This is CRAZY !

[DR_Buck]

I don't know what it is but the last two weeks the phone has been going crazy with saw-milling calls.    I've not advertised of pushed to get any business for over 6 months.  I'm in the throws of a major house remodeling effort and have been avoiding taking jobs.   In the last 2 days alone I've had 7 phone calls and 1 email from people wanting saw-milling work.     Normally this would be good.   But now is a bad time.   I'm going to try and farm some of them out to other guys in the area.

Tonight I had a few milling requests and an offer of some free trees.   The free trees call went something like this:

Hello?   

"Hey this i s Chris from Bubba Tree Service (fake name).  I'm clearing a lot  and will be taking down 15 or 20 maple trees.  They're all 12 - 24 inches in diameter and mostly straight and 40 to 60 feet tall.   Do you want them?

Me - "Are they free?"

"Yes,  I don't want to give them to the firewood guys, they're to nice for that.

Me - "Where are they?"

"About 30 miles from you"

Me - "OK, I'll take them."

"Great, I'll cut them to 12 foot lengths and stack them by the road for you"

Me - "That's great.  Thanks for calling"
 

[Tom]

I hope that you don't get there with your trailer only to find that they are 12 to 24 inches in circumference. 

[Bibbyman]

Well,  here is our crazy call of the day.

Came in for lunch today..  Phone rings..  Mary picks up and says, “Warden Sawmill”.

Guy on the other end,  “Is this Warden Sawmill?”  Mary, “Yes”.

Guy, “Do you have a sawmill business?”.  Mary, “Yes”.

Guy,  “Are you still in business?”  Mary, “Yes.”

Guy, “Are you sawing?,  Mary, “Yes.”.

Guy, “Do you have logs?” Mary, Yes, some.  The rain has…”,

Guy, (not waiting for Mary to complete comment.)  “Can you cut me oak 3-1/2” thick by 8’ long?”  Mary,  “Yes, but how wide?.

Guy,  “Any increments if 1-1/2 wide”.  Mary,  “We don’t have many 8’ oak logs.  We have a good little bit of 10’ sycamore, would that work?”

Guy, “Yes,   How much are you asking?”  Mary, “40¢ a bf.”

Guy, (voice went high) “40¢ !  I only pay 25¢ for oak!”  Mary,  “Sorry, I’ve got to have at least 40¢ to recover the cost of our logs.” 

Guy,  hung up…  I don’t know if he said think you for your time or goodbye. 

It was some Mennonite pallet place that had run out of logs and cants and had to fill an order by Monday.  I suspect he was going down the list of mills in the Missouri Forest Product Association handbook.  Got to the W’s and was still looking.

[Dan_Shade]

hah, that's sorta funny

[Kansas]

If he was only paying 25 cents a foot for sawed oak lumber, my guess is the sawmill went out of business.

[DR_Buck]

Well,  here is our crazy call of the day................................

Guy, “Yes,   How much are you asking?”  Mary, “40¢ a bf.”

Guy, (voice went high) “40¢ !  I only pay 25¢ for oak!”  Mary,  “Sorry, I’ve got to have at least 40¢ to recover the cost of our logs.” 

Bibby,

40¢ bf would almost pay me to buy saw'd lumber from you and sell it here.     I get almost that much here for sawing the customers logs for them. 

[WDH]

Bibby,

That guy is an idiot.

[sigidi]

DR_Buck, we have a saying down here; make hay while the sun shines.

I was also happy to carry on building our house quietly and not make too much noise about my sawmilling, it gave me the time I needed to get on with the house, but has also got me in a spot now where I want the sawmilling calls to come in again...

[Bibbyman]

Well,  here is our crazy call of the day................................

Guy, “Yes,   How much are you asking?”  Mary, “40¢ a bf.”

Guy, (voice went high) “40¢ !  I only pay 25¢ for oak!”  Mary,  “Sorry, I’ve got to have at least 40¢ to recover the cost of our logs.” 

Bibby,

40¢ bf would almost pay me to buy saw'd lumber from you and sell it here.     I get almost that much here for sawing the customers logs for them. 

This was for sycamore - logs we'd got stuck with when a coustomer we were marketing to went out of business.  The logs are now two years old and not looking any too good.  We only wanted to get our money back out of them and some sawing.

But..  It's been some time but we've checked with some pallet resaw places and all they were paying was $280/mbf.   We know one mill that was shipping them TT loads.  It was all heartsaws and junk.  But even then they buyer would hack up the cants and pay for what was usable.  We just cut our junk heartsaws and cants into firewood if we can't make blocking out of it.

Anyone out there sawing resaw cants for pallet places?

