So an acquaintance I know asks about logging last summer, and I told him what I get for a cord of wood and so decides to take me up on it. He has some friends that are "kind of on the poor side", so he'll give me the money up front because he doubts they will. I gave him a good price as I know the guy; not a great deal for me because I typically get $90 a cord for TREE LENGTH firewood at the landing, but what is a bit more cutting, and loading really? So today he comes over, and asks if he can get a cord of wood on his ton truck...he has carried 3,000 pounds with it before. I am like, "a cord of green hardwood mixed is 5200 pounds, you'll be lucky to get 3/4 of a cord on." He stopped me at 1/2 a cord because the springs were really sagging. "I'll be right back he says..." A half hour later he calls up and asks how much it will cost to have my trucker haul the rest of the firewood over to the people that need the wood, some 30 miles away. Already knowing they are on the poor side, I say "more than you can afford." I kind of say that because there is no way my trucker would even do it. It is mud season so the roads are posted which means midnight runs on these back roads, and it is not worth it for a half a load of firewood for someone even if they could pay extra for the police-dodging. And he surely isn't going to haul half a truckload of wood 30 miles even on unposted road...much less posted. It's not my acquaintances fault as he is not a logger and does not know such things, moving 5-1/2 cord of wood is an undertaking when there is 30 miles from Point A to Point B. I have even given firewood away and it ended up not being worth it to the recipient. By the time they try and pick up 1/4 of a cord with a pick up, they spend as much on gas as they could buying wood delivered! A guy I gave wood too once even tried to borrow the company's 1 ton truck and its gasaholic motor only made it worse. Buying firewood is cheap; its trucking it that is very expensive.
Cord of wet OAK about 8k lbs, dried down to apx 20% 5200, So when that fire wood delivery guy comes and swears that the load on his 1/2t pickup is a cord - you get the drift.
The trucking cost involved in anything just kills you. I do excavating and always have people coming up on jobs asking if we have any extra dirt. We usually do, but if I have my trucks hauling out, I really can't pull them off the job where we're billing nearly $200/hr for the big trucks, and have them take a load out in the middle of nowhere, where they'll probably get lost, stuck, or somehow tear the truck up in the process. People just don't understand what the real cost is to do these things.
People seem to have no idea of the weight of wood, or sand/gravel/dirt. My brother is an excavating contractor and regularly tells stories of people showing up at the gravel pit asking for a pick up or dump trailer load of material-the loader operator tells them they will have all they can haul on way before they can see the gravel in the truck or trailer bed.
When I worked with the Maine Dept of Transportation one year running bucket loader, guys would come in looking for sand to go on the back of their pickups. Its tax money so they are availed anything they want, BUT do you know how hard it is to load a pick up with a 6 cubic yard loader? What looks like a tiny bit will swamp a pick up.
I would have just parked the loader bucket over the bed of their truck and handed them a shovel. Liability is on them if they overload it or sandblast the tailgate. Takes a skilled operator to use a six yard bucket to put a yard of material in a short bed pickup.
