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All my wood leaves in vented cube bags. I don't have any netting, kindling or chipping equipment to offer wood in other varieties. I don't charge my customers 20% vat on delivery as I offer fully inclusive pricing at 5% VAT. If I did break out carriage then I would need to charge that at the prevailing higher rate of VAT. So, just quote a delivered price that rises the further away from source and you'll be fine at the inclusive pricing. Look ar your cordwood invoices from your suppliers, they should all be a fully inclusive delivered price for the wood without freight broken out. Purely so VAT is at 5%.

I sell at £120/cube for hardwood logs but that price does include 5% VAT and £30 to £40 quid for the haulier. I guess then you get into a collect versus delivered price. I dont think enough people add value for the time and cost of delivery. Even Tesco charge £5 for deliveries. If you look at my logs 35% is the wood cost (inlcuding bag and pallet), 5% is for the VAT man, 30% for the delivery man which leaves me 30% for my labour, equipment, maintenance, diesel and storage costs. I don't consider that being remotely greedy. If my cord wood goes up 25% in price next year so will my wood price. I'll gear production to demand and if it drops it drops, theres no point in working for nothing.

Facts are strange things. Oil has gone up by 40% since you bought two weeks ago due to supply and demand. Maybe wood retailers need to follow suit to better align the kwh cost of wood to that of oil.

gensesteve came up with a gem of a link in a calorific value of wood thread a few months back and at £100/m3 for hardwood equates to 10.8p/kWh. Looking at the charts that has to be for green wood. Seasoned wood pitches in at 3.8p/kWh per ton which I find yields around 1.5m3 of bagged logs which tallies pretty well with BigJ's end figure however he got there. Bit off topic here but I do print the gensetsteve linked doc on the back of all my invoices to demonstrate what great value wood is as is coal relative to other fuels.

It ties in with the delivered weight as I'm processing 35 - 40 bags per load, roughly 1.5 bags per ton. I'd prefer if it was lighter as the courier charges more for pallets once they go over 500kg. Maybe I should move to soft woods?

My cubic meter bagged harwood logs weigh in at 600-650kg. I know that as the courier I use for deliveries weighs them. My £120 a bag is reasonable and I have lots of repeat customers that clearly think so too. Why people would sell cheap simply because their wood is free baffels me. As BigJ says wood is a good buy at a top end price so those with access to free wood should be smiling broadly all the way to the bank..

Entirely off topic but a neat piece of free software is Advanced System Care that'll clean your PC and do lots more with the click of a button. It can be downloaded from Advanced SystemCare Free Download Review for Windows XP/Vista/7 | IObit for anyone who hasn't got it and wants to check it out.

Makes sense to me. You should consider flushing your browser cache more often to be up to date on our and others web sites though. It's also a good practice measure that helps to keep adware and malware beasties in check.

I had a lot of ash trunks with identical holes but never noticed any larvae/beetles or signs of their burrows on cutting/splitting. I did notice a few logs that I took out of store this weekend were covered in little black bugs. I swiped them all, should have run for the microscope I know to see if they are the Ambrosia Beetle. It's an interesting article but doesn't say when the larvae hatch, I guess if it's about now then that'd be my beetles. They seem to burn OK though.

I dealt a lot in import/export of goods at one time and with commodities the shipping rate and exchange rate variables can make or equally as quickly break a business. It is almost impossible to work on a long term basis as what works out today could be way too expensive next month when say the pound has weakened and shipping rates have increased. Commodity trading across currencies is usually best worked as a spot business, applying when all the ducks are nicely lined up.

It all comes down to maximising your return, when you buy by the ton and retail by the m3 why opt out of choice for one of the densest slowest drying woods that there is? It's possibly different for those that get their wood as free waste where boots can be filled irrespective of the species. I'm sticking to maximising my margins as no customer is going to pay by weight or provide a price premium for oak over ash, sycamore, birch or beech that all split to a larger volume. For me, 300T of oak would be a lot of hard work, longer storage with no meaningful profit at the end, a pointless exercise that probably couldn't afford the weetabix. As for question relating to the pricing Chandlers runs at, it depends on how far the lumber is transported. I never got around to finding where the logging was happening so don't know what your price would be but will likely be in the £45 to £50/ton range dependant upon distance. There was 300T of oak about to be felled and up for grabs last Friday so there should still be some of it available to those who can turn it to a profit.

I find I land fairly consistantly 1.5m3 of loose logs bagged from every ton of cord wood and about 50kg of sawdust. I retail on the internet and our courier weighs the bags and they are always around 600kg which fits in with my yield volume per ton. The logs are 100% hardwoods. I've never dealt in softwoods but believe they deliver around 2.25m3 per ton of cord wood. So a m3 loose logs in this instance would weigh in at around 375kg. For those looking for cordwood at this time of year Chandlers just offered me 300 tons of firewood grade oak but I don't like that species due to it's poor split volume (I see around 1.2m3 per ton) and longer seasoning time so I declined.

