Log Prices?

[ehp]

Ya I seen piles of hard maple for sale north of me a couple hours where Im sure they paid more for it standing , I hope I still get to cut this summer but if not I do have a boat and can go fishing , I do have a bit of fishing gear and I'm sure most guides donot have what is at my place in gear . I sold some walnut last week and it sold well and white oak veneer , there is not much hard maple right here cause its already been cut but there is some and it sold good last week . Aspen and junk ash is selling pretty good and the same for soft maple 

[nativewolf]

There you go ehp, glad sales went ok despite some slow down in the market.  In Virginia WO and Walnut are ok.  RO blah, YP bellow five year average, and hickory about normal.  Chestnut is moving ok.  

I don't really have any maple but I think that's the hardest hit.

Pulp is also hit down here.  Not sure what pallet logs are doing, will find out I guess.

[Firewoodjoe]

How are things comparing to 2008 or prior to pandemic prices. 16-17-18? I don't keep up on the exact prices. I'm just a producer generally. But what I see is yes prices are down but mostly they just aren't buying. 

[ehp]

Prices are up from 3 or 4 years ago but not a lot BUT the cost to produce those same logs has gone WAY up and I mean at least 50% if not closer to 75% on some of the things we use . From say 8 years ago my trucking is up 300% , Just ordered 2 new cable mainlines , those are crazy in price , now over $600 a piece , you donot have to be that good with a pencil and a piece of paper to figure out the bottom line is not good and I feel I live in a good place , the guys north of me 5 hours or so are in bad shape and lots of machines will be for sale or repo guy is coming to get them 

[ehp]

The smartest guy here is Barge , he is on a boat making more coin I am sure than 99% of us and no worries if the log market tanks which it is and on its way quite hard right now , He is banking tons of coin and just waiting before he pounces on all the good equipment he will buy for pennies on the dollar  and once this storm is over he will be sitting on top of his mountain of equipment and will rule the north east of USA

[Firewoodjoe]

"Prices up from 3-4 years ago" Guys were making bank here then. Have been for many years until this year basically. Yeah I know all cost are up but in my case it just takes some of the profit. Doesn't necessarily hurt me. Just not going to do all the extra fun stuff. Guys won't be buying chrome and new fancy equipment I guess. Well I never have.  At this point still good money in it as long as wood keeps moving. In my opinion. 

[ehp]

thing is lots of land owners want more coin for their bush as well so the profit margin gets smaller and smaller every year , Lots of guy complaining that now their equipment is worn out and worth little and to up grade to new is just way to far out of reach , govt keeps taxing everything so bad its hard to make ends meat for a lot of guys , It was abit ago but not that long where the last crash hit up north guys were cutting and skidding hardwood at $2.65 a tree , Like to see how your pencil makes that one work 

[Firewoodjoe]

Oh I get your point. Guys here buy wood 2 years out. How do you pencil that in the markets? Guys finance $1mil in equipment 5 years out. How do you pencil that in the markets? Most sales here are bought in lump sum. Like I said 1-2 year contracts. Land owner gets x amount and maple goes sky high then the logger makes $500 per tree profit. How does that pencil out. Good years bad years. Bank it when you can and keep the ball rolling when you can't. Just the way it works. Win some loose some. 

[customsawyer]

I don't think there is any figuring the market right now. One day it's slow. The next day I can't catch my breath. A week ago Monday I quoted 1.3 million in 15 minutes, while riding my dog around my property. I have no expectation of getting any of those jobs because I put the I don't want to do it price on them. However if I do get them I will be in the pucker factor trying to get the logs for them. This will put me paying a extra premium for any logs I can find to fill the orders. The loggers that can get the logs will be getting 4 times what the logs are worth and smiling all the way to the bank. I will be grinning a little myself. There is money flowing out there you just have to think outside the "normal" box to get it. You can't be doing things the same way you were a few years ago and expect to do as well. The markets change extremely fast and you have to keep up or get left behind. Y'all buckle your seat belts and hold on, it's going to be one heck of a ride. 

