gorman
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This thread should be linked for people who think tree guys “double dip” with the firewood end of the business.
There's no money in selling firewood
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All you need to do is go to the Commercial Tree Care forum and it's like you walked into another world. Most tree guys want nothing to do with firewood.
kevinlar
ArboristSite Member
It's very true statement... I have a tree service dumping boat loads of firewood at my lots... they want nothing to do with it.
Labor is expensive. Processing good firewood is labor intensive. That's why there is no money in it. I do it for the exercise and fresh air, but men like me are scarce. The guy who bought the most recent truckload of firewood from me weighs 400 lb and can hardly tie his shoe. Regardless, he said, "I need dry split wood that will burn immediately.'
Cody
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Cutting firewood/running saws is fun, even if it's work. Cleaning up, even with a rake, isn't horrible, good exercise. Nobody likes splitting wood. I like doing it by hand every so often, especially on the smaller stuff as it's faster than with a hydro. Running a lever just isn't fun to do for an extended amount of time. Unless of course, you've got one that you've either built, or spent 8K or better on.
ChoppyChoppy
Tree Freak
Not that bad with equipment. No different that trying to have at it in the logging industry without any equipment, or dirt work, or pretty much any job really.... having the right tools is a work smarter, not harder type thing.
Well, with the right market, product and strategy you can make money selling just about anything...including garbage. We sell strictly by the stick to captive audiences and our per cord (true cord) profit is between $550 and $600 a cord on 200 cords a year. I can get that higher by investing in wood processing and bagging equipment and reducing transportation costs by getting more customers on my established routes. Once I get a larger area I will definitely befriend every Tree company in a 50 mile radius
You found a niche market and jumped on it, and did a dang good job about working it. As you say a good businessman will be successful at anything he puts his mind to. There are firewood processors that are very profitable. But that's a little Apples to Oranges to what the OP was doing. He was a weekend warrior selling 3-4-5- cord a year. For a guy to sell just a few cord a year, it's a lot of hard work for a low return. Once you start buying trucks, splitters, processors, more help, comp, taxes, it's not a little hobby gig anymore. It's a real job where you have to be responsible. I hate that "R" word. If my fishing buddy calls tomorrow and says, "you wanna go Tuna fishing tomorrow?". I'm gone. That's just about how much money I make on my firewood a year, 3-4 offshore trips and a couple hunting trips. Yeah, there can be good money in firewood, you proved that. I always like your posts and updates on your Park/Camping vending business. Just curious, if you're making about $120K on the vending business, how many people are you supporting, as in workers, not family?
ChoppyChoppy
Tree Freak
No different in any other thing as far as hobby or actual money earning business.
I could have a T Shirt printing hobby and only sell enough to cover costs and beer money, or invest into it and make 500k a year.
I could have a T Shirt printing hobby and only sell enough to cover costs and beer money, or invest into it and make 500k a year.
That's the point I was trying to make. If you have a "Day Job", a Fiskars, a 82 Chevy Luv Truck, and a wheelbarrow, you are going to work your butt off for very little profit. Basically beer money. If you put enough into it to make $500K, it's no longer a little beer money gig. If a guy is a School Teacher, and comes here and asks if he can make some easy money scrounging, my answer is no. He can make some money, but it wouldn't be what I call easy. If I say "Sure you can make a lot of money, just go buy an $80,000 dump truck, a $250,000 mega processor, hire 4-5 guys to run the setup, you will be good to go". I really didn't do that School Teacher guy any favors, and I didn't answer the question he asked.
Joe, that hit the nail on the head. Get big with lots of investment, and there is money in it. Unfortunately, 4-5 guys and some heavy equipment may not do it either. That's just a start. We have some large firewood suppliers around here, but they make their big money clearing trees and biomass at large construction sites. Selling firewood is a just a side business that amounts to at most 10% of their revenue. Many residential firewood buyers do not want to deal with them. That includes most of my customers.
Thanks rarefish....I agree with your take....unless you live near one of those places where that have "captive customers" and get in there to sell. I have a guy in West Texas who was doing 5-600 cords a year wholesale and by the cord...he now runs 3 parks and is looking for more and he will soon just do park wood....He has a big park near Austin and and that thing alone will do 50K this year....he did a contract with the friends group....he just dumps off full bags once a month or so and for 20% instead of 10% they fill the machines. One park can make that small time guy really good fishing money.
