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For the guys selling bundles,

Started by B.C.C. Lapp, April 16, 2024, 05:34:44 PM

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woodroe

That looks great. The business is expanding !
Skidding firewood with a kubota L3300.

cutterboy

BCC, I've been away for three weeks and am now trying to catch up. I am really pleased to see what you are doing with your firewood business and how it is expanding. I love the firewood box at the store.
Keep it up! You'll be the Firewood King of Penn.
To underestimate old men and old machines is the folly of youth. Frank C.

Magicman

I took this picture of a store's firewood rack this week.  The bundles contained 4-5 sticks of wood and were priced @ $5.99 each or two for $10.  All was about 18" and Red Oak.
Knothole Sawmill, LLC     '98 Wood-Mizer LT40SuperHydraulic   WM Million BF Club Member   WM Pro Sawyer Network

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

Never allow your "need" to make money to exceed your "desire" to provide quality service.....The Magicman

Greenie

I'm late responding to this discussion.... From 2004 - 2019 (when I retired) we sold about 50 cords of hardwood per year in a campground bundled in 16" long finely split packages. The bundles weighed about 30 pounds and were formed in short plastic culverts (14" diameter) and then tied with poly baling twine. The bundles shrank while stored so we had to tap in a few small pieces of firewood to tighten up the bundles before they went up for sale. Mice and vermin chewed fiber twine.
Each bundle sold for $7, we kept about $5 after taxes and various fees.
We used a Super Split wood splitter - a fast way of dicing up firewood meant for campfires. Trees were mostly dying or soon to be dying white birch being climaxed out of the oak forest; the trees were best removed before they fell on campsites, roads, or improvements.
We had prison inmate labor; they liked dropping the trees more than splitting the firewood so we always had to push them to do the splitting and bundling - which they saw as not enjoyable/glamorous enough. More drug convictions changed the work ethics of our inmate work crew (the best workers were habitual offenders & vehicular manslaughter convictions) ... Drug convicted inmates were less desirable. Being a campground inmates convicted of sex crimes were naturally never on outside crews. 
After taxes and fees for handling the accounts (bureaucracy) we generated about $15,000 USD a year which we then purchased capitol equipment with (compact tractors, disc mower, golf carts, diesel zero turns, woodworking equipment and wifi repeaters ) Most of the capitol equipment could not have been purchased with the existing budgets we had to live with.
WAG (wild guess) is that the labor involved in harvesting, hauling, cutting, splitting, and handling would be equivalent to one person working 40 hours a week 52 weeks per year and not viable for a stand alone business venture with a $15,000 per year bottom line.
We could have wrapped the bundles in shrink wrap but then most campers would have burned the shrink wrap in the fire making an unpleasant stink and mess. The shrink wrap would have eliminated tightening bundles after they shrank.
I retired, the prison inmate program ended and the enterprise account was rejiggered with greatly less motivation for doing the extra work. We also produced dimensional lumber - that too ceased when I retired. Self-sufficiency in a park (creating materials and operating money) is a tough sell now and won't find much support in governmental agencies. We did it successfully for 16 years and never had any serious injuries or incidents.   

barbender

 Sounds like an interesting operation, Greenie👍

 I'd venture a guess that a good portion of the poly baling twine from the bundles went into the fire, too.
Too many irons in the fire

Greenie

It probably did go into the fire too - natural baling twine would have been better if not for the vermin.

OH logger

Is anyone else noticing there bundle sales being down this year? I only keep records on how much I sell a year and it seems I'm behind in sales at year to date but not sure. Any of you guys having the same experience? 
john

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