[Walnut Beast]

Talked to a guy if  Cottonwood was worth anything now. 24 cents bdf. In one area.  But down the road 175 miles it was 42 cents

[stavebuyer]

175 one way miles on a log truck these days(if you can find one) will cost you the difference.  

[ehp]

Yes we all understand that but the problem is there are still enough loggers left that will do the job for nothing and slowly starve to death do it so that puts alot of good loggers in bad shape and they end up going broke but the smart mills do under stand that and they are taking care of their good loggers they can count on 

[Ianab]

175 one way miles on a log truck these days(if you can find one) will cost you the difference.  

Was going to say the same thing. Over ~50 miles from a mill or port starts to affect the economics of logging here.  18c more at the mill doesn't help if the trucking was +20c. 

[mudfarmer]

Tried out a new buyer a little while back, no problems with existing folks in fact they are great but figured half the trucking distance might as well give it a shot. New guy's scale was not as good and it -zeroed- out the trucking savings. Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained right? Next load that went to original buyer the scale and grade were low and they knew I was sending logs elsewhere :D Bite the hand that feeds, get smacked

[barbender]

 Well, a guy has to try. I avoid selling to short stick operations if I can at all help it, I just don't like the way they do business. It ends up being I feel, false advertising. 

 Say the short stick mill is advertising $500/1000 for #1 Red Oak (just throwing out whole numbers). The mill that gives good scale is paying $400/1000 for the same wood, but your loads consistently scale 15-20% more at mill #2. So your load will pay close to the same at both mills, you'd then be a fool to haul it an extra 50 miles to the short stick operations for a claimed $100/1000 more.

 I saw this play out many times. As I've mentioned before, MN has a limited grade hardwood market. A lot of hardwood goes to a large pallet mill. Their scale is always fair, and prices are ok. Their is a grade hardwood mill that was typically about another 50 miles beyond the pallet mill. When I was hauling wood, I delivered a few loads to the grade mill and a lot to the pallet mill. A load that scaled 12 cords at the pallet mill would only be scaled 9 or 10 at the grade mill. 

 A 12 cord load @$120/cord is $1440. A 9 cord load @$200/cord is $1800, a difference of $360. The additional haul distance and the fact that the truck was tied up an additional half a day, thereby losing other loads, led us to the conclusion that it was not worth it. Not to mention we felt like we were dealing with crooks🤷

 I find it interesting that in the Bible, among a few choice sins that it mentions as being very abominable before God, false weights and measures are right up there with the other really ugly stuff.

[mudfarmer]

Didn't mean to suggest anyone was doing anything abominable, I honestly have thought before that the first place scales high sometimes but decided maybe my thumb was extra large or his small  ;D ???  The deal with the new buyer was square and I will sell him more wood in the future if he wants. Just thought it was decently related to price over here vs over there combined with cost to truck over here vs over there and sometimes you can try as you might but you get what you get!

[barbender]

Nah, I didn't think that you meant that. I'm just relating what I've seen, and how some mills scale. They're basically making their own measurement, no different than if I advertise my firewood for sale at a competitive rate, or cheaper than everyone else. But then 
 my cords only measure 3/4 cord if anyone ever bothers to stack and measure it. It's one thing if it is an honest mistake, quite another if you know you're doing it and trying to get away with it. Stealing plain and simple. 

[Hogdaddy]

Logs seem to have picked up here just a little, HM is very rough though. Low grade red oak is still rough. Stave logs are selling real well right now, that helps.  

[customsawyer]

On the other side of that, me being the log buyer. When I get someone new bringing me logs I always scale their first load with them here and show them how I'm going to be scaling future loads. If they don't like the way I am doing it that is fine. I will put it right back on their truck and zero hard feelings. Most of the big log trucks coming in here is by the ton and lots of them are in the habit of putting poor logs in the middle of the pack. You end up having to put them back on the truck so they don't count on the weight. There's crooks on all sides of this wood business.

[barbender]

 Yep I agree with you there, Jake.

 Here's another example from the grade hardwood mill. They always talked a big game how if the load graded really well they would pay you extra. I delivered several loads of 24", veneer quality aspen logs. Never saw an extra dime over the base aspen price. 
 
