Need Production Estimates?

[westernmdlawn]

Hi All,

I ordered a SuperSplitter wood splitter the other day, they say it'll be here in 2-3 weeks. So I'm preparing to launch my firewood sales division of our current existing landscaping company.

I have land on which I plan to harvest standing dead hardwood trees.

What I am asking is what do you think realistic production would be given the following manpower / equipment resources:

1 SuperSplit HD (6.5hp Subaru engine)
3 men
Bobcat Mini Excavator with hydraulic thumb to handle the logs
Bobcat Skid Steer with bucket & forks if needed
Chainsaws (obviously)
1 ton dump truck

I will need to cut down the standing dead trees, and skid them to the processing station about 1-200 feet away. I plan to skid with my 4wd Yamaha Grizzly 4 wheeler and skidding tongs. I realize I may have to cut some stuff down to size so I don't overload the quad. Once the logs are gathered for the day, then splitting and piling will commence.

My guess is anywhere from 4-6 cords / day. What do you think? Realistic? Too conservative?

Thanks in advance!

 

[dnf0929]

I'm a one man operation in my first year of business - sold about 20 face cords so far - so I definitely don't have the experience most guys here on the forum do but that's a lot of wood to be doing on a daily basis without a processor. I didn't see a conveyor mentioned which from my research seems to be necessary if you're handling that much wood. You can probably do it but you're going to be 3 tired dudes. Let me know how you like the SS as I've been considering one myself.

 

[MJR]

I skid with my wheeler when I am cutting trees to mill. I only skid minimal distants till I can hook the truck up. If you plan on using the wheeler a lot make an arch. Your wheeler and health insurance will both thank you. Good luck.

 

[savageactor7]

westernmdlawn occasionally I skid out logs with the sons 440 Suzuki Iger(sp)...was doing it with dead elm for the last couple 3 weeks. imo you'll never haul enough out to with that to justify the purchase of a SS.

Now with the Kubota with the 3PH I can haul much bigger logs that could keep a SS busy. With the ATV you're pretty much limited to 6" trees ...of course if you have an arch that could make all the difference in the world...and you would know what you could haul. Cause it sounds like you already thought things threw.

Got to say when I use the ATV the travel time is way more than halved so I can see why your preference of hauling with the it.

 

[Rick Alger]

I did something similar for a week a number of years ago. Our crew was two men and three teenagers. We skidded with a JD 440, split with a Didier hydraulic, loaded by hand, and delivered with two small dump trucks. We moved 36 full cords of cut and split wood in five long days.

Production figured out to 1.44 cords per day per crew member.

Without a skidder, production will probably be lower unless you can drive your truck right into the cutting.

 

[Wet1]

I'm also going to question using the Grizzly, that and lack of a conveyor sound like the weak links in your operation. I also wonder how you're going to remain within 200' of your base... I'd think you'd run out of wood pretty quick.

FWIW, I have a SS, great machine. It will take you a couple of hours per day to split that much wood with a few guys. If you're going to be harvesting really large or tough stuff, you might want to have a large hydraulic on hand as well, but you certainly won't need it often.

 

[blackdiesel]

How far are you going to deliver it? One cord at a time, it will take you a while just to haul it off.

 

[westernmdlawn]

Well, I realize that it will take a good bit of additional time to load it and haul it for delivery. Not all of it will be delivered though I wouldn't think. I will be adding a delivery charge to the base price, perhaps $20-$25 or so.

I agree that the 4 whlr is not going to be able to skid anything large. I could use my bobcat if I really had to to skid with, but don't want to be running it thru the woods a hundred times. One flat tire would be a real pain.

If I could get my 1 ton dumper to the trees, I would probably be better off bucking the logs into 8' sections and loading them directly into the dump truck. Then haul these logs to the workstation where the splitter is.

Around here, the market price of 1 cord quarter split hardwood is going for around $120-$180 range. I was planning to shoot for $160 to start, then maybe going up. The largest firewood guy around does a few hundred cords / yr. and he is the one charging $180/cord.

I've been trying to figure out the optimum arrangement for profit for my given resources at the moment. I'm not sure if using 3 guys is better or not? On the one hand, I don't want to squander the capacity of the SuperSplitter, and on the other, I don't want to waste money on potentially under utilized labor.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how or where to look for hardwood log loads delivered cheap to my location?

 

[abohac]

Your in great shape with the exception of the quad. It won't keep up with the rest of your operation.

 

[wdchuck]

Around here, the market price of 1 cord quarter split hardwood is going for around $120-$180 range. I was planning to shoot for $160 to start, then maybe going up. The largest firewood guy around does a few hundred cords / yr. and he is the one charging $180/cord.

His prices probably reflect the overhead involved.

 

[blackdiesel]

It seems like when times are harder that there are more guys selling firewood. Making the price go down some. There's a big differences in the price of the wood if ones doing it for a living and the others doing it for beer money. I'm mainly just sell to the lodges. The weekend warrior don't want the carry the 1 million dollar policy. go figure

 

[Dok]

Wow! My neighbor just bought a cord of oak from the largest firewood operation around here, $325/cord delivered.

A quad with an arch to skid the logs would be fast but I wonder how it would hold up to daily use?
Dok

 

[westernmdlawn]

Wow,

I wish our market prices were in that range. That is where they need to be for it to be profitable, but there's still so many weekend warriors out here. Those hacks make me sick, how stupid are they really? Gee, lets set the price so low that we get all the work (and no money). If everyone would wise up and raise their collective prices a few notches things would be alot better!

 

[ericjeeper]

figure out cost of grizzly.

