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Try Palletways, we get rates significantly cheaper than you've been quoted. I am a good negotiator though! They also don't charge extras that lots of other companies do for tail lift drops etc..

Sound words indeed and ones that more than will should take heed of.

Why is it lots of people seem to be panicing for cord wood, not for firewood to sell this year surely?

If I were you I'd edit out the 'cheap' word and maybe replace with sensibly priced, then reissue the request. Cheap is such a cheap word and suggests you will likely do everything on the cheap which could stretch to not looking after such a cheap place which could put land owners off.

Forget Arbtalk, looks like we are now into Haytalk. Anyone want to talk about butterflies?

Thats incredibly generous, it means you are discounting your wood by up to£30 a delivery allowing for around £10 each for fuel, running costs and minimum wage on journey time or you have that cost built into your pricing already. I'd much rather short ship using a courier and charge £25 per bag on top for delivery. No hassle and the customer pays for the delivery - not me.

I've got a Romanian, he can sharpen a chain in 5 minutes to perfection. Everyone needing a chain sharpener should hire a Eastern European. They are great loggers too, great work ethic and they never complain.

Thats a lot of hard work for little return on volume.

The people I buy cord from offered me oak at a lower price as being a dense wood it splits to a smaller volume that you can't charge more for than white woods eg. sycamore or ash. Their words not mine. I prefer to avoid oak as a prime wood in a batch as it's hard to split if dry and takes an age to dry if green. For anyone that wants to find out densities of species of woods there are U.S. research papers googlable that run down the enegy yield of woods. Seeing all woods yield the same energy weight for weight the higher energy yield relates directly to a higher density of wood and vice versa.

I must be doing something really wrong if everyone else is getting a m3 from 300kg of wood. Every time I have an artic load of logs delivered I typically yield 40 - 42 bags. I should be getting nearly 80 if they weighed in at 300kg/m3. Are you sure you aren't thinking of builders sand bags rather than m3 bags? I don't think that the trader, haulier and my courier are all in collusion to spirit away half my wood. The artics look pretty full when they arrive.

Wood density for all but a few hardwoods (teak I think is one) is less than water. Hence wood tends to float on water. 1 metric ton of water is 1m3 so wood in all but the very rare exception is under 1000kg per cube. That is for solid wood, no gaps.

My 15% to 20% moisture logs weigh in at 630kg/m3, wish they were only 333kg/m3 as the courier I use ramps up the charges for anything over 500kg. They let me know exactly what my logs weigh in at and the range has always been 615 to 660kg per m3 bag. This works out with my yield that is 1.5 bags per tonne so the weights correlate. If this guy is shipping 6m3 of hardwood he'd need to have had his transit upgraded with 7.5T springs and plated otherwise Mr. Ministry of the transport variety could take an interest. He'd also be better off selling the trees rather than splitting and seasoning seeing cord is fetching £60/T and he's bidding out 4 tonnes at £160. Seems a lot of sweat to make less.

As a rough guide 1m3 of cord wood will yield around of 1.5m3 of split logs (loose or bagged, less if stacked). It's quite a bit different if you talk weight to volume but that wasn't the question.

Does that make it more expensive to run a wood burner? Think this thread has just about gone as far off topic as it's possible to get.

I have to disagree that paid for wood isn't a cheap option to provide heating and hot water via a back boiler. If you take my hardwood at £80/m3 (weighing in at 660kg) which I supply under 20% moisture then the heat generated costs less than3p/Kwh. That is well under the cost of heating oil, gas or electricity. So it comes down to how efficient the stove is relative to a modern gas boiler for a central heating comparison. Even if 50% of the heat goes straight up the chimney wood would still be no more expensive than gas and well under the price of electricity. I do believe most wood retailers are unaware of or are overlooking the price advantage. Wood is a cheap fuel even with the rise in prices for cord over the last 12 months. For those who like facts and figures go google and you can come up with lots of sites breaking down fuel costs. The California Energy Commission give a pretty full breakdown by wood species and here is a link to a UK site Firewood

You may want to look into having a third party do the deliveries for you. I use a local courier (who is part of a Nationwide group) and they charge £25 a pallet for deliveries within 30 mile radius. By the time you cost up a vehicle tax, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and fuel costs then add on the time cost for driving the vehicle you'd need to be very busy delivering to better £25 a pallet. If you were that busy you could probably negotiate a better rate with the courier anyway.

