Fascinating Customer Interaction

[Wood Doctor]

How many cords is 2 truckloads, 4?

In my case, a truckload is 2/3 cord or 85 cu ft. That's what I tell my customers. The loads are mounded up. I also wait at least a month or two for the split logs to dry in the sun and wind before I load and deliver them. Sometimes it's much longer than that depending upon how dry the round was before I split it. Most rounds dry for a year or more, but you have to be careful with soft maple because it will start dry rotting out in the round in about a year. Heck, if you don't let elm or cottonwood dry for nearly a year in the round, they are so stringy they don't split well at all.

Oh, and Mudstopper, I unfortunately had to say goodbye to my '97 Ford Ranger. I'm now driving a '17 Nissan Frontier that actually has a larger truck bed than the Ranger had.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Well damn! How big is your little truck?!?! My half ton short bed can hold about 1/3 maybe 1/2 of a cord if I don't want to over do it.

Have 7, 3 are mine. 2 have 7.5x12ft beds, the other 7.5x14ft.
The others are 12ft beds aside from 1 with a 10ft bed.

The big truck has an 18ft bed and stack about 6ft tall.

Example... this is loose though, usually it's stacked.



No way I'd do it with a pickup and not a dumptruck.

 

[GrizzlyAdams86]

Guess the only interesting customer interaction I had was a few years ago (posted about this in the "Lowballers" thread). I had been selling wood for a woodstove insert to them (they were trying to heat too big of an area with it) and they then complained about the price, there is no way to describe how stingy this person was with money. They are well off, they just get by as cheaply as possible. Long story short, the complainer heard about someone who had a OWB and quit using it due to health issues and would sell them their wood, already cut and split but siting outside uncovered for several years. They said they could buy it for $40 a pickup load and asked me if it was OK to buy the cheaper wood instead of from me. In a roundabout way I told them "I don't care". I quit selling wood to this person later and because of this will not sell wood to anyone but people I know.

 

[Wood Doctor]

Guess the only interesting customer interaction I had was a few years ago (posted about this in the "Lowballers" thread). I had been selling wood for a woodstove insert to them (they were trying to heat too big of an area with it) and they then complained about the price, there is no way to describe how stingy this person was with money. They are well off, they just get by as cheaply as possible. Long story short, the complainer heard about someone who had a OWB and quit using it due to health issues and would sell them their wood, already cut and split but siting outside uncovered for several years. They said they could buy it for $40 a pickup load and asked me if it was OK to buy the cheaper wood instead of from me. In a roundabout way I told them "I don't care". I quit selling wood to this person later and because of this will not sell wood to anyone but people I know.

Can you imagine how much punky wood they bought? Those cheap clowns don't even know how much heat that good firewood can produce. That punky stuff can plug up chimneys faster than grease lightning. I hope they at least paid the chimney sweep his due.

 

[NSMaple1]

In my case, a truckload is 2/3 cord or 85 cu ft. That's what I tell my customers. The loads are mounded up. I also wait at least a month or two for the split logs to dry in the sun and wind before I load and deliver them. Sometimes it's much longer than that depending upon how dry the round was before I split it. Most rounds dry for a year or more, but you have to be careful with soft maple because it will start dry rotting out in the round in about a year. Heck, if you don't let elm or cottonwood dry for nearly a year in the round, they are so stringy they don't split well at all.

Oh, and Mudstopper, I unfortunately had to say goodbye to my '97 Ford Ranger. I'm now driving a '17 Nissan Frontier that actually has a larger truck bed than the Ranger had.

Wouldn't you have less problems with possible rotting rounds, and also shorten your overall drying time, if you split everything as soon as it was in rounds? Confession - no elm here. But I do do some poplar, which I think is similar to cottonwood.