 These guys are a bit aggressive at times sending out mailers trying to buy your logs. I figure if they were more honest they could skip the mailers and guys would bring them their logs.

[beenthere]

barbender
What is the mill doing with veneer grade Aspen ?? 
Sawing them, or are they peeling them for panelling?

Was involved with a potential start-up plywood operation back in the day with thoughts of making sheathing-grade, 5-ply plywood out of Aspen from northern MN.

Different grades of Aspen logs were selected, then peeled, veneer sheets dried, and sheets graded. End result was enough clear-face plywood to drop the sheathing-grade plywood idea and switch plans to making Aspen paneling instead. 

[ehp]

From what I was told today  , things are not good 

[barbender]

Beenthere, we sold them to them as saw logs but that mill does sort and remarket logs to other buyers. Actually their mailers used to state, "we want all the logs off the job", we'll of course they didn't want the pallet grade but they wanted everything else, and they weren't paying you anymore for the veneer logs either. 

 I don't fault them for remarketing the veneer and whatever makes more sense for them at all. I just thought they were a bit disingenuous the way they went about it. If I had a job that had a bunch of veneer, I sure the heck wouldn't sell it to them, for sawing price so they could turn around and make a huge profit on it. 

 Let me take a step back. Like I said before, northern MN doesn't have much of a grade hardwood log market. The main hardwood log consumer is a large pallet operation that has 2 mills, with 4 saw lines all together I think. They basically get everything for hardwood sawlogs that are produced, because most loggers up here don't want to mess with sorting sawlogs and honestly most don't know the difference between a veneer log and a pallet log. The only "specs" that most crews are going by are species and minimum diameter, "no rot, straight, and well trimmed" I believe is what the pallet mills spec sheet says. Even when other hardwood mills up here buy logs, it is usually by species and diameter. So Red Oak for instance would be 10" minimum top, with some quality specs but no one is sorting logs by #1, #2, #3 and what the heck is veneer?😂

 Now you better believe that the pallet operation is sawing and remarketing a whole lot of grade lumber, those guys are no fools. 

 Getting back to the first mill I was discussing, they simply buy their hardwood logs by the cord. Minimum diameter spec, and they're not going to take any obvious garbage. But they don't grade the logs until after you've sold them to them. I think they basically pay a #2 price for the whole load and then make out great on anything that grades better. 

 One of the things that I think is disingenuous, is they would give you vague assurances of better pay if the logs were really nice, but being they didn't grade them until after you left they had no motivation to do so. I used that aspen as an example because there was no way that those massive butt and second cut clear logs could've graded any higher, but they did not adjust the pay. I never heard of anyone else getting any grade bonuses either.

 Now let me contrast that with another hardwood mill I got to work with 2 falls back out of Wisconsin. They had me skid the wood and lay it out on the landing, and pre-grade from the forwarder seat. Once I was running out of room, their timber buyer came out and graded, scaled  and tallied every stick. Then I would pile it up for their trucks. So, in that case you had a set price per grade and species, and you knew what you were getting before it left the job. Far more professional and I really enjoyed working with them. Also, it tickled me that it meant the other mill I was talking about wasn't getting any of that beautiful timber, except perhaps all of the #2 red oak that didn't pay enough to send 200 miles back to Park Falls, Wisconsin😁
 

[Walnut Beast]

From what I was told today  , things are not good

Is that on everything? From the sounds of some of these log buyers unless you have some serious amounts you can't even get somebody to give you a bid 

[ehp]

Im better than some I guess but there just not a very big demand for mainly hardwood other than lower grade stuff , Pretty much all the white pine I cut goes for timbers so cut into squares and I cut a fair amount of that over the winter . Problem is there is not much money to be made cutting low grade here as the timber cost so much to buy standing and now log prices are going down , Stuff like hard maple just let it stand and walk by it . Just hope a couple of the loggers that bought bushes of 250,000 or more of hard maple got them cut cause they paid pretty crazy prices for that in my mind , They are talking at least a year or more before they see stuff come back up