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Silver birch 2 or 3 tons in Dunblane


mkellerm
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4 minutes ago, mkellerm said:

Should this be in the milling subforum?

 

I think you've got it the wrong way round somehow. It usually works that people pay us to take trees out their garden, it may work occasionally that we agree a deal with someone for good quality timber that could become profitable after we've added value in some way, but you don't have anything that fits the bill. You've a small heap of Birch with Ivy on it that you want paid for the pleasure of removing it.

 

You might find an individual locally that will take it for free to use as firewood but it's not a business proposition.

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So just to clarify why the answers aren't really being serious..... 

I doubt this is 2 tonnes of wood but....

 

For a fire wood business:

Collect the wood, say 1 hour round trip, 60 miles just to give a figure £30, drivers and mates time, 2 man hours at £15 each way. That is a minimum of £90 expenses to turn up at your house

Load the van, very helpful postcode you have given, and the photos show a terrace / row of flats, with limited parking and access via a narrow stair, loading would be another hour I reckon, so that's another £50 of expenses (working 'men' cost more than ones being driven in my line of work, hourly rate is higher).

Before they leave give you what you are looking for? £100?

Unloading at the other end, just tip, no time required but you do need a yard

Turning into logs - a lot of this is small stuff, not sure how a processor would deal with that, might have to be manually cut and split. 2 tonnes of logs would take me 2 or 3 hours manually (for Silver Birch), so say another £50.

Where are we at? Say £290 in expenses, add profit for the business, employee NI or contractors rate, insurance, and that turns into £350+ just to collect and make firewood.

 

Now lets put these logs through a kiln or air dry them for a year. Air drying... £25 with handling

 

So need to sell these 2 tonnes for about £450 to make any money at all (with delivery) .. it isn't making a lot of financial sense so far. 2 tonnes will turn into a lot less firewood with waste and what cannot be made into saleable logs.

 

Back to my first comment though, not convinced from the photos that that would create 2 tonnes of logs.

 

 

So for a domestic user,

£100 to hire a van

£20 to buy a mate a breakfast

£100 for you

Collect the logs, load up, dump at their house

Spend time making logs and storing them for a year, perhaps add in a new saw chain, oil, fuel, and so on

Cost of £250 for someone to collect them themselves in one go

 

See the finances aren't adding up really here.

 

If I lived around the corner and could collect a car boot of logs each time I was passing then my cost would be whatever I gave you for the logs. 1 hour in your garden cutting to car boot length and stacking for easy access. Perhaps this forum is the wrong one for this - though you might get someone local who will take them, might even help you tidy the garden in exchange (rake up the branches and so on)

 

Assuming that you had a tree surgeon take down the tree - 2 or 3 tonnes is a professional job - there is a reason why they weren't biting your hand off to take the logs away even while they had the kit and man power there to do the work

 

 

 

Sorry to say, gumtree or facebook adds might be the way to go and get some cash from it, advertising on here and the finances don't add up for most of the members

 

 

 

-EDIT-

For reference in the first picture there is a stick in the middle - about 12kgs? Pick it up fairly easily one handed, you'd need 150 of these to make 2 tonnes

 

Edited by Steven P
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The people on here know what they are talking about (mostly!), and what you have there isn't anything to get excited about. If you want to generate some sensible interest carefully clean up the stems, take measurements of diameter and length and if possible move them roadside so someone can just load them up. If you can't move them think about how anyone else could do it ie machine access etc.

Few things to think about 1. for milling garden trees are not popular as often have embedded metal in them (ie old bird feeders etc). If access is a problem then the limited value of these logs will be further reduced and I would want paying to remove them, you might find someone keen but the mostly professionals on here look at that and roll their eyes. 

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This is all very harsh on the original poster.  I think he should buy the equipment to mill the logs; then he just had to build a good stack with spacers neatly positioned between every board and some roofing sheets on top with a large weight on; then wait for them to dry for a year or two; then advertise on Facebook or similar; then spend many hours showing customers the boards; and he could make maybe a couple of hundred pounds.

 

 When he has done this if it goes well I would suggest digging some earth in his garden and sieving it and sterilising it to sell it as top quality topsoil.  Not only is there money to be made here as well, but if he digs up any large stones these could be sold as building stone and it is a double whammy.  Come to think of it this might be even more lucrative than milling the birch.

 

 Actually maybe the best bet is to buy the right equipment and extract oxygen from the air.  Buying oxygen in cylinders is really pricey these days, yet I have been breathing it in for over fifty years and it hasn’t cost me a penny.  Serious money to be made here I am quite sure.

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