 

[ken morgan]

disclaimer: not in the business, just for myself. I just split roughly 24 cubic meters or (6.5 cords) of wet elm and that is the stringiest ugliest stacking stuff I have ever seen....if it had split a little smoother I would probably only have about 6 cords...and talk about tough!
I just do not have room for unsplit wood, gotta split and stack it as I get it

 

[Beetlejuice]

disclaimer: not in the business, just for myself. I just split roughly 24 cubic meters or (6.5 cords) of wet elm and that is the stringiest ugliest stacking stuff I have ever seen....if it had split a little smoother I would probably only have about 6 cords...and talk about tough!
I just do not have room for unsplit wood, gotta split and stack it as I get it

Me and my partner split green pine for 2 wks and had quite a pile.. After about 2-3 week break we thought thieves were at work cuz the pile went down significantly from just drying out..

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Wouldn't you have less problems with possible rotting rounds, and also shorten your overall drying time, if you split everything as soon as it was in rounds? Confession - no elm here. But I do do some poplar, which I think is similar to cottonwood.

Cottonwood is a poplar.

Populus angustifolia (narrowleaf cottonwood), in the Great Basin

Populus deltoides (eastern cottonwood), in the eastern United States

Populus fremontii (Fremont cottonwood), in the southwestern United States and Mexico

Populus heterophylla (swamp cottonwood), in the eastern United States

Populus nigra (black poplar), in Europe, Asia, and Africa

Populus trichocarpa (black cottonwood), in the Pacific Northwest of North America

Populus x jackii (balm-of-Gilead)

 

[GrizzlyAdams86]

Can you imagine how much punky wood they bought? Those cheap clowns don't even know how much heat that good firewood can produce. That punky stuff can plug up chimneys faster than grease lightning. I hope they at least paid the chimney sweep his due.

Might not have paid a chimney sweep. This person was tighter than tree bark with money. And when they complained to me one time that the wood I was supplying them with "burned too fast" (it was dry dead standing barkless Elm I was selling to another person at the same time who was heating his 2-story farmhouse with no issues at all), I asked what they had their damper set at. They looked at me like a deer in the headlights and asked "What's a damper?". After I explained what a damper does there were no more complaints from them the next time I delivered wood.

 

[Wood Doctor]

Wouldn't you have less problems with possible rotting rounds, and also shorten your overall drying time, if you split everything as soon as it was in rounds? Confession - no elm here. But I do do some poplar, which I think is similar to cottonwood.

Yes, that is correct, even though I do store the rounds off the ground, in the sun, and on pallets. I usually split as soon as possible, sampling the rounds on occasion that I know are stringy when green. Most of the elm, cottonwood, and poplar that I collect are virtually impossible to split green. Checkup cracks on each end generally tell me when these are ready to split.

 

[NSMaple1]

I'm burning some poplar right now. I don't usually bother with it but this was a windfall into a road so I cut it up and added to the stacks. It had been there a few months before I got to it so wasn't green green when I split it but it split good. And it is burning pretty good too, with 2 years drying, similar to white maple. Kinda surprised me. I won't ignore it so fast after this.

 

[OnTheRoad]

In my case, a truckload is 2/3 cord or 85 cu ft. That's what I tell my customers. The loads are mounded up. I also wait at least a month or two for the split logs to dry in the sun and wind before I load and deliver them. Sometimes it's much longer than that depending upon how dry the round was before I split it. Most rounds dry for a year or more, but you have to be careful with soft maple because it will start dry rotting out in the round in about a year. Heck, if you don't let elm or cottonwood dry for nearly a year in the round, they are so stringy they don't split well at all.

Oh, and Mudstopper, I unfortunately had to say goodbye to my '97 Ford Ranger. I'm now driving a '17 Nissan Frontier that actually has a larger truck bed than the Ranger had.

So you're selling wood that's been split for 1-2 months and claiming it's seasoned? Or are you selling it as green wood?

 

[OnTheRoad]

I'm burning some poplar right now. I don't usually bother with it but this was a windfall into a road so I cut it up and added to the stacks. It had been there a few months before I got to it so wasn't green green when I split it but it split good. And it is burning pretty good too, with 2 years drying, similar to white maple. Kinda surprised me. I won't ignore it so fast after this.

