As long as your making money and comfortable with it, but by the time you pay yourself and insurance doesn't seem like much left.
I think there is a difference is justifying a cost and sticker shock too. I had no idea what these trailers are worth, or what they were selling for. I was expecting a little less myself ($12,000) instead of $16,000. The full price of $18,000 is misleading too because that is "out the door pricing" with taxes and the powerpack included. It also includes the dump body, and backhoe attachment which is an argument unto its own. Before I bought this trailer I did not have a backhoe for my tractor and now I do. Its $5,000 just to buy a backhoe for a Kubota Tractor, not to mention the ability to mount a pole hole auger which is a few hundred dollars itself. But then there are the other things I can do with it that I could not before. Last year I struggled to put up some roof rafters on my barn but that won't be an issue now. So are lifting some of the components on my bulldozer, but that too won't be an issue now. I also plan to place an upside down woodsplitter on it so I can split my wood and save a lot of steps in the firewood making process. I also want to build a boom mounted mower to get over he fence lines. I guess what I am saying is, versatility has its value too. I justified the cost via logging, but in many other ways it is worth having.
Insurance is $106 per year for the trailer (none if I did not want to take it over the road) and I pay myself via the wood I sell. When I worked at the shipyard as a welder I made $31 an hour yet only brought home $225 a day. I am making more then that now even cutting pulpwood ($380), and that is only when I work and I only work a few days a week. Depends how I feel. I think you are looking at this all wrong though because you are not seeing what the alternative for large landowners is, and that is to have someone else cut their wood for them. Oh I have done that a few times, but it has never ended well, mostly because I cut too much wood and like things a certain way. That is a discussion unto its own, but its the utter loss of money I cannot get past. If I had another logger come in and clear my woods...and it is tempting, clearing hundreds of acres is a daunting task, BUT I am 42...I am in no hurry....that logger would take 2/3 of what my forest produced in pulp and 50% of what my forest produced in logs. That means for every cord produced of hardwood, I would be letting that guy keep $52 of it, yet only retaining $28 for myself. For Spruce Logs, I would be giving away $182 per thousand, or in cord wood terms, $91 per cord. It is true that I do not need my Wallenstein Log Trailer to get wood out, my dozer and tractor can do it tree length, BUT because it cannot get the logs up off the ground I was snapping $35 chokers all the time. I mean all the time. One twitch alone I broke 3 of them. When those big trees hit a stump, rock, or root, that dozer just does not spin or stall; it snaps the choker. That is hard on everything, including expensive final drives. It also produced a lot of drag and I could not pull nearly as much. I have cut my trips to the yard in half with the Wallenstein and will reduce trips even more when I get some higher stakes on it. (The trailer is only hauling 1/2 a cord and is rated for a cord). It really will add years of life to my bulldozer. But don't think I don't understand what you are saying, $18,000 for a trailer is a lot of money. Even now I just don't see why they should cost that much. The log loader at $9,000...yes; it has a lot of moving parts, hydraulic cylinders, and specialty items for sure, but $6000 for the log trailer alone? It seems high to me. And while I would NEVER recommend anyone order this without the powerpack, at $1600 it too is overpriced. yes comes in one convenient package, but overpriced nonetheless. But overpriced (everything is these days) and being justified is two different things.
The trailer and loader does not seem expensive to me. So your just cutting your own land? I assumes you were paYing for wood. Like as a logger, paying a landowner and then having to pay bills off the rest. That would take some money off the top if you were paying for wood. And if your doing your own that would mean you don't have to have liability insurance for logging insurance which is a huge cost. How do you deliver logs? Dump truck or log trailer....that trailer go behind a truck too? I would think the trucking insurance would be more than $100/ month?
