iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Log Prices in your area

Started by Percy, March 29, 2018, 02:23:39 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Percy

Up here in Canada, B.C. specifically we have to buy logs by the cubic meter. Pay for bark sawdust everything. A cubic meter is around 422 bdft of lumber but in log form, the best recovery on sound, round and large is 333 bdft per cubic meter. On smaller logs like 12inchers it's around 5 cubic meters per 1000 bdft. 

Well our log Prices for smaller WRC has escalated to 240.00 per cubic meter.  That makes our log costs 1200.00 per 1000 bdft. If milling costs are 400.00 per thousand(starvation wages here) it makes fence boards at least 1600.00 per 1000 bdft. I literally cannot afford to build a fence outta wrc. We can sell pretty much everything to our brokers as the locals are beginning to hate us as they feel we are gouging them. 

Question, do you have log price anomalies in the US such as this?? 3 years ago that 240.00 log was 80.00. Even our Sitka spruce has climbed to unprecedented heights. It seems that log quality drops as prices rise making those surprise logs more frequent and lumber prices from brokers not responding at the same rate as log Prices. Getting weird. How it in your neck of the woods?
GOLDEN RULE : The guy with the gold, makes the rules.

alan gage

Are they finding buyers for the logs willing to pay more from farther away? Here in the midwest WRC is expensive stuff and sitka spruce is virtually unavailable but coveted by boat builders. We'd look at lumber prices on the west coast and drool. Maybe your WRC is similar to the walnut craziness I read about with logs being shipped to China. 

Alan
Timberking B-16, a few chainsaws from small to large, and a Bobcat 873 Skidloader.

Percy

Quote from: alan gage on March 29, 2018, 02:52:06 PM
Are they finding buyers for the logs willing to pay more from farther away? Here in the midwest WRC is expensive stuff and sitka spruce is virtually unavailable but coveted by boat builders. We'd look at lumber prices on the west coast and drool. Maybe your WRC is similar to the walnut craziness I read about with logs being shipped to China.

Alan
The WRC is every bit as beautiful as the walnut but not nearly as tough. Our brokers tell us most of the WRC lumber is being shipped to theU.S. Our dollar is low compared to the U.S. dollar so our lumber is much cheaper in the States. This scenario has happened before but not like this. Even with the dollar difference,WRC lumber prices are/have to be unprecedented compared to before. Perhaps this is as it should be but the change is  very unstable and precarious for gypo's such as myself.
GOLDEN RULE : The guy with the gold, makes the rules.

moodnacreek

It's the same way here with white oak.

NorcalMatt

We have incsence cedar here and that is going for about $700/thousand.  

4x4American

Log prices around here are crazy.  I have to compete with Canada and overseas markets for logs and it's hard.  Canadian markets can pick up logs on the logger's landing and pay more for the log than I can.  Then they truck it back to Canada and saw the logs.  Then they bring the lumber back and sell the lumber for cheaper than I can sell it for.  Makes me wanna drink turpentine and whizz on a brush fire!!
Boy, back in my day..

Southside

@percy I am confused by your numbers on cubic meter conversion to BFT vs actual yield being lower. Are logs not scaled in the same manner as in the US to determine the cubic meter volume?  Do you measure from the small or big end of the log? 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

moodnacreek

4X, I never herd that one before.

DbltreeBelgians

Quote from: 4x4American on March 29, 2018, 09:58:55 PM
Makes me wanna drink turpentine and whizz on a brush fire!!
You're killing me 4x4!! Can't stop giggling over that one. Thanks for making my day.

Brent

Percy

Quote from: 4x4American on March 29, 2018, 09:58:55 PM
Log prices around here are crazy.  I have to compete with Canada and overseas markets for logs and it's hard.  Canadian markets can pick up logs on the logger's landing and pay more for the log than I can.  Then they truck it back to Canada and saw the logs.  Then they bring the lumber back and sell the lumber for cheaper than I can sell it for.  Makes me wanna drink turpentine and whizz on a brush fire!!
Thats one of the problems with the spread between our two currencies. Im not up on the easterly hardwood markets so logs could very well be flowing in a northerly direction. In BC with the softwood, we have logs up the wazooo. Im not aware of softwood log purchases from the US for BC mills as the dollar difference would make them so expensive. We cut the WRC  logs here in BC as log exports of WRC is not allowed for trade reasons/barriers. The way I see it, we(Canada) is a mini China of sorts. The dollar difference makes labour, lumber, and Canadian transportation cheaper than the US. The demand for WRC increases in the US as its cheaper(Dollar diff again)and then everyone in BC decides to mill WRC and log demand goes through the roof and prices increase drastically. Then some little guy like me buys/commits to some 240.00 dollar logs and overnight, the politicians do something that affects the dollar desparity making the difference less and the little miller is stuck with logs he cant make any money on. I can see why them wall street suits get ulcers. 
GOLDEN RULE : The guy with the gold, makes the rules.

