How is Standing Timber Priced

[coopacres]

Hey All,
Hello,I'm new to the site,trying to figure out how to post my question.I have a small stand of hard maple(veneer) i believe it to be veneer but need someone to comfirm this.I believe the trees are ready to harvest ,I'm concerned about them getting bugs or becoming past prime? Where do i go about to find a log scaler/grader. Thanks to anyone who could give me some direction..
Mostly for interest sake, I'd like to get an understanding as to how someone would bid on standing timber. I live in an area surrounded by nearly 40,000 acres of county forest (plantation Eastern Red Pine), which the county manages and tenders out for harvesting. The trees are all in nice tidy rows, are all the same species and are all the same size-so how does the bidding process work? I'm a contractor and I do some work for the county, so I have access to the quotes online and I can tell you they are all over the place. So guys, how does it work?

opps sorry for posting over top of another topic

[beenthere]

Welcome to the forum.
Best way for you (other than reading a lot of what has been said on the forum) is to contact a local forester to go over your timber with you. There likely is a reason the bids are all over the place, and he/she would be able to point you in the right direction.
Or have you already contacted a forester?

[Pullinchips]

Your term of logs may be looser than ours as foresters.  Pulpwood piles up in a "log pile" just like saw logs. It just goes to a different mill and therefore stacked in a different pile. A 15"dbh tree with a twisting canker 1/3 the length on it and big knots will still be the same size as a similar straight log but just with unacceptable defects.

Also there is top wood, unless there smaller trees and they cut off at a 6" top and just leave the tops in the woods. But around here most logs are either 8" top or 6" top, even our large trees to a 6" top still will have "top wood" which is loaded as pulpwood.  This "topwood" will not show up inthier cruise as sawlogs as its not sawlogs, they may list topwood may not. But you still need to have a cruise to determine what % of the total volume is logs etc. A log can be half a tree or the whole tree to say a 8" top.  80% of total volume may be logs and 20% may be poles, could also be 90% and 10%, you just have to cruise it to see?

[WayRiver]

Tdawg

A couple comments on red pine plantation harvesting...

The "marking": I expect the county will mark the trees they want removed....if its every third row vs isolated trees in a row will effect bid prices. How many junk trees (with crotches, twists) are in the mix?   

What is the age of the plantation and how well has it been managed in the past?  (how much non commerical stuff has been marked to be cut? ....for the overall improvement of the plantation)   (I have a 50+ year old red pine plantation that was poorly managed/parts unmanaged in the past...)

Does the proposed cutting lend itself to mechanical harvesting?  It will add different bidders/pricing to the mix.

Lastly...it sounds like you are considering mature plantations.....the highest and best use of red pine plantation material is for poles.  (it used to be.... 35 to 55 foot poles were the big jump in price....although there was a lesser market for 25 and 30 foot stuff if you had bigger material suppliers wanted.  I am not currently up on prices or specs for poles)  But a transport load of poles will dramatically up the value of a harvesting.