Right now I am clearing my own land, but I have cut wood for other people too. There is no liability insurance in Maine required for being a logger, but I am not sure about other states. As for moving wood, that is the great thing about the Wallenstein, if you need to haul wood to a buddies house, you just hook it behind your truck and go, and with the powerpack (small engine driving a hydraulic pump) the grapple works no matter what is towing it. Truck, tractor, bulldozer, car...that is what the insurance is for. Even then I thought it was kind of high, but I am not sure how they base the rate. As for trucking into paper mills, that is all contracted out. They have to have a certain amount of wood to produce the paper for their orders, and as such they need a steady supply. They give contracts out to various companies like ED Bessey, Prentice-Carlisle, Irving and Plum Creek to ensure they have their wood, which they in turn give contracts out to small truckers, who in turn use guys like me to fill their quotas per month. Some months we can cut as much wood as we want, other time (like now) its very tight and you might sit on loads for a few weeks before they move. All the prices I indicated however were "roadside", which is wood harvested from the stump hauled to a place where a large truck can pick it up and haul it off. Mine typically goes on tri-axle trucks, (10 cords) but sometimes on tri-axle trailers too (18 cords). Sometime I'll have to explain in a post how all this works, its pretty neat, a system that has been in place for generations and really has worked well. My family has been here officially since 1746, but honestly well before that, though it was not until the year 1800 that we started clearing land for agriculture. We have tried ever since then, but have never been able to fully clear the woods off. It grows faster than we can cut it.
My family has been in SC in this area the same amount of time. The reason I ask and am interested is that I am a Forester. I watched American loggers and was fascinated with the system up there. What you describe is similar but totally different than our system. Our loggers have trucks usually, and small independent loggers maintain quotas here as do wood buyers, but neither are on the scale of the Plum Creeks, who we have down here as well.
American Loggers moves 5000 cord a week...and that is written correctly. Sadly Maine is surrounded by Canada and thus their subsidized economy. Maine just cannot compete even though we are putting up new tariffs weekly. Still American Loggers do not haul wood into Maine, they haul wood out. Canadian trucks on the other hand, haul chips down (low grade) and veneer and sawlogs back (prime wood). Everyday a train comes into Maine from New Brunswick with low grade hardwood pulp...some 100 cars...every day. And the port of Portsmouth NH gets ships from Sweden and Norway hauling in their low grade chips as well. When we try and sell our wood back to them, they claim it is full of disease like that hemlock fungus (I forget the name), Japanese Bark beetle and others. No matter what we do to appease them, they say no, yet they flood our market. I believe it has to do with us paying off our national debt to them, but am not sure. As for Plum Creek...personally they help me, and they kill me. I say that because the biggest paper mill my wood goes to, has a huge contract with them. They must buy X-amount of wood off them per week or else...and by else I mean they run to the courts to enforce it. In the meantime they are supposed to be buying wood off farms like mine, part of the American Tree Farm System and the Forest Stewardship Council, but they can't because they are already being force-fed wood from Plum Creek. But Plum Creek's pay is based on average prices paid for wood. Since wood hauled in from New Hampshire (NH) and Vermont (VT) is more expensive to get there in mid-Maine, they pay more per cord. Wood off me, right next door, is cheap to haul there, so my pay per cord is less. Years ago everything was on a quota, taking equal amounts of wood from NH, VT and close by the mill. Not any more. To get the price down for Plum Creek's wood, they no longer buy wood from NH or VT, and it is KILLING them. A drive to our other house in NH (Katie and I have 3 houses) will have 10-15 logging operations...feller-bunchers, skidders, chippers all for sale. It is bad here, but not nearly as bad as those guys have it because they have very few places to sell low grade wood like pulpwood. The mill by me...as long as they are not flooded, they buy all they can from my area because it lowers the price of the wood they must pay to Plum Creek. So it is a two edged sword, because of Plum Creek, our quotas are a lot higher, but they might buy even more if Plum Creek was not force-feeding them wood they don't want. So how bad is it in Maine? Pretty bad. Some landowners now are getting paid $5 per cord for softwood pulp. Most loggers I know are leaving softwood pulp right in the woods to rot, it actually costs more to pull it out then it pays. Some of the mills are up for sale, but most are being scrapped. What few are in existence, but shut down, are not wanted. Most are softwood mills that made brown paper primarily; newsprint and that sort of paper which there is little demand for. Other mills in other states that are running have no interest in buying a mill that will compete against a mill that has lower operating costs...so these mills never reopen and eventually get torn down too. (Right now Maine has 6 running out of 25 or so a few years ago). The state stepped in and are giving subsidies to biomass places so dirty chips have a