Firewood Price

[gensetsteve]

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

[DN22 Gardening]

you can really only do costings at the end of the year IMO.

 

we're doing ok this year so far, bank balance is looking good,

then along come three MOT's,

a failed wheel bearing on the nissan,

two strimmers going t*ts up.

 

and now the bank balance is £1500 lighter.....

 

no way can you cost things like that.

 

at the end of the year, if you've made enough profit to live on, carry on,

if not, jack it in, and go push trolleys at tesco's

 

as for log prices, if you can sell at £140 per cube, good luck to you.

round here i'm considered expensive @ £75-00 h/wood and £60.00 soft.

if i could get top money, i think i'd sell all my equipment and buy ready to sell logs off the cheaper lads on here.

 

:lol:

[pgkevet]

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

 

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..

[mendiplogs]

you can really only do costings at the end of the year IMO.

 

we're doing ok this year so far, bank balance is looking good,

then along come three MOT's,

a failed wheel bearing on the nissan,

two strimmers going t*ts up.

 

and now the bank balance is £1500 lighter.....

 

no way can you cost things like that.

 

at the end of the year, if you've made enough profit to live on, carry on,

if not, jack it in, and go push trolleys at tesco's

 

as for log prices, if you can sell at £140 per cube, good luck to you.

round here i'm considered expensive @ £75-00 h/wood and £60.00 soft.

if i could get top money, i think i'd sell all my equipment and buy ready to sell logs off the cheaper lads on here.

 

:lol:

HI ref £75 for a cube is that for a bag size 1mt x 1mt not a loose 1mt thanks jon

[pgkevet]

you can really only do costings at the end of the year IMO.

 

we're doing ok this year so far, bank balance is looking good,

then along come three MOT's,

a failed wheel bearing on the nissan,

two strimmers going t*ts up.

 

and now the bank balance is £1500 lighter.....

 

no way can you cost things like that.

 

at the end of the year, if you've made enough profit to live on, carry on,

if not, jack it in, and go push trolleys at tesco's

 

as for log prices, if you can sell at £140 per cube, good luck to you.

round here i'm considered expensive @ £75-00 h/wood and £60.00 soft.

if i could get top money, i think i'd sell all my equipment and buy ready to sell logs off the cheaper lads on here.

 

:lol:

 

Yes you can allow for those things .. every vehicle has an average running cost and that includes MOT's and MOT failure rates. But you're quite right..if you can buy in without any processing costs of your own and do a simple retail then do it - buy the bags and pay someone to take orders and deliver and do the whole thing via skype from the Caribbean:001_smile:

[gensetsteve]

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..

 

Your figures stack up to mine. I expect to earn £25 an hr supplying logs so 40 hr week 50k a year. With kindling sales and overtime (saturday) should be able to do 50k even with 6 weeks holiday and a bit of sick pay. Good thing about logs is ready market and very little marketing required. Also logs dont tend to go off or get sick.

[baz]

Pricing is a very simple exercise:

 

What your costs are = x

 

What you need to earn to make it worthwhile = y

 

Sales price = x + y

 

If x + y is uncompetitive then you either need to reduce costs to restore the worthwhile balance or go find something else to do with your time.

 

As the Meerkats say - shimples.

[Michael C]

Pricing is a very simple exercise:

 

What your costs are = x

 

What you need to earn to make it worthwhile = y

 

Sales price = x + y

 

If x + y is uncompetitive then you either need to reduce costs to restore the worthwhile balance or go find something else to do with your time.

 

As the Meerkats say - shimples.

 

Thats exactly what I was trying (and failing!) to say.

What I have also been trying to say, is that it is very important that 'x' is fully inclusive of ALL costs associated with getting a M3 of firewood to the customers door..

[gensetsteve]

I agree with most of what is said but everyone around you may sell out at £50 a cube by November whereas your selling at over £100 a cube and take till March to sell out whats the problem.

[Alycidon]

as i prssed the submit i thought of that sky huck ,some folk around here do take trees down for the wood ,ash trees are standing gold to some guys with a blunt stihl 017 and a few spare hours ,i did price up coal the other day and it was 240 a ton ,what do you recon would you get more heat from that compared to 240 pounds of fire wood ? seasond hard wood that is ?

 

 

You cant burn ordinary house coal on a stove, burns very dirty, clags up the glass and danger of backdraught. Weight for weight coal will produce more heat than wood when burnt on an open fire but at twice the price of wood then wood is a winner.

 

A