Question for Firewood sellers

[KiwiBro]

Great posts, Sandhill Crane. Did you ever run the numbers on cages on pallets? I did so a while back but can't find my workings/costings. IIRC cages worked out better long-term than the other options.

These were 2m x 1m x 1m cages (holding 2 thrown/loose cubic meters), with built-in pockets for pallet forks, fold-down sides for moving and storage when empty, and crucially in my scenario, a top-hinged long-side flap for dumping the wood into high-sided (3.m) bin trucks that take about 50-55m3 each load.

Initial cost was high but much longer lasting than bags plus a small residual resale value if SHTF.

Got the idea from a potato farmer who had many hundreds of them made from wood sans the side flap.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

2mx1mx1m cages with built-in pockets for pallet forls, fold-down sides for moving and storage when empty,

I use a few boxes half that size next to the splitter to throw culls in, then when full, load on conveyor and bundle on pallets. I had 18 pallets of culls. Bartered 6 and will season the rest for our own use next year.
The RowPacks, as I call them, foldable plastic forklift size crates are expensive, and it would take several to equal a cord. The plus is they stack and do not rot. They do fatigue with uv exposure and sometimes pieces break off the top edge when I throw wood at them.
I also tried to find steel pallets with removable uprights in the corners. We used them on jobs for the tubes and ladder sections of tube and clamp scaffolding. Also for lumber, and various materials, etc. on job sites due to easy of moving by forklift or crane if properly rigged. For firewood use they would need wire fencing for sides, and an opening side for dumping. Which adds to the cost.
For me it also meant changing from my forklift to a machine that can tip a load to empty it. That was before Mainus posted about the Palax Swing.
I no longer have my wood racks that I spent several thousand dollars on, buying lumber and bolts, not to mention time. Fruit farmers around here have stock yards full of wood crates for shipping apples on flatbed semi's.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

2mx1mx1m cages with built-in pockets for pallet forls, fold-down sides for moving and storage when empty,

I use a few boxes half that size next to the splitter to throw culls in, then when full, load on conveyor and bundle on pallets. I had 18 pallets of culls. Bartered 6 and will season the rest for our own use next year.
The RowPacks, as I call them, foldable plastic forklift size crates are expensive, and it would take several to equal a cord. The plus is they stack and do not rot. They do fatigue with uv exposure and sometimes pieces break off the top edge when I throw wood at them.
I also tried to find steel pallets with removable uprights in the corners. We used them on jobs for the tubes and ladder sections of tube and clamp scaffolding. Also for lumber, and various materials, etc. on job sites due to easy of moving by forklift or crane if properly rigged. For firewood use they would need wire fencing for sides, and an opening side for dumping. Which adds to the cost.
For me it also meant changing from my forklift to a machine that can tip a load to empty it. That was before Mainus posted about the Palax Swing.
I no longer have my wood racks that I spent several thousand dollars on, buying lumber and bolts, not to mention time. Fruit farmers around here have stock yards full of wood crates for shipping apples on flatbed semi's.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

The bags are about 55-60cu ft each if filled to where wood about falls out of it. I get a cord to 3 bags, at least on what I've done so far (did maybe 25 cords last year in them)

The drum is what, 3.5ft circle? 5ft tall would be about 50 cu ft to a pallet. Still a little short of 3 pallets to a cord though.

Looks like a neat setup, just watching videos on the Palax equipment it's not built logger proof! IE where 1/4" steel is "by the book" strong enough 1/2" gets used.

If a person was doing hundreds of cords with that setup I could see it being a better deal in the end than the bags. May be something I go with in the future, although I think I'd build my own and make it logger proof. About the only thing that would take a bit of head scratching is the stretch wrap rotator.

Bins, crates etc, they are expensive, and more so are a pain to handle or store when empty. The bags fold up and easy to store.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

48" x 48" pallets, so they don't quite fit side by side in a van trailer. Drum is about 46" inside, flange on top. I'll get some measurements in a bit.
A stack of twenty pallets only takes a 4' x 4' foot print.

 

[dewaldf.carstens]

Hi, I have struggled with this same issue the last year. I am considering using a normal 1.2 meter x 1 meter pallet as a base and make a wood frame on top to produce a 1.8 cubic meter volume, which is halve a full Cord.
This will allow the wood only to be handled once, when stacking the pallet. Then this will fit in my kiln (reefer) and on large trucks for distribution.

The idea has come to mind when doing deliveries to households. Always having someone extra with to fast unload is not productive.