At work we had a shipment come in with a pickup truck load of dunnage that was poplar in roughly 18" blocks. I took it all home and split it. Why not? That will heat my house for a couple weeks and all I had to do was load it and split it.

Now that I do 90+% of my heating with wood, I'm getting less picky about what I burn. It all makes heat.

 

[ken morgan]

Me and my partner split green pine for 2 wks and had quite a pile.. After about 2-3 week break we thought thieves were at work cuz the pile went down significantly from just drying out..

yeah I stack my firewood as higha s I can reach so its often stacked 7-8' or so. I have several racks where the wood shrunk as it dried more on one side then the other and the stacks collapsed, and had to be restacked....what a PITA.

 

[c5rulz]

yeah I stack my firewood as higha s I can reach so its often stacked 7-8' or so. I have several racks where the wood shrunk as it dried more on one side then the other and the stacks collapsed, and had to be restacked....what a PITA.

My observation is that the stack will always want to tilt towards the sun on my stacks. I feel it dries faster on the outside edge and tends to tilt that way. I make the stacks 4' 4" and they shrink to 4' by fall.

 

[Beetlejuice]

My observation is that the stack will always want to tilt towards the sun on my stacks. I feel it dries faster on the outside edge and tends to tilt that way. I make the stacks 4' 4" and they shrink to 4' by fall.

Sounds like the 6 "p" s. Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. Makes it easy to estimate footage. I built a trailer at 6' X 10 X 2..then guestamate the other 8 feet on top. Usually ends up about 25 cubic feet. Makes for good public relations

 

[ken morgan]

My observation is that the stack will always want to tilt towards the sun on my stacks. I feel it dries faster on the outside edge and tends to tilt that way. I make the stacks 4' 4" and they shrink to 4' by fall.

yeah here the property costs too much to go out...gotta go up as much as you can to save space. when i bought this place I was like 300 tsubos...thats freaking huge!! I can has me a shop and multiple car parking and etc.. etc. etc. now I am shoving crap around in my shop to make room for a quad I am trieing to rebuild and the saws are taking up a whole rack, I got 3 engines for my track car sitting under the bench with **** dropping on them (they are plastic wrapped but christ...) I would need 4 more racks if I stacked at anything less than 5' but I get ya...

 

[c5rulz]

Sounds like the 6 "p" s. Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. Makes it easy to estimate footage. I built a trailer at 6' X 10 X 2..then guestamate the other 8 feet on top. Usually ends up about 25 cubic feet. Makes for good public relations

Guess I don't understand what you are trying to say???? All firewood sales are based on a definition of "tightly stacked wood". The way I pile it for drying makes sale pretty accurate. Take a tape measure and a logging crayon and measure it off. Loose tossed wood requires 180-190 cubic feet to make a cord rather than 128 cubic feet when stacked.

I feel this is orderly.

 

[Wood Doctor]

So you're selling wood that's been split for 1-2 months and claiming it's seasoned? Or are you selling it as green wood?

If the bucked round has sat for a year or more and then split, elm will dry in a month or so, provided it's store in the sun and wind, uncovered. My moisture meter verifies this. The bark falls off as you split. I save the bark for kindling, Most customers appreciate a box full of dry bark.

Also, many of my "rounds" are actually halved or quartered via. noodle cutting. That helps dry them as well and allows splitting them sooner. Once again, I always try to split as soon as possible. Wood species that allow splitting immediately after bucking to length can usually be sold in a year if it dries in the sun and wind.

 

[lefturnfreek]

Have 7, 3 are mine. 2 have 7.5x12ft beds, the other 7.5x14ft.
The others are 12ft beds aside from 1 with a 10ft bed.

The big truck has an 18ft bed and stack about 6ft tall.

Example... this is loose though, usually it's stacked.

View attachment 645418

No way I'd do it with a pickup and not a dumptruck.

Hmmmp.....



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