Cause if you work it hard enough to make any headway with it.. I am betting you will be buying parts..
I do not have a four wheeler. I have a 4x4 tractor and a dozer. The 4x4 is only 30 horse. But it is heavy with a loader. There are some tops that look like they should just pull easy and they turn out to be a real booger, end up cutting a fork off to be able to get them moving.
I would bet a 100 dollars that my tractor will drag a grizzly quad backwards up a hill. It takes guts and weight to pull a log of any size out of the woods.
Plus you have to have enough weight to be able to pull it around corners..
I think you need to rethink your plans.. Or go broke. just my 2 pennies

 

[drmiller100]

to me, there are 2 fundamentally different businesses involved.

One business is ot cut the trees, and haul them to where they will be processed. This business is called "logging."

Another business is to cut the logs into firewood, and deliver. This is called "processing."

A 3 man logging crew can do 60 cords a day pretty easy with the right equipment.
A 3 man Processing crew can do 10 cords a day with my processor. that is bucked, split, and delivered, as long as the average delivery is 2 cords.

my experience is that if i take my 3 man processing crew to the woods with skid steers and 16 foot dump truck, we cut and hauled about 5 cords a day, hated life, and I lost money. This is why I bought logs.

regards,
doug

 

[westernmdlawn]

Okay, It looks like I can get a load of logs delivered to my location for $475. Supposedly, this will be 6-7 cords of wood. That translates to roughly $70-$80 per cord. If I can sell my wood for $180/cord that would generally leave $100 for splitting, loading, and delivering. Not sure if this can be profitable paying employees to do the work without a processor. No processor, but I do have a supersplitter, bobcat, mini ex, dump truck, etc. Screw the employees, I can do this myself anyway. I wonder what production I could make per hour by myself. I'm thinking 2-3 cords per day (8-10hr days).

 

[ericjeeper]

smile

Okay, It looks like I can get a load of logs delivered to my location for $475. Supposedly, this will be 6-7 cords of wood. That translates to roughly $70-$80 per cord. If I can sell my wood for $180/cord that would generally leave $100 for splitting, loading, and delivering. Not sure if this can be profitable paying employees to do the work without a processor. No processor, but I do have a supersplitter, bobcat, mini ex, dump truck, etc. Screw the employees, I can do this myself anyway. I wonder what production I could make per hour by myself. I'm thinking 2-3 cords per day (8-10hr days).

I think you would be better off hiring at least one guy to help.. Cause at the end of the day someone is going to need to be there to pick you back off the ground.Let alone pull the kink out of your back.
One guy is going to handle all that weight at least twice just getting it from log to splits. Then stack it and then reload it for delivery.

 

[dnf0929]

After creating numerous spreadsheets to try and calculate what my hourly rate would be producing and selling firewood I decided looking at the firewood business simply in terms of profitability doesn't seem to be a very good idea. The fact that I love being outside cutting and splitting, my propane bill is next to nothing and I can even make a few hundred bucks extra a week during the winter made it worthwhile. I know this doesn't really answer your question but I started off trying to analyze the heck out of it and only made myself crazy. Bottom line is if it isn't something you really enjoy doing I wouldn't do it simply for the money because that's going to get old really fast.

 

[John D]

Okay, It looks like I can get a load of logs delivered to my location for $475. Supposedly, this will be 6-7 cords of wood. That translates to roughly $70-$80 per cord. If I can sell my wood for $180/cord that would generally leave $100 for splitting, loading, and delivering. Not sure if this can be profitable paying employees to do the work without a processor. No processor, but I do have a supersplitter, bobcat, mini ex, dump truck, etc. Screw the employees, I can do this myself anyway. I wonder what production I could make per hour by myself. I'm thinking 2-3 cords per day (8-10hr days).

Im not trying to discourage you,but have you figured out what this is going to cost you per cord,with the wear and tear on all the equipment,fuel,and man hours labor involved? From looking at your equipment list,just the SS and mini SS are worth close to 100 an hr here on a job easliy. Prices of firewood are going down fast here with oil/propane coming down,naturally wood follows.I am in NY state ,where its quite a bit cooler than MD,and they are only getting 150-200 tops per cord of good seasoned hardwood,if they can sell it at all,craigslist is loaded with guys selling firewood,prices are dropping quickly.A few of my friends were all geared up,selling it,and no ones buying at 225 a cord.IMO,it is just not a good time to be getting into the wood selling business if you dont have all your ducks in a row.

 

[blackdiesel]

Okay, It looks like I can get a load of logs delivered to my location for $475. Supposedly, this will be 6-7 cords of wood. That translates to roughly $70-$80 per cord. If I can sell my wood for $180/cord that would generally leave $100 for splitting, loading, and delivering. Not sure if this can be profitable paying employees to do the work without a processor. No processor, but I do have a supersplitter, bobcat, mini ex, dump truck, etc. Screw the employees, I can do this myself anyway. I wonder what production I could make per hour by myself. I'm thinking 2-3 cords per day (8-10hr days).

you'd have to bust a bloody hump to do 3 cords per day by yourself. With my processor, that will do 1.5-2 cords per hour, its a long hard day to cut and deliver 4 cords per day. I usually start around 8a.m. and end around 4-5 p.m. And at the end of the day i am completly wore out.

Right now, my neighbor is pushing around 30 acres of timber, and he is letting me cut the timber off of it. (most of it is pulp wood, hardly any saw logs) and i'm paying 5 dollars a ton on the stump. which translates to 5 dollars a rick of green wood, or 15 dollars a cord. You have to operate a 15k dollar skidder to do this though.

Theres really no way to make money at cutting wood. i'm operating thousands on top of thousands of dollars worth of equiptment, at an occupation that could easily put you in an early grave. With no health insurance or benifits. So at the end of the day the 35 bucks an hour that you made (after fuel and expenses, not including the equiptment payment) dosnt seem worth it.