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I have talked with a few Baltic based companies and Premium Wood were the most helpful. I was going to place a trial order but it does require a pump truck to offload from a sea container that I don't possess, so in the end I couldn't follow through with the order. Be keen to hear from anyone that has used Premium Wood because if people keep asking silly prices for cord I'm going to either pack it in or get myself a pump truck and start buying in already processed firewood.

I've been quoted anything from £1,500 to £1,800 for a trailer load of cord. This is substantially more expensive than any purchased in the past that has peaked at £1,350 for a load. Taking £1,500 as the best offer we usually yield 45m3 per load. Cost of wood per m3 = £35.56 Labour to handle, split, load & deliver = £20 Fuel to handle and process = £3 Fuel to deliver = £2 So here we are over £60 a cube before plant maintenance, oils, filters, chains and depreciation is taken into account. Looking at imported wood seriously for the first time. Available at £85/m3 stacked kiln dried hardwood delivered duty paid. 2m3 stacked equals 3m3 loose bagged. So a delivered price equivalent for loose logs is £60 a cube. What is the point of buying in and sweating? Having to maintain equipment solely used for splitting and moving logs around? Something isn't quite right when its cheaper to import wood over 1,500 miles.

I find Latvians work best.

The tree had probably been down for much longer than 2 years. I have some 6 year old stuff hanging around that's seems to have fossilised and takes a lot of cutting. On a screw splitter it just shatters and dust flies everywhere. Ask them when it was really felled, I'd venture it'll be two years ago back in '07.

To sum up it seems everyone is pretty much in agreement that wood would only normally shrink 5% to 10% unless you suck it dry and destroy the cell structure. If you sell by volume and who doesn't, then it doesn't matter how well seasoned the logs are beyond a 5% to 10% premium to allow for shrinkage. At a lower trailer weight for seasoned wood, the haulage costs will be reduced. So, this trader looking for a 30% premium on 7 month felled is probably playing spot the sucker. At £81/t even for dry hardwood that'd be putting £40 to £45 worth of wood into a m3 bag. Add in labour, depreciation, maintenance, insurance, chains, fuel, bag, pallet, storage and a retail price of anything under £110/m3 wouldn't make sense. Unfortunately, that price wouldn't make any sense around here.

I'm very much into yields, costs and margins as I can't be arsed doing something for nothing. From hardwood we have averaged over 4 years 1.84m3 per purchased ton of wood (fresh felled to 6 month felled). The rate for the part seasoned was higher at nearly 2m3 per ton purchased. I have never seen anywhere near the 2.4m3 per ton that this deal would require to make it palatable. I have data on log shrinkage and settling in bags. We double lift to aid settling. We use every 6th bag as a top up bag. That's around a 15% top up rate after a years sat seasoning. I'd reckon half the top up is due to shrinkage and half to setlling on lifting. So again I'm nowhere near this trader who has suggested 25%+ shrinkage has occured in 6 months since felling. From talking to this dealer I think it is safer to buy by the ton and if the cord is part season you'll be quids in rather than buying as part seasoned and finding on the resultant yield you have been burned. The margins are to low on wood to carry a big variable yield risk.

The volume is constant, the only question is can you stick 25% more tree trunks onto the same trailer if they are 6 months felled over freshly felled. I can't see it myself, I think you can lose 25% in weight but I need to be convinced you lose at the same time more than 25% in volume. You'd need to lose a lot more volume than the weight lost as he said the weight would be 19t on a full load (so effectively the extra wood going in can't add to the dried shipping weight). It doesn't ring true to me but I am open to be convinced.

Not with timber trailers as they are filled to the top of the retaining poles. So have the same volume, only the weight varies.

Here is a good conundrum. I contacted a cord supplier today who said they can deliver seasoned cord that was felled last November (a short season) weighing in at around 19t for the trailer load at £1,550. Working out at £81 per ton. The cord supplier said it'd be a full trailer load so the same volume as 26t of unseasoned wood at £60/t but more wood and less moisture. The question is how much does cord shrink on seasoning. I've had piles stuck outdoors for 2 years and don't look at it and think where has my wood gone to? it doesn't look any different. I've tried researching the web but there are only guestimates of around 5% to 10% shrinkage going from green to seasoned. I can see that seasoned wood could lose 25% of its weight if fully seasoned but I'm not convinced it'd lose 25% of it's volume in the process to turn an £81/t part seasoned purchase into the same value as a £60t green purchase price. My problem is I'm used to buying in tons and selling in volume. I know a ton of hard wood purchased gives me an average yield of 1.84m3 of bagged logs. In this case a ton purchased would need to yield 2.4m3 to deliver the same cost. I can't see that'd be possible with hard wood. Do folks concur with my thoughts that it doesn't ring true, I'm suspecting it could be a case of smaller trailer being quoted at big trailer prices.

