I just had my forester out here to write a new "managment plan" and I need to do some thinning, not a commercial harvest (yet). I was wondering about trying to sell small, 3 cord log length loads delivered. I'm thinking that there might be a lot of not so challenged folks (like us) that a normal 8-9 cord load is just to much wood at once for them. My concern is that I only have a dump truck and everyone is accustomed to log length being stacked off a log truck with the loader, not dumped, and I can imagine that not every load will come off very neatly. Would this bother you?
I've bought that way before, 4 ft lengths, was a 1 ton dump with sides, the guy was calling them 2+ cord loads, not sure about that but I didn't care because the price was right. The guy had some property that he was having harvested and they backed out on him with a bunch of trees on the ground. 4 ft lengths was all he could manage with the equipment he had and he wanted to get rid of the wood, that was his story anyway.
Brother had I ton dump took many load that way.. it is not as messy as you think it stays in pile sort of.. throw 2 smallest ones on top to run perpendicular to tire... . for small loads would be fine.. a simple pole will straighten out most..
If I made some "bunks", I could make 12long x 8wide x 4 high for 3 cord. I'm just thinking of the mess that can be made dumping a hack of "2x4's" off a truck. Of course this might be handy for the guy working up the wood with the ends off set. I'll have to try a load with just the sideboards, the steel for the "bunks" is a little too expensive for an experiment.
I've had several dumptruck loads of logs dropped off by a tree service, and I had no problem with how they landed. Certainly not a neat pile, but not all that messy either. It was easy to get in with a chainsaw and buck the logs down to size. For me, whether the loads were free or if I would have been charged, they were acceptable being dumped like that. The way I see it is, it's wood and I get to use my chainsaws and axes. What's not to like!