Prices I received for pallst and frame is about 15USD, which will be paid as deposit by customer and get refunded when empty or swopped with next delivery. Survey I did on FB, shows that people love the idea, which I got from Europe. They have been using this a long time.

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[jcl]

Great ideas and input everyone.
The swing is very interesting trying to get info and $$ for my area but think it might weight to much.

For the combined lifting weight for my new holland Tc45. But interesting. Think longer lasting totes. Are my best option.

Will just have to buy what I can when I can.
Thanks everyone

 

[Sandhill Crane]

I like Carstens idea of a simple rack that he can charge for, and swap out if need be the next time a customer orders.
I tried two types of racks for seasoning and handling. The 1/3 cord racks only lasted four years and quickly began to fatigue. The larger racks worked, although with three rows tightly stacked the center row did not season as well.
However, being able to dump bags with rotating forks is a huge plus over racks and even the netting I use, if the cost works out. And delivering with a dump trailer would be much quicker than loading, dealing with straps on and off, and unloading with forks.

 

[KiwiBro]

for next year I am going to try to get a set of industrial rotating forks and modify it with a side panel like the swing.

These guys do rotators starting at 1500kg ratings, with an optional side fork for supporting the load that I'm assuming could easily have a plate welded to it to better support the firewood bags:
https://en.bolzonigroup.com/prodotto.php?p=124



*ETA* those potato bins I mentioned earlier made me go looking for a local bin tipper manufacturer and I came up with this option, which I'm guessing is cheaper but probably not as robust:

https://www.rataequipment.com/products/loader-attachments/bin-rotator

 

[KiwiBro]

Hi, I have struggled with this same issue the last year. I am considering using a normal 1.2 meter x 1 meter pallet as a base and make a wood frame on top to produce a 1.8 cubic meter volume, which is halve a full Cord.
This will allow the wood only to be handled once, when stacking the pallet. Then this will fit in my kiln (reefer) and on large trucks for distribution.

The idea has come to mind when doing deliveries to households. Always having someone extra with to fast unload is not productive.

Prices I received for pallst and frame is about 15USD, which will be paid as deposit by customer and get refunded when empty or swopped with next delivery. Survey I did on FB, shows that people love the idea, which I got from Europe. They have been using this a long time.

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Do you use a pallet trolley when delivering to households? I like the fact the tall crate has a small footprint for getting down the sides of houses or negotiating cars and other obstacles in driveways and on sidewalks/footpaths, and fits well into the kiln. But does the weight make it harder for one delivery person to move the pallet trolley over such terrain?

 

[dewaldf.carstens]

Do you use a pallet trolley when delivering to households? I like the fact the tall crate has a small footprint for getting down the sides of houses or negotiating cars and other obstacles in driveways and on sidewalks/footpaths, and fits well into the kiln. But does the weight make it harder for one delivery person to move the pallet trolley over such terrain?

I have seen in EU some diferent methods. Some use s crane on Iveco to get it to ground level. Then pallet truck to move to where this fits, like Garage or side of house. There is some nifty all terrain pallet trucks which are awesome, But, the ultimate will be the powered all terrain pallet truck. They seem to be 8k USD, which is mad.

I hope to get my I4Williams tipper the 8th of December. It has ramps, for loading MultiOne. I hope to use this with a all terrain pallet truck. Tip bed, so that angle of bed = angle of ramps. Small winch to break the pallet truck down hill. If wood is dry, pallet should be less than 1 ton.
I hope to make powered version for much cheaper than you can buy.

Ultimate would be to do deliveries with 8 -10 tonner with tail-lift and powered all terrain pallet truck. Then this is 1 man job.

My labour this winter was mad, especially handling wood. We delivered 1300 ton from March - Sept and that was crazy. We still produce too little, so we are lpoking at harvester, either excavator based (cheaper) or wheel models. We proved that our Loco 20 + Bilke S3 do process around 70 ton of split firewood per 9 hr shift, if you have the wood ready.
I am also busy getting prices for Woodmizer mill to look at producing own planks for pallets. If we have to buy 15000 pallets per year, we might as well make them. Also gives us another market for the larger than 300mm trees to cut boards, or beams.

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[KiwiBro]

I recall when people were calling you out as a blow-hard they couldn't believe! LOL

Trust me, people, I've seen the photos and bounced ideas around with dewaldf.carstens in PM's and it's one very exciting operation being built up over there.

