Black oak- fair value

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Sheepdog223

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Dec 6, 2020
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Marion,IA
I recently completed a job involving Derecho (August) clean up in Iowa on a large acreage with lots of timber. Part of this project involved the removal of 10-12 large black oak trees that sustained too much canopy damage. We were able to salvage quite a few logs. We have a ball park 4000 board foot. 3000 of which seems to be perfect or near perfect. . . Stock straight, no branches, no marking/rot/ other imperfections. I don't know if black oak gets used as veneer. . . But some them have to be veneer quality. . . Or darn close. Certainly some cabinet grade wood. There were forest trees. I've tried to arrange a sale to a mill for the homeowner as a courtesy. A local mill offered him less than $500 (they haul). I understand he isn't going to make a killing but I feel like he's being taken advantage of at that price.

Any input on a fair market value would be appreciated.
 
Beings how IA just had a freak storm, there is likely a considerable amount of timber on the ground, so therefore whatever mills there are in IA are going to be swamped in timber from folks just doing clean up.

Call around see if you can get a slightly better deal, but take what you can get.

Unless you want to pay trucking farther abroad, but even then markets are going to be what they are.


BTW I'm just surprised there even is a market for timber in IA, as all I remember is corn and snow, granted we didn't hang out long..
 
When oak was paying decent ( 1985 -2000) I got about $100 less per 1000 for black oak ( butts only, no second cuts) than red oak for rotary veneer. As Northman stated, a lot of available raw material , along with corona shutdowns of production has left a glut of logs on the market. That’s never good for raw material prices in any commodity. It’s not like you can delay the work. They won’t keep forever. Take what you can get . M2CTS.
 
When I was working out of the Fort Tejon Ranch about twenty years ago the manager got several logs and containers together. He arranged to ship them to Japan at $30,000 each. Of course he did the leg work and made several contacts to do it. I on the other hand was working in the US forest so when I asked about it the answer NO. Timber only goes out from private land. Thanks
 
The market for RO/ Black Oak is not very good right now, veneer market for them is almost non existent. 4000 bd ft is about a tractor trailer load, which doesn't give you much selling power to a mill that's handling millions of feet per year. Take what you can get for it, anything's better than nothing
 
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