Log Prices?

[ehp]

Had another good talk with log buyer yesterday I just told him my thoughts and he agreed , If you donot think about what your doing it's not going to work out very good for you in the long run, If your lucky or smart and have the material that the mills need you should be in good shape cause the mill then needs you but if your just cutting lower grade pallet stuff here your in trouble 

[Firewoodjoe]

Well I actually liked your positive post or good log prices. Back to doom and gloom I guess 😂 

Actually our pallet wood is moving well. Some mills are quit low inventory. Not saying price is great on anything but moving easy. That's the biggest battle. 

[customsawyer]

Kodiakmac, I'm trying to wrap my head around the numbers you posted. Am i reading it right, that red oak is higher than white oak?

[barbender]

Pallet is a big market for mechanical crews around here. Savanna Pallet is a big pallet mill in our area, with two mills. They buy a lot of hardwood, and enough softwood to compete with the big Potlatch stud mill. Savanna is where most hardwood logs go, whether pallet or grade logs because our grade log market is pretty limited. The management isn't stupid and they pull all the grade off in their mills and market that.

The quality of our hardwood is such that this model just works for everyone. The trucking to get grade logs to a market is high enough that most loggers don't feel it is worth the trouble of separate sorts and trucking.

[Firewoodjoe]

Some independent loggers here do the same. Mills will pay more standing than they will to a logger for gate wood. Then complain when it's all going to Amish. 

[barbender]

I've never understood the big mill philosophy on wood prices. They will be at the timber sale bidding up massive tracts of timber, for prices way in excess of gate price. The reason being, they need to guarantee wood supply. My thinking is, if they weren't always trying to pay rock bottom prices to the loggers, they would have their guaranteed supply. 

[ehp]

FJ, the log prices I have gotten this winter or whatever you want to call this weather   has been pretty much the best ever for me , I'm getting pretty much veneer prices for saw logs so I cannot complain about that , not going to say for much veneer I have sold but lets just say more than a log or 2 as well . Mill seems quite happy with the logs that I'm sending in and  what I'm doing even thou I'm a old single guy doing the work . , Things are going to change and I think for the better as far as loggers around here cause there are not many of us but a few of the younger ones are in pretty big trouble money wise so that will just free up more bush for the guys left . Only time will tell

[Kodiakmac]

Kodiakmac, I'm trying to wrap my head around the numbers you posted. Am i reading it right, that red oak is higher than white oak?

Yup.  There are some head-scratchers on that list!  

[SwampDonkey]

I've never understood the big mill philosophy on wood prices. .

Same way of thinking by food processors. It's a racket they all know well.

[mike_belben]

Stumpage sales sounds kinda like grain futures. 

[mike_belben]

Yesterday i drove by the stave mill, which doubled their production capacity from last year.  And also doubled the land area used to store logs.. theyre sucking a tremendous amount of WO away from the veneer market and making them pay dearly to get these logs.  I now know a few veneer buyers a that shop that stave mill for logs.  Stave guy does real good flippin them to slicer market. 

We will extinct WO around here soon enough at this rate. 

[Firewoodjoe]

That's actually a true issue. I don't remember all the details but it was discussed in our annual forestry education class. Never was good at listening in school 😆 

[SwampDonkey]

Probably won't extinct white oak, but it will drop the diameter classes a bunch. Like we went from spruce saw logs and veneer to a stud wood model. Lots of sticks with live edged corners there in the pile of lumber. :D

[Hogdaddy]

I've never understood the big mill philosophy on wood prices. They will be at the timber sale bidding up massive tracts of timber, for prices way in excess of gate price. The reason being, they need to guarantee wood supply. My thinking is, if they weren't always trying to pay rock bottom prices to the loggers, they would have their guaranteed supply.

Exactly!! The mills have been doing that here for a long time. What they buy, and add a cut bill, is 50% higher than gate logs.
Most sales here are auctions, with mills buying 95% of the timber. We have one mill here that doesn't as much anyway, and I appreciate that, not competing with the logger. And they always have good logs, and plenty of them.

There's a sale next weekend that I'm actually looking at today. A lot of white oak is in it, we'll see what it brings. 

[mike_belben]

Im exagerating a bit about extincting white oak as a species.. the reality is already prettt much here, and its that we highgraded any walnut first, and now all the fat white oak that can make plywhood or barrels isnt in the forest because its in the parking lots of mills.  Whats left in the woods is there cuz it cant make a barrel.  Consecutive diameter limit harvesting takes all the fast growers and keeps all the 90 yr old mossy 8 inch spindles standing, which never get better or bigger.  They fall over to be replaced by some other shade tolerant or just vines and ivy.

Then the forest comes out of production and goes to subdivision. The ultimate cha-ching. 

Anyone with young fast growing tall clear straight white oak should be releasing the heck out of it and protecting it like a prize.  Alcohol consumption is never going away and doesnt have some other undiscovered supply of raw materials to choose from. Nor will another species or a plastic ever replace the white oak barrel. It will become a name your price situation for those who hold the right timber in the next generation. 

It wont be easy, you cant harvest a 28" veneer without not harvesting it as a 16, 18, 20, 24, 26.   This generations inflation problem is causing a mass harvest thatll lead to an endangered species in that log class.  Making them almost priceless.

 Maybe WO plantations will become a thing.  I have seen row planted walnut a few times but not WO.

[moodnacreek]

Just because a sawmill log yard has certain species of logs doesn't mean they are sawing them. And they will buy unwanted logs from their regular suppliers to keep the parade going.   On the white oak demand, that makes it almost impossible for me to get any length of low grade for trailer planks. I substitute  locust but with the black holes and worse lucky to get 12 foot.