place to go, but they messed up; they gave it to the biomass plants already running and not the ones idled. In that way they never increased demand, they just are keeping the biomass plants operating. (Biomass=chips burned to make steam for conversion into electricity). That is a big deal because sawmills operate on very fragile margins. They actually make more profit on their "waste". A White Pine Sawmill by me that saws 130,000 bf per day makes more money selling the power produced from their sawdust and bark, then they do in wood products. They do sell bark mulch and sawdust to farmers and pellet makers though. So without biomass plants to burn their excess waste products, they are kind of screwed and in danger of going out of business as well. And adding to all that is, that we are where paper making started. Paper from wood pulp was invented in NH and therefore these mills are OLD! They are also right on the rivers making them ideal targets for the DEP, EPA and now (thanks to the Supreme Court) the Army Corp of Engineers. Today consumers want "green" paper that is environmentally friendly and these mills are relics. Its hard to upgrade them and so they don't get the sustainability stamp and have a hard time competing against newer, more modern paper mills. But who would ever build a new mill in Maine with our crazy environmental regulations? I am not even sure it could be done. But I hear the midwest and out west people gloating about how great things are right now, and I am glad of that, but as I said, paper making started here and it moved west, and as their mills age, they will face they same issues we have and soon the paper products we need won't be coming from America, but the Congo where Eucalyptus Trees grow to 60 feet high, are pure white and need no bleaching, and grow to full size in 15 years time. How can we compete with that? I don't think we can, and that is why my wood sits sometimes for weeks waiting for a mill to take it. But sheep, with the Muslim Population growing in Maine, and their diet having a lot of lamb in it; I can make a call today and sell every sheep I have, lamb or mutton. The market is good. So for the first time in our history we have a woodlot that is practically worthless, and sheep that have a lot of value. My father doesn't see all this and thinks I am "cutting too hard", but the thing is, I can't cut it hard enough; fast enough. It is worth a lot more to me as green grass as fodder for my sheep. I am not proud of it, but that is the direction this farm is going. Farming first, Logging second...I am not proud of it, but we are not in 1965 anymore...
So I shouldn't me ton I just had a sale that finished up a few months ago that was having pine pulpwood hauled at $48 a cord on the stump that's what I was paid. One side of the state I get that price the other I get a 1/3 of that. Our mills are old too. And not many paper mills and there huge holes in the coverage areas. Since the BCAP subsidies or whatever they were on dirty chips expired that market had stagnated. It still exists but nothing like it once was. Our mills make power as well and buy and use fuel wood or dirty chips.
I'm getting tired. I was done by noon 85°f is too hot for cutting and stacking. Oh I posted this in loaded trucks too.
This recent biomass subsidy was a State Sponsored thing, but I am not a big fan of them. It helps in the short term but only makes the crash that much harder when it inevitably falls. I don't see much on the horizon for biomass either...in this state anyway. I am not trying to drag anyone into the dumps here, I am normally chipper and upbeat on most things, but we just paid a kazillion dollars to stretch high voltage cables from that Nuclear Power Plant in New Brunswick to Hartford, Providence, Boston and New York City. And because we have that house in NH, I know up there they are bringing down high voltage wires from Quebec where they are building a massive dam to these same cities. Biomass might be on the New England Power Grid, but honestly what is a 2-3 KW plant going to do against a nuclear power plant or massive dam? Pretty hard to compete especially after being given free money for 4 years. It is interesting to note that our local high school that pools some 1200 kids from 11 towns into one, put in a clean chip boiler to heat their massive complex, including sidewalks. It reduced the schools heat budget by half, BUT because of all the smart boards (instead of chalkboards) their electrical rate doubled in cost. You just can't win!
Yeah it is really sad. The one thing I did not mention that this all happened really fast. I would say 8 paper mills shut down in the last 18 months alone, 3 in one single week. They employ about 400-650 people so it devastated the communities where they were.
SC is the nation's largest exporter of pellets to europe. Or at least I have been told and read. Things change fast in this industry though. And those are made from lots of waste from mills and such anyway as well as clean and dirty chips.
The pellet industry really duped us here. They made claims on how many jobs they were going to generate and had the State pay for their construction, really basing their job numbers off of how they would be employing loggers, truckers, etc to get their raw materials, then after getting up and running, bought their sawdust from the sawmills instead. This not only reduced their employments numbers to less that 1/4 of what they predicted, it raised the prices of sawdust for the farmers by 4 fold! It is such a financial burden for some dairy farmers that they have converted over to dehydrators, dehydrating their manure and using that for bedding.
