There's a forester who may help me manage a logging contract on my property. While he has been a forester for many years, he is new to doing private contracts, and he is open about it. He's estimated that keeping in accordance with my forestry plan, I could get about $12k on a logging contract, and his fee would be about $4k, which would net me $8k. In his draft, he hasn't listed this as a percentage of timber sales, just a flat fee. Is 1/3 of the timber sales a good number for a forester fee? Also, should I insist that his fee be a percentage of the sale and be contingent on completion of the sale? I do not possess the means to pay him outside of the sale amount.
entirely depends on what needs done to accomplish said sale. If dude is just advertising the job and working up the permits... Its not worth paying them.
However, if they plan on marking boundary's, marking timber, tracking whats been cut and where it was sent, and basically riding heard on the logger contracted to do the job, then yeah, they should get paid something, especially if it involves surveying property lines.
Each state is different, so the permit process alone could be worth a good part of his fee, here a DNR permit is like $100 for acreage under 20 acres with no wetlands, if you go through the local county for an LDA type permit, it could be thousands of $$ (because the county has it head firmly planted up its own ass).
All that said, permits are fairly easy (as long as your local county has a better then 4th grade reading level) And its completely possible to find a logger that will do most of the planning with you, just have to find one that cares about the forests needs, not necessarily all about the money. They are out there...
Biggest thing I can say regardless of how you go about it, get a copy of each load ticket, then keep track of said tickets, its the easiest way to steal wood, this is where a forester would earn their money, however it means they have to be on sight every day. Granted, it is a PITA when LO's start demanding where the wood went, but as long as the load tickets are accounted for, you shouldn't need to worry (though a log truck can put a lot more wood on then most folks realize... so just cause that huge pile disappeared in 4 hours, doesn't mean any wood is missing)
Ironically I've been accused of stealing multiple loads in the past (before I owned a log truck...) and its comes down to the LO being a little too paranoid... and not paying attention to just how much went on each truck.
