Cost of FREE Firewood?? was $31 for mine.

[bogydave]

My wood is 10 miles away. 20 miles round trip. My truck hauls 1/4 cord at a time, so 80 miles per cord. I get 17mpg hauling wood. 4.7 gallons of fuel in the truck, I'd imagine a cord of wood will take about 1/3 gallon in the saw. So call it 5 gallons of fuel. At $3.58/gallon that's $17.90, call it $18. Add $3 to cover bar and chain oil and 2 stroke mix and that makes it makes it $21/cord. I should include the price of the saws I use to. $200 for one and $350 for the other. Both should be good for 10 years minimum at 5 cords/year. So that adds $11 per cord. This brings my total cost to $32 per cord, not including time or wear and tear on my truck.

So, add in maybe $10 per cord for wear on the truck and that gets me to $42/cord.

Then add in my time (which I wouldn't count since I generally have fun doing it, but let's add it in anyway).

I get $15/hr at my day job. I'm not totally sure on the time, but I'd hazard a guess of 2 hours for cutting, 1.5 hours for hauling and 3.5 hours for splitting (I split by hand). So 7 hours for each cord. At $15/hr that would add in $105 per cord. That would bring it to $147 per cord if I "paid myself" for my time.

So after all that rambling, since I don't count my time in there, I would say that my "free wood" costs me $42/cord.

**edit**
If I do the math as the OP did, just for fuel and oil I would be at only $21 per cord.

Now that gets complicated.
Makes me want to say free. Like going fishing is fun & free (less license, gas, time, & equipment) :lol:
Free doesn't mean cheap