Firewood Price

[Michael C]

You cant burn ordinary house coal on a stove

 

A

 

 

I burn both coal and firewood in mine without any bother.

[skyhuck]

You cant burn ordinary house coal on a stove, A

 

Depends on your stove.

 

Some of the modern clean burn stoves are built for use in smokeless zones, so are not designed for coal as its not a smokeless fuel.

 

And dedicated wood burns should not be used with anything but wood.

 

But old fashioned multi fuel stoves are fine with coal, as are open fires.

[likeitorlumpit]

If you were a wholesale business with volume then you'd be content with 15%+ over your costs. If you're an average retailer then your generally happy with 50% profitability excluding premises costs. If you're a fashion retailer then you look at 100%-200% with high overheads of premises and time/sale. Don't forget to add your VAT to any retail.

 

You should then look at it as how much you want to earn. Self employed one-man band with capital investments should be looking £50K plus to have a worthy lifestyle and a reserve. For low skill hired labour you're going to be looking to pay £20K fulltime? Again don't forget the NI and holiday pay, paternity leave and 'sick days' etc

 

Your figures suggest £50/cube costs including overheads but no labour costs and 1.5hrs work? 50K income = near enough £25/hour with holiday pay etc= £87.50/cube+tax if I've read it right. Not so bad assuming you can shift the volume. Anyone you employ and pay less than £25 per hour is added profit for you and less competition AND is roughly in line with that 50% markup over costs.

 

Tell me off for interfering as an outsider but I had to run a business too and getting it right saves sleepless nights:001_smile:

 

The best way of adding profitability is add a consultancy... paid for your time without any buying-in of goods. The other way of adding profitability is to sell related small volume/high profit fashion items - fire irons/baskets/kettles/tripods etc and any extras will be extra cherries on the topping such as the guys here selling their swedish logs and firelighters...

 

There may be other ways to look at any business.. find a part-timer - some old reliable retired bloke - to run the deliveries for you for cash-in-hand beer money (but watch the way you record that) to allow you to do the producing..

 

I like this idea

The usual problem is getting the word out there

I tried selling big bags of fertiliser etc at knock down prices but the costs of advertising the service far outweighed the profit. Must think of something else or a cheaper way of getting known.

[gensetsteve]

Add kindling and fire lighters to your stock.

[Alycidon]

I burn both coal and firewood in mine without any bother.

 

 

Look in your owners instruction manual. People do burn coal I know but it is not recommended. I have seen bags of ordinary house coal these days marked "not for use in stoves".

 

A

[farmer_ben]

Add kindling and fire lighters to your stock.

 

BIg beer festival opposite my house this weekend, got kindling, logs nets, swedish logs and chimney logs all for sale on drive. few extra quid here and there adds up after a while

[eggsarascal]

I have sat down and worked it out as best you can. Buying cordwood at £50 a tonne you need £75 to make 2 cu metres. To take delivery process and deliver takes 3 hrs. On average you will travel 20 miles on ea delivery so thats a gallon at £6. £5 of cherry for the tractor. £1 for bar oil. So far you have £87 And we have not allowed for rent rates electric heating fixed costs on the tipper depreciation on the processor serviceing or labour cost. If you pay someone self employed £10 an hr thats £30. So far £117 so unless you sell for near £200 its not worth doing

 

Not sure i'm with you at the moment steve, didn't you say earlier that £90-£100 a cube was enough? now as i read it you'r saying it's got to be near £200 a cube or it's not worth doing.

[pgkevet]

I like this idea

The usual problem is getting the word out there

I tried selling big bags of fertiliser etc at knock down prices but the costs of advertising the service far outweighed the profit. Must think of something else or a cheaper way of getting known.

 

In my profession there was/is a bad approach to selling. American driven theory that 80% of your sales comes from top 10/15% customers so target them. Personally my view is that I'd like to cultivate another 10% of new customers like those:001_smile: - instead of soaking the regulars and risking offending them.

For a smaller business model like delivered logs I'd suggest whenever you do a delivery you drop home made fliers in the closest 10 houses..odds are that in a similar road you have similar customers - and you can offer a discount for group deliveries~: same profit/less aggro. That flier lists the new goodies too.

 

Pics of the Swedish candles burning should sell them to the right right households... pick the posher roads for those to save colour inks.

 

Other lateral thinking suggests safety gear, smoke alarms or even selling customer addresses to chimney sweeps to target or do a swap for passing their cards to your customers if they pass your cards to theirs..

 

Do I get a percentage?

[gensetsteve]

Not sure i'm with you at the moment steve, didn't you say earlier that £90-£100 a cube was enough? now as i read it you'r saying it's got to be near £200 a cube or it's not worth doing.

 

Sorry typo should be near £200 for two cubic metres in our tipper:biggrin:

[gensetsteve]

In my profession there was/is a bad approach to selling. American driven theory that 80% of your sales comes from top 10/15% customers so target them. Personally my view is that I'd like to cultivate another 10% of new customers like those:001_smile: - instead of soaking the regulars and risking offending them.

For a smaller business model like delivered logs I'd suggest whenever you do a delivery you drop home made fliers in the closest 10 houses..odds are that in a similar road you have similar customers - and you can offer a discount for group deliveries~: same profit/less aggro. That flier lists the new goodies too.

 

Pics of the Swedish candles burning should sell them to the right right households... pick the posher roads for those to save colour inks.

 

Other lateral thinking suggests safety gear, smoke alarms or even selling customer addresses to chimney sweeps to target or do a swap for passing their cards to your customers if they pass your cards to theirs..

 

Do I get a percentage?

 

 

Getting customers is not normally a problem. Keeping enough profit in the log job to buy enough cord a year in advance to supply demand is normally the problem.