How far to travel for wood until it's no longer worth it?

There are 2 girls my wife works with, they drive 1/2 hour each way to our house to pick up free wood. We cut it to length, they load and split when they get home. I do not burn wood so all the trees that come down I cut and stack then give it away.

have about 10 that are standing dead I need to work on.

 

Back when my honey and I first got married, we used to pull a 5'x11' tandem axle trailer of firewood back home (100 miles) from our old farm, where my folks lived. It was about a cord each trip.

 

22.5 miles on the way there, traveling on 2 lane hi-way, the ride home is all county roads, about 50-60 minutes ( nice and slow), with the Great White Hope loaded to the bump stops, nothing but hardwoods.!
Gotta' 15 acre woodlot just a few hundred yards down the street, all hardwoods but have to cross the guys yard so conditions have to be dry or very frozen to access.
I've been fortunate in that for most of 18-20 years I've had to drive less than 20 miles to score good hardwoods with most of it being flat, level ground.

 

It's only a few miles, even for the beech. I'd do it for sure. Even if your truck only got 10 mpg, that's 4 gallons of fuel. You could probably load more than a third of a cord, too. I would go get the higher BTU wood.

 

saskwoodburner I drove about 50 minutes for this load of birch. It was green and recently dropped by power line work crews. (we cant drop live trees here). Our birch here is 20 mbtus and I dont have much close by but I have lots of larch which is 19.5 mbtus within several minutes drive so Im real spoiled. Sometimes its worth it to go that extra mile for fun, adventure or gain. Ive gone up to the sub alpine to harvest sub alpine fir just because I like the high country. You will love the difference in the burn between poplar and birch! I threw the stop sign in just for fun!

 

How is birch for splitting in warm weather? Nice load btw

 

How far to go has a lot to do with what it costs you. If you are going 50 miles for some other reason, what does it really cost to bring along a trailer? For me the question boils down to what does it cost to drive my S-10 vs. what it costs to drive my Civic to the same place. One of my woodlots, the one with lots of 25 year old ash on it, is about 6 miles from my home so I go there with that S-10 rather than spend all of my time searching for closer scrounges. I also have the option of taking dead and down hardwoods within a few hundred yards of where it will be burned, but I hate to see all of that ash go to waste. Most of that dead and down is off the ground so it can afford to wait. At 25 MPG it just doesn't cost that much to bring home lots of that ash.

 

Geeze! Just when does season close for stop signs?

 

Thanks. That stuff was heavy! Im with Backwoods Savage on the splitting but with my back I just use my splitter. I find it has a few more strands that need to be whacked with the fiskars hatchet from time to time once it goes through the splitter but thats comparing it to pine or larch which normally just "pops". That load was early November 2014 and is making its way through the stove this season. It was split and stacked on pallets and top covered the very next day.

 

If you don't already have one, pick up a tailgate extender for the truck. I have a Frontier with the short box, and that extra 18" of bed length makes a big difference. It's probably closer to another 2' of length on a full sized truck.

 

I havent seen these before. I just googled it, looks interesting. Do you find they can hold the weight? I buck everything to 18 inches and as you can see from my picture above I can get three rows of 18s and then I find the last one is around 14 inches (in those pics I ran out of wood so I couldnt quite fill it up). It would be nice to get a 4th row of 18s in there.

 

I laughed to myself at first about the back row. There's been a time or two I didn't run out of wood, but ran out of steam and the truck box looked like that.

 

Yeah I hear yu. I do 80% of the processing by myself and find the same thing. Ive often thought it would be nice to load up a trailer in addition to the box but by the time my truck is loaded up Im spent. With the birch I had to do a toss or two of each round before it was out of the trees and then I had to carry it a bit. By the time I was finished my body was spent to the point I was dragging my feet. The box extender would be nice though for trips like youre contemplating or for the days I have extra energy. Let us know how you make out!

 

You'll have to look up the specs on your tailgate load rating. On my Frontier the rating is 200 lbs, but I've driven to Florida from Cincinnati with at least 350 lbs resting on the tailgate carrying 2 motorcycles. I regularly load firewood up on it as high as the rest of the bed also and haven't had any issues. My next truck will probably be a crew cab F150 with the short bed, and I'm sure my first purchase for it will be another bed extender. It's really useful when buying lumber in longer lengths too.

 

saskwoodburner and Sean I'm glad you guys feel the same after loading a truck bed full. My trailer is 4x8, and by the time I get one load filled with heavy hardwoods, a heavy half cord, I'm bushed.

I've tried to do two loads in a day by myself, and I can't do it.

The best I can do is get a load of rounds out of the woods, unload it, then split a load and get that home.

 

Flat level ground in East Central Indiana? You don't say! LOL. Obviously I'm kidding. We've got LOTS of relatively flat countryside around here. Not Kansas flat, mind you, but no real hills. To the point where drainage was one of the only major obstacles to settling this area.
That helps a lot for me, as I routinely drive 34 miles one way for wood. The property is Pop's, and I'm going to visit my dad anyway, so it's not really an extra cost for me.
I usually load up the s10 shortbed, which is about a third of a cord heaped up and stacked, and the lawnmower trailer, which is right about a cord if it's really packed. If I have both of them maxed out I'll take back roads home so as not to be a hazard on the highway. The little truck has the payload and towing packages, so that helps.

 

Sounds like you sure know how to get a nice load home! I used a 1994 s-15 and trailer for several years for firewood, a 5' x 8' "rick" on that truck was all it wanted!! My trailer was a small home built atv trailer and with both loaded up it had my headlights pointed toward the sky!!
Not long ago I had a call from the Winchester area about doing MRI at your local hospital,,,I get to thinking about another street bike at this time of the year and wonder if they could find me any hours on their timeclock!! You guys are a little over an hour from me.

 

My absolute max is 40 miles, and that is with a 20 ft trailer behind me also. I only go that far for premium wood, say a hard maple, hickory or oak. I suggest setting up a feed on craigslist so you can be first in line for things close to home.....

 

Since where I live there are no trees I travel to the mountains for lodge pole pine on National forest land. I will get about a cord in one trip. That would be 200 miles round trip.
I use my diesel truck and small utility trailer which is not to bad on fuel, but it is still way cheaper than what it would cost me for propane each month if I did not burn at all. Plus I like going up into the mountains and getting out. It is a form of recreation for me and since I am retired it also gives me some good exercise. I will say though at age 65 1 cord is about all I can handle with felling, limbing, bucking, and loading up the logs. My wife will come along and help with clearing up the branches and getting them out of the way.

It really is not about getting the wood it is the whole experience of using the saws and falling the trees coming up with innovated ways of dragging and loading. I am constantly thinking of new ways to make it a little quicker and easier. It is a hobby in a lot of ways and how do you put a price on that. Happy cutting guys and any wood that is free is also free BTU's.