It must be the tardis effect if you can fit 1.2m3 wood into 1m3 of wood. It's clear the original comment was demonstrating that 1.2m3 of loose logs will likely stack into a 1m3 space. The only thing I'd find issue with the retailers in question site is no contact address, which is always poor for internet retailers. An 0845 number which again is poor for internet retailers. Also all the endorsements from DEFRA etc. which I'm certain the government agencies won't have sanctioned. Other than that the pictorial comparison is reasoned and fair as we all know of a wood retailer or two that sells builders bags as m3 or ton bags which when my m3 bags weigh in at 600kg leaves me facing a price premium and notional 400kg disadvantage.

Brilliant piece of research by British Researchers. I knew all along that my taxes were being well spent.

When the grazed knuckles and crushed finger nails hit I usually do tend to swear a little. My wife insists swearing gains nothing and offends those who are close by. Am I wasting my breath or does an outburst really ease the pain? The only alternative I can think of is to cry, out loud of course.

There are very lightweight breathable car covers that provide full rain protection. It may be worthwhile doing some research on Google to see if the manufacturers of those supply sheeting also? Something like that would be a lot more throw aboutable than tarpaulins.

I do Paypal card services on my website. It's a good means for new customers to use as they gain credit card protection should your site be a scam frontage. Second time they order I push them onto a BACS payment to save the high commission Paypal charge and all have been fine to do that.

I think that cover only applies to 3 point link (PTO driven) machinery and the drive for the processor is not disclosed within the thread. I insure with the NFU and have the equipment owned by my business but housed at my home which is not operated at the same address. Maybe you should pop in and see them face to face as I've always found the local NFU folks bend over backwards kind of peeps though it has to be said I haven't ever had to submit a claim. If the processor is on a 3 point link (PTO driven) then you won't find a cheaper option to cover both the tractor and processor if you can sort the logistics out with the NFU.

My wood ships with a lot of spiders, I wonder if she's a screamer? Woods a living material after all.

It probably depends how many bags you want to cover and whether you are asking for storage or for transportation purposes but a folded builders bulk bag will pretty much cover the top of a 1m3 vented bag. I always strap one of the unused unopened builders bags to the top of my m3 bags when I'm transporting them to a customer to stop the logs bouncing out and it works well.

I add charges to the ex-works price of £10/m3 bagged for local deliveries up to 3 miles which I run myself. £20/m3 bagged for county wide deliveries that I outsorce to a local courier and £40/m3 bagged for National delivery that I outsource, you guessed it, to a National pallet distribution company. I figure outside of 3 miles it take me too long to be worth delivering it myself.

Be careful on the loading weight unless the vehicle has been plated to over 3.5T. A full wood load could push toward 3T in 15 barrow bags. Looks really good and a nice change from the usual green colour people use (including myself). I'm looking for a hiab trailer as couldnt justify the cost of a vehilce sitting dormant most of the time when I have a truck anyway. They are few and far between though. Good luck with the venture. I ran a leaflet drop within the local area and thats generated a lot of interest so I'd recommend you consider doing that if you have the time to spare.

The pricing was big and bold at £80/m3 on the flyer. Double sided A5 leaflet with pitch, pricing, and a picture. On the reverse side map showng the inclusive delivery area. I saw leaflets as a good approach as no one else does that in this area and it's been favourably received as 'a professional approach'. The flyer also give a full address and land line contact number which I always thinks looks better than no address and just a mobile number. The usual return on a general mail drop is 1% at best so it has been very successful. For those that can be bothered to do it - there may be plenty of new customers just waiting to hear from you. It all comes down to whether you or your kids can be bothered playing postie for a day.

I just delivered a m3 bag to a new customer today. When he ordered he asked what size a cubic meter is. I told him roughly 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 and a bit feet. He got it then. Charged £80 btw.

I've tried researching what the firewoood sales seasonal trending is but nothing seem to be written on it other than demand is growing and now exceeds 1mn tons per annum. Having started supplying this year I utilised one of my daughters at the end of the school holidays to deliver around 100 leaflets locally, it generated lots of interest and I'm receiving around 3 orders a week at the moment (thats a very good return from a small leaflet drop). My question is when is the peak demand for firewood or is there a double peak when people lay down winter stocks and then need to top those up in the middle of winter? I'm selling locally and also nationally via web sales and would prefer to cater for the local populus over national customers who are less likely to be long term customers. Having said that though - there is a good repeat business from our net derived customers.