Pricing Sawn Cherry

[Qweaver]

I sawed three cherry 8'6" logs for a customer this morning that made nearly clear perfect 4/4 boards.  He wanted to know their worth per BdFt and I just had to guess at $2...but I think that was two low.  How can we determine the worth of lumber?  Especially valuable ones like cherry and red oak?

[Engineer]

In my opinion, every time a process is performed in the creation of a wood product, the value goes up.  Trees have stumpage value - in the case of a decent cherry you could be looking at $250 to over $1000 per MBF - which equates to 25 cents to a dollar or more per board foot.  This number is usually a value arrived at by the forester or buyer, which can increase or decrease on a per-log basis when the log arrives at the mill.  The mill establishes the final value per MBF (that's per thousand board feet) when they buy the log from the trucker.  Sawn, you've increased the value by the sawyer's cost of time and fuel, plus a potential premium for the grade of the lumber.  So in a case of clear cherry, $2 a board foot for green clear lumber would not be unreasonable.  You've factored in the sawyer's 'value added' at anywhere from $1 to $1.75 per board foot.  This is for ungraded, green lumber

Where the biggest jump occurs is post-sawing processing - this would be grading, drying, surfacing and trimming.  You could make those clear cherry boards jump in 'value' from $2 a board foot to a range I've seen anywhere from $3 to $15 a board foot.  Depends on the board, the market and the buyer. 

I can tell you for certain that I would almost never consider buying green ungraded lumber of any domestic species for more than $2-$3 per board foot, even the ones like cherry or walnut that seem to command high prices. 

[drobertson]

I'm not sure from the op if these logs were your logs or the customers,, So if they were his, I would say what ever your saw charge is, if they were yours, then 2 bucks is a fair charge for green fresh sawn cherry.  If dried and processed as mentioned, then depending on the grade the price would clearly go up for who ever owns it and wants to market it.

[scsmith42]

I usually use many of the national mail order houses as a guide in determining value.  Wall lumber in Mayodan, NC is a great source for pricing.