have to go .70 bf with a minimum of 14" on the small end. I don't charge more to go onsite. they can save $ if they do the clean up. which is fine by me, or I can charge by the hour and clean it all up and end up with some slab firewood. I think hourly is just the most fair for everyone, cause I should not get less if they have junky logs. ??? If they have real nice logs that produce real nice material, then they should make out fine too. I think by the beginning of the year I will go to $95 hr.
bd foot can be an interesting argument, and must be used carefully. it is a legal specification and a difficult customer can cause you some grief. i get confused on all the rules, but I know softwoods are measured to hundredths of an inch for calculation.
I typically measure to the lower side of the inch and the lower side of the /4 measurement. i.e. if I have a board that is 1 3/16 thick and 6 5/8 wide and 8 foot long, i call that 4 board feet. that way i'm not accused of "ripping off a customer" and everyone is happy (whether the customer knows he is or not!).
What makes Board Foot a strange and mysterious thing is the application of grading rules where grading rules have no place. There are some in the industry who go out of their way to complicate anything they touch. I know what dan_shade is talking about and he's right, that there are some who will try to cause you grief. That's why it is best to cover methods of charges up front.
Regardless of grading rules, Board Foot is a volume measurement derived by multiplying the height, in inches, times the width, in inches, times the length, in feet and dividing by twelve. Knowing where the breaks are for determining nominal measurements is a must in measuring board feet. An example is that 1" nominal thickness includes 1" to, but not including, 1 1/4. Why not 1 1/4? Because that is another industry standard called 5/4. A board is 5/4 until it reaches a thickness of 1 1/2 nominal because that is another industry standard called 6 quarter. etc.
Unlike any of the other measurements, board foot is measured for anything less than an inch by calling it an inch.
That's why there must be some customer/sawyer understanding before the job starts. It does't take long before your customers understand your program and you understand theirs. Reasonable folks can get along. :)
The way I charge, whether at the mill site or at their site, is after I have a cant, I measure the cant size and calculate the board footage (T"XW'XL') before any cuts are made. Then the average that I charge is .30 BF; 4/4-5/4 will go a little higher and 6/4 up will be a little less. If I have to bring my help I charge more too. As has been said, I make certain folks know up front how I calculate and what the charges are, including for blades ruined by metal.
Stacey Freeman
bigmillman, it sounds like you might be losing revenue by not producing the jacket boards. There is a log of lumber removed before the cant is square.
Tom,
I do charge for those jacket boards...I did leave that part out! When I saw hear at the mill, I take the jacket boards that will produce lumber through our Tower edger and figure the BF on those. When on the road I edge on the Woodmizer and charge for that BF. When I am sawing on the circular mill I figure the BF the same as mentioned before and send everything through the edger.
Many thanks for pointing out what I had left out...one of those mornings!
i mostly do hourly. i mill alot of reclaimed stuff and so i hit alot of nails. my hourly rate for me and the mill is $95, with the resaw on it, i charge an extra $10/ hr. i used to charge a haul in fee of $60. now i just charge from the moment i get there until i am done milling. for some other people when i am resawing new doug-fir, i charge $87.50 i never hit nails in the new material, and they always pay their bills on time. they tell me that i am actually cheaper than the big mill in denver, and my quality is better. i also add in blades, if i hit metal, they pay for the blade, if it just gets a little dull, i charge them half.
Here latley I've started to just charge by the job. I've tried by the Bf and by scale and by the hour and it just doesn't seem to work out for some reason. Seemed like someone was always upset or nitpicking about something.
I take and figure out all the bf by scale, adders and such and shoot them a price. If the logs have rotten spots in them and are no good I kick them off the mill and deduct by the bf and show it on their bill.
This just seems to work the best.
OOPS I do have a blade damage adder that I explain up front that is in addition to the job charge. just a grind $25, broken off tips $50, real damage is $150 deposit on actual cost of repair differance is refunded with a copy of the bill. never had any problems with this policy.
Back when I still custom sawed logs on my stationary circle mill I charged $.30 / bf, International 1/4" scale in the log. We'd have to saw so many different sizes that it would take too long to scale the lumber, so I scaled the logs. We had too many problems with nails, so now I send them to you band guys.
Frickman and to all other circle guys:
How are you charging for hitting hardware?
I know most band guys are charging 25-30.00 which covers the cost of a new band.
On a circle, it seems to get a little more complicated. Teeth, shanks etc. can get pretty exspensive.
Quote from: inspectorwoody on November 23, 2007, 08:33:35 AM
Frickman and to all other circle guys:
How are you charging for hitting hardware? .......
I guess Ive got it pretty good only having 6 teeth inserted in each of 3 blades I am running on the Mobile dimension the most ive had to charge for was 7 teeth on one log, for the most part generally i dont lose more than a couple when i hit a nail and then only part of the tooth due to running a stellite tipped insert, which may not be a good as carbide tips, but are nearly as good for me in the woods i have sawn over the years.
On a custom job the owner of the logs knows up front that if i hit metal from a known yard tree or fence line I get new teeth cost and if I bust a shank i get that as well, and Ive threatened double cost for the down time of changing teeth but never charged it..... most folks will make sure to butt the log above the fenceline and they will all mark a yard tree for me to look at before i cut it..... no one wants to pay extra if they can avoid it..... for theose folks who dont care, I more than likely would hesitate to cut their material, but since i get a move in fee and it does not all come back out on the first weeks sawing, I have a hole card in that i already have dollars to charge out..... making it easier to come to terms of the signed contract...... yes i make folks sign a contract just for the one or two idiots over the past 21 years who balked at paying for their wood in a reasonable time frame, and to know what is expected of them and what i am expected to do as well.... very simple and not written by an attorney, but will hold up in Idaho courts.
William
inspectorwoody,
I don't custom saw anymore because of the hardware issue. When I did, the customer paid for all teeth, shanks, etc. that were destroyed. Sometimes I would put an old saw on the mill in case I ruined it.