Log Prices?

[Hogdaddy]

My fault... I wasn't asking or talking about white oak, i was just asking how weight=board feet. (and price per ton versus price per foot) I think I got everyone confused. Just misc. hardwood pallet logs

[stavebuyer]

Board foot to ton conversions vary with log scale and tree diameter. Hardwoods vary from 5-6 tons per mbf for big poplar to 8.5 tons per mbf for tie/pallet sized hickory. These are Doyle values as buying per ton is often in the SE where Doyle is the most common scale.

A 25 ton load of White Oak scales around 3200 Bd/ft on average so at $50 x25 tons=$1250
Divide the $1250/3200 bd ft yields $.39 per foot for the stumpage on Doyle Scale

[Hogdaddy]

Thank you.  @stavebuyer 

[customsawyer]

I appreciate stavebuyer stepping in and clearing some of this up. It gets misunderstood converting from scale, to ton, to yield.
The only ones that buy by doyle scale is small time guys like myself when buying from tree surgeons. All larger timber sales are done by the ton. Land owner, logger, trucking all get paid by the ton. I have never converted how many bf doyle scale was on a semi. I know that when I buy a 25 to 28 ton load of logs at $100.00/ton in white oak, I will actually yield around 4500-5500 bf of lumber. Keep in mind that most of it is going for flooring lowboy trailers so more over run than normal. I wonder if our southern white oak would weigh more or less per bf than Appalachian or Northern white oak? Or pick any of the same species.

[stavebuyer]

It is common to get large lumber over-run with a band mill on Doyle scaled logs. That also varies greatly by log diameter. You might double lumber sawn versus the log scaled footage with 14" logs and have no over-run with 24" logs. The big logs will also change the log scale to weight scale ratio. The same 25 tons with a 24" log average might scale 4000ft.

I have bought on weight and resold by the ton and vice versa. Easy to get bit.

[ehp]

lumber here took a big hit hard yesterday , pretty much all grades . I talked to 3 different log buyers yesterday as they stopped by where I'm cutting just to talk , Boys things are not good and that's a understatement and next spring its going to be worse and to the point guys are going to be sitting at home wondering what to do , the one mill is going to start sending guys home now cause they got no sales for the lumber . The county put out 2 hard maple cuts to bid on and the 1 mill bid $2/ft standing and now they are in big trouble cause no way is that going to work out but they paid for the cuts , anything under the highest grade of veneer is a loss at that price and you still got to cut and skid it and truck it to the yard for the veneer buyers , I can tell you I sure would not want to be paying big monthly payments , the one big lumber yard that sells the lower grades is so full its telling everyone the price has to drop and drop alot , some of the other smaller mills are not buying anything cause they know the log prices are going down 

[nativewolf]

So far it's holding here.  YP peelers pulled back a touch- really just tightened specs.  Going to send a low grade load of stave wood out- we'll see how it does.  Not great wood so I'm not hoping for much.   CO is still 1400 for a good sawlog.  

Hickory sure is weak, we might leave the good ones til next harvest.

[ehp]

As far as I'm concerned.  The crash is here and dropping fast 

[nativewolf]

It's a global market and for the last 2 years China has been a fraction of prior sales.  Combined with the last 2 years of Trump admin in the tariff wars we've had 4 years here with declining Chinese purchase.  I think Canada benefited a bit on the tariff side of it.  

The Chinese communist party is finally making some moves to get rid of the zero covid rules and to fix the housing market.  That would do huge things to the global wood products trade.   If that happens wood products will pick up during an interest rate driven recession leaving winter of 2023-4 being potentially smoking hot.  That is just a guess but I'd say keep an eye out on what is happening in china.

[nativewolf]

The problem in China on the apartment/housing situation is that the developers sold the apartments, regular ol citizens have bought them.  The construction companies then failed to finish them (commodity increases, covid, poor planning, fraud, embezzlement, land speculation among other reasons).  So the problem is big (millions of units) and concentrated (several dozen big companies).  It's the sort of problem that the govt there can fix if they put money into it.  That is the sort of thing they can fix, if they want to.

[ehp]

You put all your eggs in China baskets . I am not . You very well could be right but I'm not taking that chance.   I have been down this road to many times before .  .  Things are going to be tough and everything says it will be .  China has no control over any houses being built here which is a big part of logging in NA .  They are all telling us a 30 year mortgage will be at least 10% . That alone will kill everything . Your going to see big lay offs in the work force which is already starting to happen here.  In a couple years things may pick up but not because demand for lumber has gotten a lot better . It's going to be causeblook at the average age of guts logging . There is no young people doing it and most guys logging are ready to retire or quit and do something else . Most guys here are my age or older so we're not going to log much longer 

[nativewolf]

I'm saying China will move market regardless of the state of the economy here.  That's what happened in 2009-14.  All the price support was China.  

There are other drivers of course.  Ukraine is moving forward, that settles next summer as many experts think than Europe could explode with opportunity.  It would be much bigger than Germany reunifying which had a huge impact.  

The interest rate rise is likely about over here, we'll see.  In the meantime I agree with you that things may continue to contract.  I'd just be prepared for it to not contract.  

Like you I see a lot of loggers leaving the business.  Supply destruction has done a lot to support our business locally.  