 

[dewaldf.carstens]

I recall when people were calling you out as a blow-hard they couldn't believe! LOL

Yes, so do I, but I always liked to proove people wrong. The only thing that made my business plan not add up, was the volume of wood we could cut and get to processors. This I did point out was a concern and risk from the start when it was decided that a harvester was too much of an investment, 1 year ago now. So we had meeting with Partner, and showed him, sorry but I was right.... So now we are looking at harvester....
We have also signed rental agreement for farm yard, 6 ha, with 6 large buildings for packing wood and moving all processing to central location.



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[ChoppyChoppy]

CRD?

I looked into them, everyone that had them had not much good to say about the after purchase care with the outfit. Can't get them to answer calls, never mind get any parts.
Same experience you have had?

Where is "ZA"?

 

[dewaldf.carstens]

Rapido Loco 20 is a large firewood processor, we use to process anything above 200mm diameter up to 500mm diameter. Anything smaller goes to the Bilke S3, auto cut and split, just feed logs.

The Loco 20, the manufacturer claim, 5 Full cords per hour, that is BS. We do get constant average of 2 cords per hour from it, after owning it for 8 months, if you just have to load the logs.

We obviously don't do this every day, because we can't tell trees, and get them out and prepped into logs that fast. This is the reason we have to buy harvester.

The firewood market in Cape Town is around R4bn, or 300 m USD per year, population 5,000,000 (under estimated).
Every week there is 50x30 ton of wood delivered from Windhoek in Namibia (1500km away) , 20x35 ton loads of Rooikranz from Stilbaai, 400km away. We are 80km from Cape Town, so there is the +.
Also we have access to trees, other people don't, fortunate.
I see the firewood business as production Line, as this is what I am used to in FMCG environment 23 years. These machines need to run every minute of every day.

We are not Arb company, I see us as commercial tree fellers. If gave up Engineering as career to start this, this is what we do, day in, day out, 6 days per week. Like Kiwi said, 1 year ago a few guys slacked me for being big mouth, unrealistic.... well, 6 months after the Loco and Bilke arrived we produced, loaded, delivered, invoiced and were paid for 1300 tons, about 650 Full cords of dry (-20%) Saligna firewood. We are a PTY company, all go through the books, we have just been audited and that is what the books say, not me.
I hope, with the harvester, log truck, that will be doing 6500 cords per year and continue to grow, export, mill some lumber, produce Eucalyptus oil, chip for mulch and some value added products. The plans are there, markets too, but as we all know, money is always the limiting factor. But, as they say; Rome was not built in a day.

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[ChoppyChoppy]

I sort of remember now from another thread.

Must have at least 5-6 full time guys working to move that much wood?

 

[dewaldf.carstens]

I sort of remember now from another thread.

Must have at least 5-6 full time guys working to move that much wood?

Loading the truck? Yes 10 guys, 5-6 hours, loading by hand, all depending on which crew you get....

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[ChoppyChoppy]

Loading the truck? Yes 10 guys, 5-6 hours, loading by hand, all depending on which crew you get....

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Dang, and that pencils out somehow? 10 guys, that's $150+ an hr just in wages?

 

[dewaldf.carstens]

Dang, and that pencils out somehow? 10 guys, that's $150+ an hr just in wages

It does not make financial sense, our labour is 35% of turn over, 20% transport, 8% fuel. Plan is to reduce labour to 10% with harvester, and with own transport to at least 12%. Thus the investment in harvester makes plenty sense , especially if we can up production at least 10x if not 15x working 50hr weeks.

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[dewaldf.carstens]

CRD?

I looked into them, everyone that had them had not much good to say about the after purchase care with the outfit. Can't get them to answer calls, never mind get any parts.
Same experience you have had?

Where is "ZA"?

Hi, ZA=South Africa, we are near Cape Town.
Yes I read the same reviews of CARD before we made the purchase, but this is what we considered:
Price: they were almost half the price of the Cord King, and this was a big one for us. We decided that we can make a plan with parts locally, seeing that most off shelf stuff we can source or fly in if needed.
We produced over 700 Full cords, only issues were; wedge broke, had to weld a few times, positioning rollers at bottom of splitting chamber were busted, had this fixed at local shop, fuse holder for 30A fan burned, will replace, cheap.
All in all the machine does the job very well. Next one will be Cord King, we should have the money then. Would like AC cab and joystick, plus 60 ton ram with packaging wedge, 16/24 way wedge.

All the suppliers state these , but in reality it only happen with large diameter logs, which you don't get unless you buy them.
We get 2 cords/hr, process 180+mm, smaller stuff goes through Bilke.

Something I must add, if I don't go for Cord King next time, I will copy the CORD for 1/2 or 1/3 of price and do couple of improvements.

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