We only have 4 people here including me..... a well used F450, skid steer and splitter. We buy from local guys and have them split and put the wood in dino bags and then we go get them. One of my guys can do 200 bags a day....so it is only about a day and a half a week.... I have two routes that takes me about a day and a half to complete and we have guys in North Texas and East texas who are in the business who split, bag and fill machines too far for me to get to....they get 3 times what they would normally make and I still get a good by bag profit so we only do about 120 cords out of here. The rest of the time we are prototyping new types of machines. I have a UL certified 20lb propane bottle machine we are waiting on orders for from the big players in the exchange game, I just shipped off 3 machines to California to rent propane bottles and propane fire rings for the beaches (they are outlawing wood fires on the beach). Working on a Kayak and Paddle board kiosk to beta at a local park, a bike rental one for a guy in Wisconsin and a marine battery Kiosk for a big battery company to sell batteries after hours at marinas......The firewood sales pay the overhead plus some and was really only started to prove the business model ....and then got out of control.....When I retired from the Army I got bored.
KiwiBro
Mill 'em, nails be damned.
200 dino bags a day? Are you talking these bags?
That's one heck of a productive operation if so.
That said, I learned years ago firewood is a stay small or go big proposition. There's a huge, wide-open stretch of no-mans-land inbetween that will bleed even the best operators dry if they don't make it back or get across in time.
That's one heck of a productive operation if so.
That said, I learned years ago firewood is a stay small or go big proposition. There's a huge, wide-open stretch of no-mans-land inbetween that will bleed even the best operators dry if they don't make it back or get across in time.
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KiwiBro, I think he is talking getting wood out of the dino bags and putting it into the smaller bags for the self vending machines. So one guy can bag up 200 smaller bags a day. The dino bags are just to dry and transport the splits to his site to small bag it.
KiwiBro
Mill 'em, nails be damned.
Thanks cantoo. I was looking forward to learning more about the operation that was producing 200 of those large bags of firewood a day. They'll be out there for sure and a great learning opportunity.
We don't have so much the parks wood niche market here but there is the wood-fired oven niche that pays a premium for certain woods. It's a profitable market but quite spread out. There is also the small bag/sack firewood market usually sold at coastal gas stations where the buyers are on their way to their weekend retreats and don't want to be messing with firewood themselves. It's a tough one to break into though. Would need to build up a good, tight area of such places to keep stocked while not clocking up too many largely unproductive miles doing deliveries.
The best I can work out for here is to either do firewood as a secondary (in downtime) product to a more profitable main business like milling/harvesting/tree work, or go very big and chase massive volumes of sales.
We don't have so much the parks wood niche market here but there is the wood-fired oven niche that pays a premium for certain woods. It's a profitable market but quite spread out. There is also the small bag/sack firewood market usually sold at coastal gas stations where the buyers are on their way to their weekend retreats and don't want to be messing with firewood themselves. It's a tough one to break into though. Would need to build up a good, tight area of such places to keep stocked while not clocking up too many largely unproductive miles doing deliveries.
The best I can work out for here is to either do firewood as a secondary (in downtime) product to a more profitable main business like milling/harvesting/tree work, or go very big and chase massive volumes of sales.
ChoppyChoppy
Tree Freak
I can do around 400 bundles in a short day (~10hrs) if I wanted to do it that long. I usually get bored after a few hrs though.
T. Mainus
ArboristSite Operative
200 of those dino bags would be roughly 66 cord of wood give or take. Nobody can do that much in a day.
KiwiBro
Mill 'em, nails be damned.
Running two shifts with some of the processors out there would give it a good nudge.
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Like everyone says "the easy part is the work, the hard part is getting paid and making money for the work".
We do sell campfire wood but prefer to sell it by the trailer load to the camp ground or to someone in the campground and they can resell or do whatever they want with it. I did build a shrink wrap wrapper a few years ago and it worked great however some idiot made a crazy offer for it and my daughter in law sold it to him. In the end selling it saved us a pile of work for a few dollars return. I told her I could make more money selling wrappers then I ever could selling camp fire wood.
We do sell campfire wood but prefer to sell it by the trailer load to the camp ground or to someone in the campground and they can resell or do whatever they want with it. I did build a shrink wrap wrapper a few years ago and it worked great however some idiot made a crazy offer for it and my daughter in law sold it to him. In the end selling it saved us a pile of work for a few dollars return. I told her I could make more money selling wrappers then I ever could selling camp fire wood.
Even if you have a camp or park manager buying loads from you and reselling them out, it's not really big money -- especially working with the ones I deal with. They chisel you down like gangbusters. I've even had these guys try to buy on consignment, paying me only after all the bundles they hand out are sold. They hate paying C.O.D. And, they want me to deliver cutting and splitting scraps for free.
When it comes to campfire wood, it's actually more fun for me to deliver loads to a trailer park and talk to the customers who always pay on the spot without batting an eye. Sometimes they even throw in an extra ten bucks.
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