[OH logger]

Just buy jobs today put a 5 year contract on em and sit on it!!! 😂 

[Cedarman]

Target is expecting sales to be off these holidays.  They also reported $400,000,000.00 in shoplifting losses. Prices have to go up.  Inflation will keep people from remodeling and builders from building. Lumber prices will go down.  Therefore log prices will go down.  
But cedar is holding firm.  Denmark wants a container every 1 1/2 months at 10 to 15% price increase.  I will milk this cow until dry. Local sales continue at a good pace.
Since hardwood loggers can switch to cedar, I hope it fills our bare log yard this winter. It got bare this summer and fall.

[ehp]

Wish I could buy that far out , here most will only do 1 year period , our logging permit is only good for 1 year as well on a job

[customsawyer]

Cedarman I strongly dislike a empty log yard. It's hard to sell it if you don't have it.

[nativewolf]

Everybodys log yard is empty.  That is why pricing has not collapsed. 

I know 3 logging crews that shut down, 2 that are only cutting white oak jobs.  Not a lot of logs moving.  

Hopefully reports like Targets will keep interest rate movement down.  Typically the fed is lagging, just like it was too late raising rates, it will keep higher too long.  

[bigblockyeti]

I'm hoping for just the opposite, high rates = high returns.  Target is just another of many middle man used to export USD to china.

[nativewolf]

Just buy jobs today put a 5 year contract on em and sit on it!!! 😂

we put 30 years on ours.

[YellowHammer]

It's interesting because I buy a decent variety of logs, but not enough to get a "deal" from various places.  Yesterday I paid 65 cents for poplar, about what I paid a couple months ago, $2.25 for butternut, about what I paid a couple months ago, and asked about 3CF walnut, it's holding at $3 to $3.50 which is  about where it was last summer.  Basswood was also 65 cents.  Mixed tie logs were going for 53 cents, which I thought was pretty high because I had heard crosstie prices had started to drop.

I've been trying to get cedar logs for months, I can't get them.  I'm not even sure what is a good price anymore because I can't buy what I can't get.  I've had 2 cedar loggers call me recently, we set up a deal, and they never show, never even call back.  I can only assume I was outbid, or I was being used as a patsy to drive the cost up to others, but either way, I don't have a cedar log to my name.

I was hoping the walnut log prices were dropping faster because the walnut lumber I sometimes buy has started to drop quality within grade (more cull boards, lots of sapwood), but not necessarily the price, maybe just a little.  However the lower grades I get in the packs actually mean my net cost on walnut has gone up.

I bought this week a pack of KD FAS 8/4 hard maple from Pennsylvania, it was 4.80 which is unchanged in two months, and red oak from Kentucky at $2.93 which is exactly what I paid in August.  

I just ordered about $10K worth of exotics from North Carolina, they actually went up about 10% since last order, I assume to pay for freight.  I buy exotics from about 3 different places, only one could fill my order because of the scarcity of them being able to get the variety I needed.  

Just my information this week.  It's interesting to get the information on this topic from the logger's standpoint.  I typically only buy near veneer or 3CF and better logs so live bid in an accumulation yard for them against other buyers.  Not like a formal auction, the logs are laid out, I pick the ones I want, and there's usually another guy or two, like me, buying also.  I'm the most "non pro" out there, yesterday a guy was buying about 5 semi loads against me, (I only bought 3600 bdft) and he was stapling barcodes generated from a handheld computer thing on the ends of each log be bought.  We were buying within a few cents of each other, so if I'm getting ripped off, he as a professional log buyer, was getting ripped off too.              

[OntarioAl]

nativewolf
30 years !!
You obviously have some enlightened land owners.
When I was contracting up here I tried to offer a service to manage their wood lot no dice it was a case of how much how fast. I was competing with crooks that offered unrealistic stumpage cleaned the lot off and only paid a pittance to the landowner.
Cheers
Al 

[nativewolf]

30 years and revenue share and we do TSI in the harvest, first harvest cull and fix.  Try not to go broke.  Contract ties to land.  Nobody else can do commercial harvest.  Second harvest will be strong. Can't work on crapped out high grades.  

Our big challenge is getting production up to a steady 3 trucks a day.  

[bigblockyeti]

30 years is pretty ambitious, don't know how anyone could sweet talk a landowner into a contract tying up their land for that long.

[stavebuyer]

I don't deal in KD lumber; but someone is doing quite well if they can buy wholesale FAS RO green lumber at 715 and sell it KD for 2700. You can buy all the 4SC RO logs your checkbook can stand for $.60 Doyle. Also seems odd the 3SC Walnut logs are bringing that kind of coin when 4/4 green FAS Walnut lumber is at 2300. 

6x8 ties are dropping $.50 but 7x9 Oak are still bringing $41 so tie logs at $.50+ is very common and above average margin for the mills that specialize in them. We are still in severe drought locally and every mill is overflowing with logs. Many have loggers on quota.

[Skeans1]

30 years and revenue share and we do TSI in the harvest, first harvest cull and fix.  Try not to go broke.  Contract ties to land.  Nobody else can do commercial harvest.  Second harvest will be strong. Can't work on crapped out high grades.  

Our big challenge is getting production up to a steady 3 trucks a day.  

I'd be willing to bet the land owner can break that contract just like any contract it's only good today.