I'm looking at maybe getting into selling firewood, and i want to know if it is worth the time and investment to do, i have the equipment and I'm thinking it would be something like i cut and split then bundle and sell at the local farmers market or something like that. Any ideas help!
I’ll tell you that if I was selling firewood, cut and split and you pick up, it’d be $500 a cord. I like doing it, but not at a pace to make a buck.
ok hmmm on a good note we have lots of people near me with downed trees already cut up as well maybe i should see if i can get it off their hands? once i make some money i would get a splitter and probably the rural king 1.5 ton dump trailer to go behind our tractor
Since you have the equipment, you can try it without an investment. Worse case scenario, if it doesn’t sell, burn it. In my area, wood brings much higher prices in town. If you live near a bigger town. If you only make enough to buy more firewood toys, that’s ok too.
hey being able to buy more t̶o̶y̶s̶ tools is always the way to go ok and being able to buy food but uhhh t̶o̶y̶s̶ uhh tools are best amiright
As I age the wood harvest gets smaller. So we find a decent firewood seller to fill in our cordwood needs. Use about 6-8 cords/year depending on weather for 99%, 24/7 heating in 2 stoves. 2 CSD cords last year, maybe 4 cords this spring. The seller charges $259/cord CSD, and he gives me the good hardwood ( beech, rock maple, yellow birch ) we want. Our woodloy is mostly Red/Soft Maple, Paper Birch, little White Ash. The firewood biz is high labor, low margins if not part of another job like land clearing or logging. Anyone harvesting AND processing their own firewood understands the effort and time and skill.
seems to me it will absolutely work great or fail miserably lol sounds fun! once i get a drivers licence i would be able to deliver but till then pick up only
if it didnt i wouldn't have said it lol ... come to think of it tho i say alot of stuff that doesn't make sense
Highest price per cord will be selling bundles. Now whether you could sell enough at a farmers market is a question I'm pondering myself. A farmers market will depend on time of year and type of nieghborhood. My thought is a affluent suburban area around a holiday like Memorial or July 4th would be best. But that's just speculation from someone thinking about doing the same thing. I was also looking at bags instead of twine or shrink wrap. Mainly because it seems like it would be nicer for customers. Contain most of the debris in the bag not in back of their fancy SUV
I lived near a lake with an RV park around the shore. Made quite a bit of beer money by throwing a mini load in the truck with the tail gate down and slow cruise through the park Friday and Saturday evenings. 50 cents a stick back then. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Like much of agriculture-related/natural resource things, it is fundamentally a material handling business. The money is usually from low-cost efficient handling of high volumes. With the cost of entry low, you often find yourself competing against those who don’t know their full cost of doing business.
Question = how to make a small fortune selling firewood? answer = start with a large one.! Just joking..... but as efficiently as I operate I’d be lucky to clear $0.25 an hour after expenses.
https://www.kiln-direct.com/download/130/index.html This article is pretty interesting, despite primarily being about kilns. Table 6 has some good numbers to start with, and adjust for your circumstances. For the record, my cost to cut and split a cord is higher than $35.
So what I've gathered from this is. Try it (basically free for me) and if it don't work stop doing it on a good note there are. Many many houses here that burn wood so all I really need to do is get some signs
Bags and bundles selling retail works well....I would not wholesale. Weekends driving thru state Parks and RV Parks that do not sell firewood on site would be your best bet as they captive audiences that have an immediate need for firewood in small quantities while the farmers market customer may not. We are gearing up for our busiest season for our 20+ state and municipal parks we will do about $80,000 gross in March and April but we sell 24/7 and unattended
