Just speaking for myself, but those that have seasoned firewood going into late Winter have the market all to themselves. Below freezing days in Nashville put folks into a firewood panic. Spent most of Friday top covering about 20 ricks to keep it dry for deliveries this coming week.
I wouldn’t change anything sell when you can we all know how the seasons are unpredictable If anything increase inventory
Yes we had an unusually cold for extended periods winter. I will have an established repeat customer base going forward. Advertising before a polar vortex created more customers than I could deliver to and made it challenging to schedule repeat customer orders. For the most part every weekend is spent delivering unless it’s raining. I had a dollar amount I wanted to achieve and realized the time investment was more than I bargained for. At 56 I’m not wanting to ramp up production and invest more time, in addition to working full time. I’m thinking being wiser and more efficient is the ticket to squeezing more from a premium product. Supply the established loyal customer with a consistent top shelf product is the direction I’m going. Next winter will be back to normal and I’ll return to thinking I’m never going to sell all this wood.
We were down on some of our sales, still had some loyal customers to deliver for. That's OK, giving us time to build us a hoard of premium wood for later years...
Take care of yourself. I've pulled that before and ended up sicker for longer. Sometimes our bodies just need a day rest.
Advertising before the polar vortex, you must have been slammed with prospective customers. We are the same age and efficiency is certainly high in my mind. My neighbor came over and asked why I don't split my wood with the maul. I'll do that for a workout occasionally but I need to get the wood split and stacked as quickly and easily as I can so I can tackle the other 376 projects on my list. Kept that to myself though. I think you are on the right track- go premium, charge more and keep the best customers.
I delivered to a customer today that had obviously been cheating on me with a cheaper green wood whore. I backed up the driveway and noticed a kindling splitting tool in my way along with a pile of bark. I looked at his rack and saw about 20 long splits left. 20-22” splits. I figured he had been breaking them down to get them to burn. My splits are 18” Ha, he had to call me back to get more good stuff.
I have 2 today and feel the same. My son got me an electric grease gun for Xmas and I have not had time to take it out of the packaging and use it.