You are referring to log deliveries? It's just the ears reference has me wondering.

Good luck with dragging 400kg of wood around. If you want to do bulk bag deliveries then the options are: Trailer and tip (slide off down ramps) Tralier and offload/stack Telehandler (local only) Flatbed transit and tip Flatbed Transid with HiaB arm. Trailer with HiaB arm. Courier (£25 local, £40 national) Pickup or convered Landy and offload/stack. Think that just about covers it. I do local on telehandler and anything beyond 2 miles they collect or it goes courier.

Becoming VAT registered isn't as easy as it once was due to all the VAT fraud schemes past, present and undoubtedly future. Assuming you can get yourself VAT registered then it is worthwhile as several posters have already pointed out, you reclaim all the expenditure items that come with 20% VAT and charge 5% on the firewood (any delivery charge would be at 20%, hence why delivery is always a no cost option for VAT registered operations). One thing though, if you do go VAT registered never piss off the excise man. They have powers of search and siezure way beyond other government outfits, including the police.

We recycle all our shavings. If they are clean they go to the rabbits, horses or chicken sheds as bedding. If they are dirty then it goes in the log burner in equal quantity to logs when its running at temperature. Why would anyone want to give it away? Im3 of sawdust is probably the same as 2m3 of logs.

I have some logs felled two years ago, stored inside for 6 months, with - yes fresh green moss. When the wood is split its only 25% and ready to burn pretty much straight away. Maybe moss improves the seasoning process?

There are plenty of traders dealing in ex rentals on ebay and plant trader. Good out thing about a trade purchase is you can usually haggle a price including delivery.

Thanks, I did call Mark and he seems a genuine guy who said he can sort me out with multiple loads at a reasonable price so I'm going to pull in a few loads from him July time that'll see me sorted until next year.

Thanks - will give him a call next week

Do you have a contact number for him?

Be worth watching this ebay auction Fire wood processor, firewood, log splitter, JAPA 700 2011 | eBay

Usual supplier seems to be drawing a blank. Does anone have any good bulk load contacts for hardwood cord in the Midlands they can share?

If you have a friend (I use the missus) a 5 foot bandsaw sees off most things. Gives you a workout too. I chose the bandsaw option as I only see the occassional monster tree in my firewood grade cord so couldn't justify the expense of a second chainsaw.

Screw splitters are not as scarey as some tend to suggest. You know which way the screw spins so you know which way if a log snags it is going to kick. Therefore, feed in with your left hand and guide onto the screw with the right and then if the log spins on the screw it isn't going to have you joining in. I use my hycrack screw splitter in tandam with my processor. Anything too large for the processor gets ringed and then srew split. Screws work better the more seasoned the wood. If its green wood it tends to go stringy which can be a real pain. Seasoned logs crack open and split easily. So, you can guess, its best to ring and come back a year or so later to split. A screw is invaulable if dealing with really old wood. A processor ram will baulk at splitting seasoned wood so a screw goes places a ram can't touch. Screw splitting is slower work than with a processor. We can get 14m3 of mixed size and shape hardwood through the processor compared to 8m3 through the screw splitter in a day.

You do need two extra lines. One is commonly already standard fit for a pecker attachment with a second requiring plumbing. My digger actually had two sets already plumbed so I looked into a rotating grab. In the end, I went for a fixed grapple. The primary reason being cost. Rotating grabs are 2 to 4 times the price at the budget end before plumbing. Also, grab rotors take up a fair bit of the head room available at maximum elevation so would limit the ability to grab logs from the top of a pile, particularly with smaller diggers. Having used the grapple it is easy to home in where you need to be and pick up selectively. Even largish logs at an angle (say up to 30 deg) can be grabbed effectively. So, I have no regrets that I didn't go for a rotating grab and suspect I would have regrets had I gone for a rotating grab.

Purchased a grapple for my 2.5t digger and tried it out for the first time at the weekend moving logs from the pile onto the telehandler forks to move indoors ready for processing. It made life a whole lot less strenuous and not a hint of a possibility for bruised fingers. I think it could prove to be a good investment for £600.

I'm in one of the poorer areas of the country and charging £85/m3 collected or immediate area delivery. It's going to go to £90/m3 this September. I'm going to sell out this year so may as well up the price to both supress demand and make a lager margin. I think anyone delivering hardwood at £65-£70/m3 bagged and seasoned is giving it away. I'm in the market for artic loads at that price to save me working too hard. Offers invited.