Me and Katie (and our daughters) are fine financially, but we have recognized that we could do far better if everything we did was not based on Wholesale Prices. Whether it is income from the woodlot, our sheep, our gravel pit, or our quarry, we are the first on the chain selling our natural resources. This means we pay retail prices to extract it and get paid wholesale prices when we sell it...that is an inverted business strategy. But how do you convert to retail business when your area is so financially strapped? It is so bad here now that the USDA has the schools open year around so that every kid and adult can eat a school lunch free. You simply go down to the local school or community center between Monday-Friday and have a meal, no questions asked. So how can you try and glean more money from your resources when your neighbors cannot afford to even eat? And this State is not making it easier. Most towns now just passed laws accepting the National Building Code so for those of us with sawmills, we can no longer used rough lumber (lumber harvested off our own land) because it lacks the grading stamp required. That means buying lumber. Not only does it limit the buildings we can build because the expense of purchased lumber is 3 times higher then our own rough lumber, it means the poor guy with a portable sawmill does not have as many customers, or landowners like me cannot sell their rough lumber for retail prices. I can't even sell it if it was sided on 4 sides...it lacks the structural testing stamp and it would be cost prohibitive to get the certification to do that. Again I am normally chipper, but this is reality where I live. I hope it is not this bad in other areas, and if it is not, to encourage others to be diligent when they see this nonsense approach their own communities and rally against it. Even in another State, New Hampshire where we have another home, we see this sort of encroachment of flawed bureaucracy and that is the "Live Free of Die" state as their motto goes.
Yea from what I have gathered Maine has bad areas. So does the south. The deep south, appalachia, parts of Michigan some of the PNW. All where an industry use to dominate that production or methods have shifted elsewhere and left a population in an area with nothing to do. The unacceptable use of rough cut lumber is a crying shame!!! How do they think buildings were built for hundreds of years here? How many of those structures are still standing up there in the north east. How many of these dumpy houses built today blow over in a 60 mph wind!!
Yall need to figure out how to set up an Internet business to capture the city folks and those with more income that like crafts and organic meats and small town products. Figure a way to ship reliably meat. May freeze it and overnight it? Or 2 day it in a cooler? Make jerky and sell that. If yall are into candles or bee products make and sell those. I'm sure yall could get creative. This will net you most sales of specialty higher priced items.
Not to blame our Land Grant University, but I honestly don't think they are helping. Every year for years they ask for a bond issue, and for 42 years now, Mainer's have never said no to one yet. That means by population we pay the highest taxes in the country! But the University of Maine, while getting Mainer's to pay for research on forest products, never looked into what they could do for existing paper products. Instead they were going for the "cool" stuff like making ethanol from wood, making plastics from wood, and that sort of stuff. Their claim was, "give us money and we will keep Maine kids in Maine with great jobs". Instead they drove up our taxes and the kids left for high paying jobs out of state. In the mean time their researching ideas never came to fruition because few places want to build factories based on unproven techniques and methodology. And certainly nothing where 600 people or more are employed in doing so. I emailed the University of Maine Forestry Dept (they have a huge forestry program) asking for some helping getting more production out of my Wallenstein and to see what their experience with small grapple log trailers was, and they were like "we can't help you." I was shocked, 100 million dollars from Maine tax payers per year and you have NOTHING to offer? I thought that was what Land Grant Universities were for? As for the rough lumber, it is a crying shame, but so far their only answer has been is to test hackmatack as a possible stud. The Northeast Lumber Manufacturers Association which is the certifying body for approved lumber has not tested lumber in over 100 years and then only did Spruce, Fir, and Pine. That is why you only see those species of wood for sale as studs here. I have no issue with putting hackmatack upon the list, but I am a huge fan of hemlock. That being said, testing for even 2 more species of wood is not going to change the silliness of not being able to build with rough lumber. I built a 30 x 50 barn last year with it with rough sawn hemlock and am not too concerned about it falling down. And I am pretty sure my sheep that make it home could care less about if the wood is dressed and has a stamp on it or not. They look pretty contented to me.
I think the argument with hemlock is that it can be brashy or tends to randomly break. So I was taught in school. But I'm sure sawn a half inch or more thicker on a board makes that a non issue as most post and beam construction is over built and many studded structure are over built anyway as well. Oh and the hemlock "fungus" or whatever you refer too is the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid , at least that's what we have here in the south and Appalachians that's devestat8ng our hemlock and ruining the trout streams.