[Ron Wenrich]

By the TT load.  Price is up to 36¢/bf, picked up.  Also sawing 5¼x6x8 oak @ 42¢/bf.  Pallet boards are 28¢ and 3A com RO is 46¢.  After the grade is off the log, you can't mess around with it.  You have to move it out in the biggest block you can.  We're doing 2 to 3 loads of blocking per week, depending on log quality.  We're a medium sized mill.

A 3½x6 will yield you 3  4/4 boards.  At your 28¢ for blocking cants, that would mean you had to get avg 33¢/bf to saw the boards out of that cant.  But, you have to add to that to adjust for the added saw time and handling. 

When you figure out busting a tie into lumber, the numbers can change pretty quickly. 

[Bibbyman]

I don’t know at what point that a mill produces enough low grade cants from heart saws, etc. to be make even a low price paid for resaw cants attractive.  Attractive in the sense that at least you’re recovering something from them. 

Our total production is so low compared to any “production mill” that it would take quite a long time to collect a tractor trailer load.  We’ve been approached before to supply oak pallet resaw cants and we’ve never felt we could, 1) justify the handling and trucking expense, 2) have a steady supply of any volume that a pallet part place would want. 

We try to make them into some other product.  Some can go into blocking and dunnage, but a lot goes into firewood.

This is why we try our best to make a beam or RR tie out of the center of the log.  Sometimes it’s hard to leave an FAS board on a face of a RR tie but often one or two more cuts and you have junk.  So often you can recover more money from a log by leaving a few high grade boards on the cant, beam or tie.   

[Ron Wenrich]

Where guys make money on the low grade cants is where they buy wood for about $150/Mbf and run it through a scragg mill or have a circle mill with a gang rip.

1 Mbf of blocking would weigh about 6 tons or about 2 cords of wood.  I know that chips aren't as good as the blocking price.  But, that does come out to $140/cd for your $280/Mbf blocking.  That might make better sense, especially if you have a good firewood market.

I've been to mills where they were chasing grade off of their cants and ties.  You have to put a sharp pencil to it, but for me, my breakeven point is to average 80¢/bf to bust up a tie and have a pallet cant. 

[ARKANSAWYER]

 Bibby the way it has been you can leave a FAS on the side of a rr tie and make more money off of it.
  Guy came in today.  He heard that I had cedar slabs that he could nail up for siding on his chicken house.  "Yep!" says I " they are $20 a bundle"  Said that was good and went to look at them.  Then he comes back and says that if I could flatten that "bumpy" and trim up the other sides so they were the same width he would take two bundles.  I said "OK, That will be $1,200.00".  He got cussing mad and left in a cloud of dust. (which is hard to do with all the rain we have had)  Just a bit ago he came back and wanted to know what happed to the $20 a bundle price.  I told him it was still $20 a bundle for the slabs but he was ordering lumber when I trimmed everything off and that was $1,200.  Now he is under he impression that he can buy $40 worth of slabs and turn it into $1,200 worth of lumber.
                                       "Beam me up Scotty, There is no intelligent life here"

[Bibbyman]

I had a very similar thing happen a number of years back.

Neighbors came over wanting cedar slabs to build a yard fence.  Wanted it rustic you know.  I told them I was bounding slabs for the chipper mill and was getting $30 a bundle.  So I showed them a couple of bundles.  I went back to work and they looked and talked it over. Came back and asked me if I could make the slabs thicker.  I told them I could for $4.00 each.  They looked like they'd been poleaxes.  "Why?"  I explained I'd have to leave a board in each slab to make them as thick as they wanted.  If they bought the board, I'd give them the slab attached.  They didn't see the logic. They didn’t buy.

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

I think we all get those Space Cadets from time to time         that think your times worth nothing 

when i last looked into getting the meadows going and sawing pine cants from 4x4" to 6x12" in 8',12's and 16' lengths for resaw about 18months ago my going rate was going to be about $420au  per mbft ex mill  you just cant work cheaper than that and that was going to be sawn out of case grade logs 

Regards Chris

[Meadows Miller]

P.s

DR  ill also second Allans statement that You Make hay while the sun shines Mate  look into each job and if its not a need it done asap type of thing book them up and schedual them in over the next few months its all extra $$$ Mate 

Regards Chris

[paul case]

bibby im with you on that slab thing,
i cut my oak for firewood and sell it by the truckload for $120. i cant make enuf! so i have been buying slabs from a neighbor mill for $10 /bundle(thats what our local grinder pays) and cutting them up. 4 makes a truckload. takes less than 2 hours per load to pick up, cut,and deliver. im just pileing them up now but i have a regular customer list and i will no doubt sell out before christmas. be diligent and real customers occasionaly will show up. the customer is always right only when money actually changes hands.  pc

[paul case]

i said i dont sell any in the summer and i got a call today to deliver a load of firewood to town at 9 in the morning. maybe i will pile some up . pc