Big J

That's effing nuts. Time for the idiot public to wake up and see the virtues of softwood. £35 a tonne delivered here for semi seasoned stock. Goes through the processor twice as quickly and dries in half the time too.

Too soon to kiln. Needs until at least April. You'll just wreck it kilning it now.

I'm anywhere from about £5 a cube upwards on hardwoods. There isn't really an upper limit as high end walnut and burr elm are worth as much as someone is prepared to pay for them. £5 a cube is for ugly beech/sycamore etc. £6 a cube is a bit steep Will! For regular customers, I'm £3 a cube to contract mill. On clean timber and assuming the blades are behaving themselves, the mill will do 50-80 cubic foot an hour.

I've really enjoyed my Citroen vans. My Relay is working it's tits off at the moment towing max capacity (and possibly then some) about 300 miles a week. Time will tell. We've a couple of years of warranty left and I wouldn't keep it much beyond that anyway.

Well the Landrover was fun, but given that we no longer need a 4x4 (not doing much, if any work requiring off road driving) we've traded it in for a 65 plate Citroen C4 Grand Picasso. Dad mobile extraordinaire, but it's top of the range so many toys (to go wrong, I expect). The Landrover had new tyres all round, timing belt and service, front wheel bearings and discs, new fuel sender unit (that one left us stranded when it went) and new brake lines. Probably not the most expensive LR ownership experience, but still a little sore. Proof of the pudding was taking it to the dealership at 24mpg and driving the new Citroen back at 56mpg! Low cost motoring, here we come

I'm a front wheel drive 2.0 160hp Relay tipper. Goes rather quickly and handles a lot of weight (whether towed, onboard or both) easily. I think rear wheel drive is on it's way out with vans.

All this talk of fuel tanks is irrelevant anyway as you'll break down long before getting to the end of the tank!

It's why the second half of a tank never seems to be anywhere near as capacious (accepting the volume of the filler spout).

Tank is 80, but it shows near enough empty before you reach 75l. It's like my van. I've a 120l tank, but I've only ever managed to get 111l into it. It's set up that way to minimise the risk of running out.

The trip computer is very misleading. It's an 80 litre tank and assuming about 72 litres on each fill, that's only 31.6 mpg. My Citroen Relay van is the only vehicle I've ever had that does what the computer says it does. I used to get 26-27mpg with the Navara but that was with quite a lot of towing. I remember that when towing heavy it would only do 23mpg. By way on contrast, the van does about 25-26mpg when towing at capacity (or beyond!).

People either seem to love their Navaras or hate them. So many of them just fall to bits under a heavy work load. How on earth are you getting 37mpg? Driven at normal traffic speeds, 37mpg is nearly impossible (I say this as someone who usually drives extremely economically). Can't be carrying any weight or working it (which might explain why your's hasn't died yet!).

My 2 cents: Beech in this country isn't very good. It's better on the continent where is grows with an almost softwood like uniformity. I visited a German hardwood mill some years back and they were turning out good quality beech, kiln dried for £7 a cubic foot. Competing with that means that UK beech is already at a disadvantage. It's also not really in fashion with devalues it further. Just my opinion though.

True. I assumed it was. Why state circumference though unless it's the average?

12ft circumference is 144 inches. 1/4 girth squared x length: 36x36x23 / 144 - 207 hoppus foot 207 hoppus foot at 26 cube to the tonne is about 8 tonnes

About 8 tonnes / 207 hoppus foot.

£2 a cubic foot (£52 a tonne) is about my ceiling for good quality beech. The lump is question is oversized, which devalues it a bit, which is why I think £400 would be quite a good price for it.

Quite possibly! Some people seem to do OK with them, though I do know two farm managers and a farm labourer that all worked them hard (like me) and all had massive problems on low mileage Navaras.

Is is actually just a different truck with a Navara body on top? I had 29 visits to the dealership for warranty work in the warranty period. Bloody glad to be rid of it.

It's an impressive lump, but beech is tough to sell, in my experience. If you get £400-500 for it, you would be doing quite well.

Getting the firewood into the back isn't the issue. Getting the damned thing to the delivery address is more tricky though - tell me, how many times did it break down en-route?!

Did you know that nearly half of all vehicular accidents in Sweden are caused by moose? I've not idea why they let them drive. What do you call a Norwegian prostitute? Fjord Escort. How do you get a Scotsman onto your roof? Tell him the drinks are on the house.

If it's an option, I find that a very windy position on any site will result in the wind reducing the moisture at a more rapid rate than the rain will soak it. There are exceptions of course (heavy downpours, times of low wind) but I just stack the crates 4m high an exposed corner of the yard and they dry quickly, even at this time of year. Not quite ready to burn dry, but nothing that a few weeks in a well ventilated wood store won't sort. Firewood is such a low value product (for the amount of space it occupies) that it's not really economical to store under cover on a commercial scale (in my opinion). If you use the example of a mid sized firewood business, selling perhaps 2000 cube a year, you've got enough to fill a 20x25m shed 4m high without any ventilation channels. Who can afford that? As I've said before, my feeling is that first priority that customers should season their own firewood. Failing that, they should accept that it's not economical to keep firewood bone dry on a commercial basis over winter. If they don't have space to dry or adequately store their own firewood, they shouldn't bother with a stove. It's not an cost effective way of heating a house if the only way you can take it is a cubic metre at a time and you expect to burn it that night. Stuff 'em, basically!

I used to really enjoy much of my work, but fairly tired of it now. I've milled a lot of wood now, thousands of tonnes personally, and it becomes quite routine. That I can handle, but I find the interpersonal business/contractor relationships can be testing at times. It's sad how often people just don't hold up their end of the deal, or just quite simply don't understand the situation. Don't misunderstand - I'm not perfect, but I do generally try to work well and produce a good product. Either way, work is work and when you've a family to provide for, you cannot be rash in making major changes. Planning and forethought are required.

Winter tyres will do you almost anywhere in Scotland. Four wheel drive is nice to have in muddy fields, but I think largely unnecessary for roads, irrespective of snow and ice. We've have 4 season tyres on our Disco 4 and the Citroen Relay van and grip is never an issue.

Don't get a Navara unless you like dreadful build quality and reliability. That is the D40 model - I can't comment on the D22.