Had a guy stop and start up a conversation this summer about a property of his that was scheduled for a watershed project next year and wanted to know if I was interested in the timber. Finally got over there this last weekend took a tour. 10 acres shaped like an arrow of mature trees. The arrow head will be completely dug out and the "shaft" will be dozed over. Everything will be piled up and burned. The timber is made up of hedge, locust not sure honey or black, and ash that seems to have minimal borer evidence. I can cut all i want for 10 dollars a tree. Can leave all the branches where they lay. My "plan" is to fell, limb and cut to 12' lengths as many as I can per day. Access on one side is farm ground, with a small creek through it. Other side is tall grass. Do the cutting for a few weekends then borrow a buddies skid steer with a grapple and load my dump trailer full. Haul them home about 8 miles, dump them and rinse and repeat until the dozers show up. The work is supposed to start in spring. Am i a chump for paying 10 bucks, or did i get a deal. He didn't have to let anyone cut. I asked why he stopped and offered it to me, he said his friends built my house years ago and he saw stacks firewood and a bigazz splitter and thought I could use the timber.
Heck of a deal in my eyes, if you’re going after the more sizable ones. A 2’ diameter tree will yield a cord+. $10 per cord is a steal!
Funny you mention that. Ive cutting at a buddies for a few months now here and there. Felling, limbing, bucking and loading all on site. He cleans up the brush. He has a lot of mulberry, silver maple and some American and Siberian elm. He's 40 miles away though. But, its his skid steer I am planning on using. So I feel obligated to finish his up, before I steal his skid steer.
Essentially you're paying stumpage rate for firewood. 10 a tree is kinda high. A lot of states have a summary type report on what price wood stumpage is being bought for. Firewood is about 25 bucks a cord around here. I'd negotiate per cord or by the trailer load.
Most people around me ask $40-50 a truck load. A 36" tree is going to be many truck loads. I'm not following the math on that.
Where you can pick and choose which trees you want to cut(leave the smaller ones) I'd do that deal in a heartbeat. I'd even try and get your buddy to delay the cutting on his land.
I've never really heard of paying per tree, but for quality species like locust and hedge that are that large, seems worth it to me. Especially since you have access to equipment for loading and a dump trailer.
Yes I would take it at 10 bucks a tree. No different then having to pay for a permit to cut in national forest. A little cheaper but still the same principle.
I guess it depends on how much access you have to other timber, how far ahead you are on firewood & what your time/ambition level is. I wouldn’t pay for that but I have been in your neck of the plains & trees aren’t that plentiful. It pains me to see trees shoved out, piled & burned but that’s just life. I had a fella wanting me to thin some of his timber but I had to haul out all the brush & clean-up. Only to find out he was wanting it cleaned up for easier access for a logger to come in. That was a big negatory on that sweet offer. I have an uncle that wants a bunch of Osage cleaned up below a couple of ponds, I get all the firewood & any posts that I get out of them. I still feel like I am getting short changed on the deal even with the post sales but I guess it depends on how many posts I get. It’s going to be a PIA with lots of limbing, skidding & swearing but the firewood won’t rot so there is that.
10$ is a bit high for stumpage rate here too, but I guess if you can pick & chose what you want & it makes the owner feel better about getting paid something for trees that are gonna be yard waste anyway you could do worse. You might ask him about stump height & point out that the excavator is gonna want the stumps about 4' tall. I would recommend not messing with the tops unless you have time. Cut them at the first Y & take the straight logs out first, the go back for tops as time permits. We spent 3 1/2 days clearing five acres of pasture & hauled out about 25 cord. Charged 5K because the people were friends & paid cash. I'm gonna go back in January & skid about 8-10 cord of good Ash out because it's easy pickins.
Time is the biggest shortage of all. I think I'm 3 to 4 years ahead on my stacks. Figured would try and sell some of this in a year or 2. Definitely hate to see it all dozed over.
Thats a good point on stump height. He said on the main bowl part to leave 18". The rest 4' for fish cover.
I’d do it at $10 a tree if I could pick and choose which ones I wanted, starting with the locust and hedges because I don’t have access to those. But a 4ft stump is leaving a lot of the best stuff behind. It sounds like he really doesn’t want it all the go to waste but still wants to get some money from it. I would be inclined to try a negotiate the price down to $7-8 per tree because of all the good stuff you have to leave behind, but sounds good enough that I wouldn’t want to lose out on it. I didn’t realize hedge got that big, I thought it was all always fence posts size 8 inches being a pretty good sized one