[Southside]

The White Oak extinction real here too.  A neighbor asked me to do some salvage work around a clear cut they had done, blowdowns and such.  It had been nearly 100 AC of post War of Northern Aggression White Oak.  The farm has been in the family that long and it was open during the war and WO when they harvested it.  The dirt was a time capsule, absolutely amazing.  It was replanted with subsidized SYP.  My guess is that ground will likely never grow WO again. 

[Firewoodjoe]

Let's see if this works. I knew I heard right in class. 🤦�♂️ 36 years old and still have to go to school once a year. 


https://mucc.org/white-oak-initiative-the-treemendous-importance-of-white-oak/

[SwampDonkey]

Lots of pressures on WO for sure. 

Up here it's been directed at maple, no scarcity of trees, but scarcity of nice logs and stand conversions to something else, whether that be aspen fir or softwood plantation. I was told by the mill I was thinning for last year they prefer a decent looking aspen over red maple from clumps. Reason being most red maple clumps tend to take the form of apple trees. There's a few decent ones, but no need in leaving crooked maples. Sugar maple does not sucker much unless young. Where as red maple will sucker at any age. A lot of them maples in the past had to be left to fill post assessment criteria. They wanted less than 60% aspen, it was easiest to just cut them down. And to be quite honest, I never saw an aspen dominated site that emerged from a clearcut to be very healthy in these parts. I can show anyone where it is dying off where it should grow to be at least twice as old before falling down. 

[mudfarmer]

No WO here but after the past few years of high maple log prices and all the industrial syrup operations going in it is going to be a rare person that has nice veneer sugar maple anywhere around here in 10yrs.

[nativewolf]

Im exagerating a bit about extincting white oak as a species.. the reality is already prettt much here, and its that we highgraded any walnut first, and now all the fat white oak that can make plywhood or barrels isnt in the forest because its in the parking lots of mills.  Whats left in the woods is there cuz it cant make a barrel.  Consecutive diameter limit harvesting takes all the fast growers and keeps all the 90 yr old mossy 8 inch spindles standing, which never get better or bigger.  They fall over to be replaced by some other shade tolerant or just vines and ivy.

Then the forest comes out of production and goes to subdivision. The ultimate cha-ching. 

Anyone with young fast growing tall clear straight white oak should be releasing the heck out of it and protecting it like a prize.  Alcohol consumption is never going away and doesnt have some other undiscovered supply of raw materials to choose from. Nor will another species or a plastic ever replace the white oak barrel. It will become a name your price situation for those who hold the right timber in the next generation. 

It wont be easy, you cant harvest a 28" veneer without not harvesting it as a 16, 18, 20, 24, 26.  This generations inflation problem is causing a mass harvest thatll lead to an endangered species in that log class.  Making them almost priceless.

 Maybe WO plantations will become a thing.  I have seen row planted walnut a few times but not WO.

I think you've about got it nailed there Mike.  TN in particular has seen a dramatic decline in WO growing stocks.  It's down 36% and as you say that means that the big stuff is gone and what big is left is likely to be junk passed up in 5 prior harvest (hollow, scared, full of cat faces).  If a real national timber inventory took place that actually graded the quality of WO and ignored parcels and areas that are not harvestable (powerlines, suburb homeowner protected areas, wetlands, fences, etc) then we would see an inventory pointing to the dearth of merchantable WO that we see on the ground.  The national surveys do not take this into account and the survey plots are not statistically oriented to show actual merchantable timber.  

Most of the good WO we see is in suburbs or too close to homes to be harvestable.  

[ehp]

Last little white oak bush I only cut 72 white oak, the other 28 trees were mainly white pine , few cherry and soft maple. That was on 30 plus acres and mainly all white oak , there is a fair amount of white oak here and will be the way the tree bylaw works . There is even enough walnut around that most would not think here , White oak is very high for here but walnut is higher in price 

[ehp]

One thing I do see as I think I posted it before is for every tree that gets cut here 3 or 4 die of old age or disease , the new tree bylaw has new rules that a certain number of big trees has to be left per basal area and were not talking like 18 inch DBH , its alot bigger than that , When I walk threw a bush and I start seeing quite a few 40 plus inch oak left or none of those marked thats a problem cause they will not live to the next harvest and with those big trees growing nothing will grow under or around their area , take some of them out and get the bush growing again 

[SwampDonkey]

I've got one white oak here. :D It's not burr oak either.  But it's only about 40 years old.   So they can definitely survive NB climate. Walnut on the other hand are not as hardy here. But butternut grows like weeds around here. But they have that disease now, so only a matter of time.

[mike_belben]

What we have of clean WO is tiny and wont be left long enough to get fat.  I dont like govt, but a free for all grabs the best and leaves the rest.  Ignorant/unable/unconcerned ownership leaves it to nature to sort out.  Which it does, with replacement by red maple beech sourwood and black gum. 

I am for shelterwood clearcuts in general.  No one size fits all but hard to say its not an improvement over current "management" most of the time.

Cull heavy, make sporadic front yard sized clear openings at the minimum wherever you are taking out a prime tree so that its seedlings are stimulated to replace it tall and straight in an even age race.  release anything good, and especially target big ugly firewood trees that are really hogging resources and dont shed a mast crop. A big oak that spreads a ton of acorn i will generally keep around for fall fats.  Mammals arent fertile without fat.

Our logtrucks often look like theyre hauling some pile of european hardwood.  11 -13" diameter.  Why bother?

 Abundant natural gas makes the firewood business not work financially, which would naturally police the woods of cull classes a lot better if it did. Most "woods" i see are simply a collection of culls and nothing else at all. 100% culls.  We are surrounded by sawmills and desperate people with saws.