Firewood Craigslist Alerts

At the request of many of you fine folks and to anyone else who this may help out here are some directions on how to setup an email alert from Craigslist. In order to do the below you will need to create a craigslist account. If you need help doing that just shoot me a PM or reply to this post.

If there are any mistakes or corrections feel free to let me know so I can update the below and not have people pulling their hair out .Hope this helps many of you to keep hoarding on

1. Go to www.craigslist.org
2. Select your state and local area
3. In the search area on the upper left area type in Free Firewood & click enter*
4. To narrow things down, on the left hand side check the box "has image" & "search titles only"**
5. Where is says "miles from zip" enter your zip code and how far you are willing to drive to grab the wood
6. Click the button "Update Search", this will narrow your search down
7. Towards the top right side click on "Save Search" it will ask you to log into your account, do so!
8. On the far left check the box next to "off", this will turn the alerts on
9. Initially craigslist will do an immediate search and email you hits. Afterwards it will begin emailing on new posts as they become available.

*I actually create two searches/alerts. One that searches for Free Firewood and another that does Free Fire Wood. I've found so many folks spell it as Fire Wood (at least down here).

** I check off the box "search title only" or often times you will get unrelated hits.

 

Good info there ReelFaster


Thanks a bunch.

Used the Gmail app on phone, as I don't use that acct for anything anyway.
LOL

 

Besides the two you mentioned I’ll search for free wood, free logs even free tree has given me different hits.
It seems eventually these different searches will make their way into free firewood but not too quickly and you may miss out.

 

BTW Facebook marketplace has the same feature. No email that I’m aware of but you’ll see the notification of new search results on your FB page. I have found it more populated with wood than Craigslist. YMMV.

Also a small sense of security as you can check out the persons profile although I don’t think scammers have really hit the free wood market yet

 

There's never free hardwood on the curb here like I've seen on c-list there.

 

I turned the alerts off for Craigslist because I kept getting too many unrelated posts, about 1 in 10 would actually be free wood or free firewood. The rest were firewood that in fact was not free! And those guys post their ads daily.

But yes, key words....free wood, free firewood, free fire wood, free logs, free (insert wood species) occasionally.

 

Craigslist is hit and miss around here. I usually have better luck just following the sound of chainsaws in the summer
And you can always go wood fishun ® at the dump.

 

I use to get the same thing which is why I suggest searching "Title only". If you don't check that box you will get hits for any of your keywords in the body of the listing. For example if someone is selling a "Wood" dresser you will get an alert. Or if someone is listing something "Free" you will get an alert!

Not many people burn wood in my area, few that I know do and a few houses in my area I've noticed have an external stainless steel chimney so I know they are burning but it's few far and in between. Most families are all about conveniences around here, too much work to burn wood. With that said, we have many many trees in our neighborhoods, big oaks, they go down all the time either from storms or people just want to get rid of them due to fear they will fall onto their homes. I constantly see wood laying around curbside and I get many alerts about free firewood. Also many tree guys use it to get rid of wood as well! Nobody wants it around here!

 

I can't remember if I did title only, but one problem is a lot of the sellers around here will say something like FIREWOOD FREE DELIVERY or whatever and those are the ones I'd be getting numerous emails about daily. Now I just kind of frantically check Craigslist about 10 times a day for free wood, even though I don't need it.....Guess it's kinda one of those smartphone/internet addictions??

 

Definitely check off the box title only that will down a lot false alerts. Also if you put in the search "Free Firewood" with the quotes around it will cut it down as well. It's not perfect by no means but with some of these tips I usually only get true hits

 

These alerts work pretty good. I had this setup about 5 years ago and scored a bunch of free firewood.