Windfall has pretty much covered the content side, though I'd add that the background file size must be quite large as it took a while to download and I thought for a moment the website was down. You need to remember not everyone is on 20Mb cable networks for their broadband, I snail along at 1Mb at the end of a 10 mile length of copper wire. Though with only collection offered I suppose all you prospective customer will have access to fast broadband so it's probably a mute point. There is a contradiction on your about us page with your other pages where you state 'AJR Firewood & Kindling was established in 2010 by Andrew J Roddick to provide quality seasoned firewood to the local residents of Essex and London' but then go on to offer for sale unseasoned wood. On the sales strategy side I'm not sure you'll generate much interest in come pick up your expensive small bags of wet logs that you won't be able to burn for a year or two. For those looking to self season I'd expect they would normally be looking for cheap wood delivered in bulk which is everything completely opposite to what you are offering.

I found leaflet drop to all residences within a 3 mile radius worked well. That returned 12% which is very high for a leaflet drop but I do live in a rural area so stoves and fires are the norm. From then on its become word of mouth which thrives so long as the customers like what they get.

When I did my business plan in 2010 I concluded there wasn't much difference in profit from selling hardwood or softwood with both varieties having better profitability than mixed wood. So, I plumped for 100% hardwood blends. This assumes you are buying in the cord rather than felling it yourself of course. There was, at that time, slightly more profit from softwood as it's cheaper and splits to a larger volume but the retail price is lower than hardwood in these parts and it's harder to move. The recent hike in hardwood pricing relative to softwood now does deliver a significantly higher margin but I work out I'd need to move 33% more volume of softwood to deliver the same gross profit, thats a lot more sweat in preperation. The main problem for all retailers is that everyone wants hardwood at softwood prices. The other consideration for softwood that turned me towards hardwood only is that it takes a lot longer to season properly. So, I'm sticking with less profitable hardwood - for the time being.

It really does depend on the hardwood, some sinks though most float on water so most are slightly less than 1m3 of solid wood per metric tonne. If you are talking about processed volume then each tonne weight will yield around 1.5m3 of split wood. Though, again split volume depends on the wood density so would in reality range from this yield that I experience from my own processing of mixed hardwoods (mainly sycamore and ash). Off to measure a piece of string now with a beer in one hand.....

I've had people ask to 'borrow for a small fee' my processor. Aside from knowing it'd come back in a different state to that when it left there is a entire H&S can of worms that'd be opened up if the loaner injured themselves. It really must be hired with a trained operator for the good of the equipment and legally for safety aspects. Anyone who has others operate dangerous equipment should have dated training records to ensure they have at least the basics covers should an accident occur. Thats something that is best done before an accident happens as is hard to prove when its not documented and the HSE guys in front of you asking the questions.

I'd be charging on a day rate for 8 hours including set up and clear up time. You couldn't price on volume as that would depend on how straight the wood is and how much prepping is required. If i was looking to hire out I'd be at £100 each for the processor and man. If I used my PTO driven processor I'd also add £50 for the tractor and diesel. That'd likely yield a processing cost of £25/M3 to £30/m3 which is fair and reasonable. If someone has lots of wood lying around that avoids the sweat of DIY and is a lot cheaper than buying in firewood.

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.

Had a visit from Mr. Tight today and he has placed an order for 2m3 to deliver next Saturday. At full price too, £60m3 above what he said he was paying. Was he lying or do miracles really happen. I'm still giggling either way.

Thats below cord wood cost.