Percy

Quote from: Southside logger on March 29, 2018, 10:21:56 PM
@percy I am confused by your numbers on cubic meter conversion to BFT vs actual yield being lower. Are logs not scaled in the same manner as in the US to determine the cubic meter volume?  Do you measure from the small or big end of the log?
The 1 cubic meter = 422 bdft is for like finished lumber. If you had a square of block of lumber that measured a meter on all three measurement(length,width,height) it would be 422 bdft. Now with a sweet log, the cubic meter has a bunch of slabs in it sawdust etc so the best I could get on that sweetheart log would be 333 bdft making 89 bdft of waste. 
Logs in BC are scaled to actual volume of wood, not how many board feet are in it. The 89 boardfeet of waste is in the equation. Prices are adjusted accordingly so its not as bad as it looks but stumpage rates are based on the presumption that the small miller will be making money off the 89 bdft of waste and the government/contractor/big mill gets their share of every molecule of that log.
Ima lousy splainer. Hope this helps ;D ;D 
GOLDEN RULE : The guy with the gold, makes the rules.

moodnacreek

 Eastern Canada seams to set the price for softwood and low grade hardwood coming out of the northeastern U.S.  Canada put many small mills here out back in the 1980's so it is said. However in high grade hardwood the buyers here out bid Canada so it's not all one sided.

longtime lurker

Quote from: Southside logger on March 29, 2018, 10:21:56 PM
@percy I am confused by your numbers on cubic meter conversion to BFT vs actual yield being lower. Are logs not scaled in the same manner as in the US to determine the cubic meter volume?  Do you measure from the small or big end of the log?
Easiest way to understand cubic meters is to measure a log. Ain't that hard.

So grab a log, and find the mid point of it... so that would be 8' on a 16' log for example.

Wrap a girth/diameter tape around it and measure which gives you diameter of the log at that point.
If you havent got a girth tape use your regular tape and then divide result by pi to get diameter.

Deduct the thickness of the bark either side because cubes are an underbark measurement.

Diameter divided by two gives you radius.

radius x radius x pi gives you cross sectional area at that point.

cross sectional area times length of log gives you cubic volume. If you got a metric tape it will come out in metric.... imperial tape will give you cubic inches or cubic feet.

Right... so theres no scale. No allowance for nothing. Logs got a bend in him the volume dont change. Ditto branch stub, knot, fire scars, pipe up the middle... no matter. Here we have private sale logs where we negotiate that stuff in terms of log grade, and write our own rules as we go along.

Our crown (state) allocation is different in that the state has set a list of defects that we must accept and logs are either compulsory or it stays in the weeds. Defect allowances expressed as a % of cross sectional area and a logs either good, or you cut it off and try for a new end until the log comes back under the acceptable limit.
We pay more for private sale logs then we do for the state stuff simply because we get better logs privately.
THink of it as like buying logs in tons across a weighbridge. No scale... Theres 20 ton on the truck you pay for 20 ton, then hack what you can out of it. Some of them have knots, some have bends... but there is a limit to how bad they can get and you pay less for them because you know theres more trash log there.

On the state sale we're running around 7 cube of logs per thousand, more or less. Recovery sits around 38%...which is about average for a hardwood mill across the state running on the same state sourced log resource

Worth a read if you're interested: https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr131.pdf

My crown logs are running at around $220 a cube landed in the yard. We're dragging them a fair way... around 100 miles but with the range in there its like a 7 hour round trip in the truck. Freight is a killer, particularly when recovery is low... I base most my calculations on a 33% recovery (even though we exceed it) which means that for every three ton of log that comes in and gets sawn we get one ton of saleable timber.
The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

nativewolf

Quote from: moodnacreek on March 30, 2018, 09:26:53 PM
Eastern Canada seams to set the price for softwood and low grade hardwood coming out of the northeastern U.S.  Canada put many small mills here out back in the 1980's so it is said. However in high grade hardwood the buyers here out bid Canada so it's not all one sided.
easier to ship to china from the ports in the US east coast than from Canada anywhere in the lakes region.  For me high quality log prices require China buying or we would not be cutting very much other than walnut.  Even then...not much.
Liking Walnut

moodnacreek

N.W. Didn't know about the shipping point [among other things] but N. Y. has some big high grade hardwood mills that can't get enough good logs and they pay top dollar. I believe they saw everything except the veneer and some times they saw that. I wonder where their production goes.

quilbilly

It's up to $1500 USD here for WRC. Price varies by length. So a 36' might be $1700 and a 12' log might be $1000/mbf. Prices are sky high right now for almost everything. Everyone has work. It's a good time to be a logger out here. Miller, not so sure.
a man is strongest on his knees

Thank You Sponsors!