So I had a customer that wanted 69 cord of tree length firewood this winter. He was only 7 miles away and so I gave him a pretty good deal on the wood, but honestly should have charged more. In the end I think I would have made more money selling it to the paper mill, but that is the way things goes sometimes. Now he is thinking he wants 11 cord more to make it an even 80 cord. Okay, but it is mud season. I tell him he really wants 8 foot wood, since I can put it on my log trailer and get it out of the woods with my bulldozer. It will cost about $20 more per cord, but it is clean since it never touches the ground on the way out. The guy is not so sure; $10 more over 11 cord is $110 extra dollars. I tell him, "if you saw what the wood looked like going to the paper mill this week, he would reconsider." I'll have to get a photo of that pile of wood. The mud is up to the tops of the rims on the skidder now and the wood is covered with mud from the butt of them to the very tip. I don't even want to top them off with my chainsaw, and that is one cut, much less cut every 16". Aprils is NOT the time to be ordering firewood.
Supply and Demand---if the guy's going to demand when the product is in low supply then the price rises accordingly ---you make enough to make it worth your while to "mud" and he may come to realize waiting is the key...
Yeah most logging operations are shut down right now, and I should be. My truck driver; he does not care about posted roads, or should I say, he does not mind getting up at 2 AM when everyone is asleep. I really don't care either. I can see when the frost is starting to come out of the ground running the roads with loaded logging trucks might bust them up a bit, but we never had frost all winter here so now it is just a political thing. By law they are pulled on May 1st anyway and already some truckers are starting to get back to work. In the woods it is not too bad, and across some hay ground, but my wood yard is in a plowed up corn field and that is where the mud is DEEP! It is all I can do to go back up the hill empty wallowing through it. The woods itself...I really don't care about ruts because it is being clear cut so that it can be a field, so it will be smoothed up after all the stumps are pulled and pushed out of the way. With no frost this winter though, rutting has actually not been that bad. I have enough slash and tops to ride up on anyway. If it gets real bad I can always use my bulldozer to log. They can float on water practically, and with my log loader, really keep the wood clean. Like you said, supply and demand.
