white oak crooks

[ssor]

One of my homeowner customers is going to have timber cut on five acres of her place. There is a substantial amount of open grown white oak. And the tops will be left for fire wood.
If you are reasonably close to northeastern Maryland this may be an opportunity to cut a supply of crooks just for the price of cutting and stacking the pieces you don't want.

[johngsandusky]

I'm not that close. But I do hope the trunks are going to a mill, not the landfill or fireplace.

[ssor]

O yes they will go to the mill. The local maritime museum has a wooden boat building program and i have contacted them.

[seayou7]

ssor, Timber on five acres. Interesting subject. As I am learning this can be horse trading of the highest kind. It would be of interest to know the avg. diameter at breast height. Red and White Oak. Approx. number of trees and the yield from the Sawyer.
A neighbor timbered fifteen acres of smallish timber in Ga. and got about fifteen thousand which he bemoaned was not enough to clean up after the timber activity.
Just trying to get a handle on the business. I find the sawyer takes half the value of timber for the harvest.

[ssor]

seayou7, 24-30 dbh perhaps 100 trees. Up here the split is 50-50 logger and owner. then the logger works his own deal with the sawyer.

[seayou7]

ssor, Thanks for the details. Isn't it something that a logger comes onto your property and benefits 50%of value for hundred years of growth. I just purchased a new Husky 455 rancher chainsaw for felling trees on my property. It is dangerous business.

[ssor]

seayou7, I don't want to work that hard. He has to be able to not just drop them on the ground but drag them out and haul them to the mill. I don't own a log skidder or a truck.

[seayou7]

Hope you find a taker for the crooks. I will try to save some crooks when I get around to harvesting my trees. I was not sugesting you ought to be logging your customers trees, just lamenting that I have to work that hard myself. Bought a fourwheel drive for dragging them out clearing a route. Shopping for sawmills. Thanks for sharing the resource of information.

[Bob Smalser]

This is why consulting foresters are in business, gentlemen. Here's some West Coast consulting forester advice that probably applies equally to the East:

Depending on log prices by species/grade and the size of the job, your rate of return as a landowner after trucking should be 40-50% and up to 75% or more, not a straight 50%. As overhead costs go up with moving from site to site, the bigger the job, the more it should pay the landowner. For example, chainsaw and skidder loggers using a typical 2-man crew with fallers and truckers hired by the day or load have overhead of around 400-600 dollars per truckload they need to recover. Accordingly, in their bids you should expect low returns like 40-50% on inexpensive pulpwood sold to mills by the ton, to greater returns like 60-75% on expensive sawlogs the mill grades, measures and buys by species and BF. You won't deal with the mill at all, other than study their receipts.

Slash cleanup is always extra, always expensive, and I prefer to leave it in the woods, hiring kids to pile it on the stumps as wildlife cover. So should you, as this is a better practice than cleanup. The understory receiving increased sunlight will cover it in a few years anyway. At the same time you seed a cover crop like cereal rye on skid trails to deter erosion. Later prescribed burns and/or replanting depends on how your woodlot is being managed.

Or better yet, you can easily do it your own forestry successfully. Inventory your marketable trees by species and diameter at breast height, mark the trees with paint, make a list, send it to several logging companies for bids, and then meet with each company on site. The outfits you don't want won't even reply, because they won't work for landowners who know what they have. The down side of foresters is they'll take the lowest bid to squeek the most out of their percentage, and sometimes those are also loggers you don't want if you are thinning and are leaving standing trees you want protected.

You should demand and expect the logger to provide a detailed receipt from the mills for each truckload of logs, with a coversheet of full accounting by the logger on determining your share, and a check from the logger attached. Loggers generally maintain accounts with the mills they sell to, and receive checks for each load or each week after a few days delay. Out of that they pay their trucking costs and the owner's share within a reasonable accounting period like two weeks.

[seayou7]

Bob, Thanks for your input. Calling out the forester is top of my list of to do. I have trees dying in an old growth forest. Trying to stay on top of culling the deadwood. Pine bark beatles thinned small pines. The hardwood is hard to see go.
We have a Woodlot here that manages quota at the one big sawmill in the area.

[Bob Smalser]

Calling out the forester is top of my list ...

I've talked this over with eastern foresters before and get a solid impression that logging in most states there is much less controlled and regulated than here, where we need government permits and inspections even on the smallest jobs. Here the state forestry board sets the tone for these business relationships, although when export prices are up I still get letters from out-of-state companies offering me a 50% share of my timber.

Accordingly, don't accept any noise you don't have to. Sound business and management practices are sound business and management practices. The major difference between East Coast and West Coast logging in my eyes is that we use the Scribner scale to measure logs and you use the Doyle scale to measure logs.

[seayou7]

Bob Commercial development is leading the way for land clearing, and driving the lumber prices down.
Our local foresters have a monthly lunch get together. I have attended and will in the future.
My resource is a Navy training manual from the fifties. Will look up the Doyl scale. Lots to learn.
SSOR, thanks/sorry bout the hijack of your thread. Will post my own in the future. Happy New Year!

[Bob Smalser]

Bob Commercial development is leading the way for land clearing, and driving the lumber prices down.


Hurricanes glutting the market with salvage wood isn't helping you either, nor the housing slump.

When prices are down here, we either wait or work for the Weyerhousers/Simpsons who mill their own wood, manage their forests on a schedule, and aren't affected as greatly by log prices. If you can't wait, then you have the wrong investment if you expected a return on timber.

[seayou7]

Advice welcome/ received. My motivation is my time availability rather than financial. I plan to wade into this gently. Taking one of each species, Poplar, Oak, SYP. Get the butt logs onto level ground in a field. Call a Woodmizer guy. Test the market for Lumber.
If I get hungry a load or two will go to the woodlot. Otherwise I build a boat shed/barn.