Interesting craigslist rant about high firewood prices

[sl7vk]

I guess I'm one of the few that heats with it because I just prefer the kind of heat it gives, and the ambiance....

We have the cheapest natural gas in the country, but I'll be damned if I turn on the furnace.... Even if buying wood at 170 a cord costs more then the nattie gas....

With all that said, people have the right to make their price, and idiots have the right to buy. The problem is that many of the quantities stated by sellers are downright deceiving. This is where people get frustrated, because it takes advantage of people that don't know better. That is why many states require would to be sold in cord measurements and nothing else.

Just because some old person falls for it, doesn't mean that it is the "market" at work. Don't kid yourselves.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

I guess I'm one of the few that heats with it because I just prefer the kind of heat it gives, and the ambiance....

We have the cheapest natural gas in the country, but I'll be damned if I turn on the furnace.... Even if buying wood at 170 a cord costs more then the nattie gas....

With all that said, people have the right to make their price, and idiots have the right to buy. The problem is that many of the quantities stated by sellers are downright deceiving. This is where people get frustrated, because it takes advantage of people that don't know better. That is why many states require would to be sold in cord measurements and nothing else.

Just because some old person falls for it, doesn't mean that it is the "market" at work. Don't kid yourselves.

A free market is only a free market when fraud and coercion are aggressively discouraged.

 

[leaf4952]

I get a cord of mixed mostly hardwoods for $150 pr cord. Guess being a girl still counts for something guys !

 

[LLigetfa]

Over the last 15 years, I've seen a cord of wood go from $60 to $95. Gas/Oil over the same period has increased way more. I don't know about this girl theory WRT price, but the wife does the wood buying. Once it's delivered she washes her hands of it. The wood becomes my job. Guess being a girl still counts for something!

 

[North of 60]

Over the last 15 years, I've seen a cord of wood go from $60 to $95. Gas/Oil over the same period has increased way more. I don't know about this girl theory WRT price, but the wife does the wood buying. Once it's delivered she washes her hands of it. The wood becomes my job. Guess being a girl still counts for something!

If you have kids, they count for everything.

 

[smokinj]

I get a cord of mixed mostly hardwoods for $150 pr cord. Guess being a girl still counts for something guys !

Id sell you a cord at 100.00!!;-)

 

[michaelthomas]

I guess I can agree with the argument that many of these guys bought their wood last spring and summer when the cost of diesel and logs was sky high, and to make a profit on the cost's incurred then, they would need to be higher. The price of gas and diesel can go down sharply over a realatively short amount of time but wood does not. There are 2 great big pellet manufacturers here in maine and a-lot of paper mills who pay for the pulp wood so there is a-lot of competition as to who gets the log truck to deliver for them. A local tree guy said that he can't do any better price wise than to drive to the Sappi paper mill and sell the wood by the ton to them. If he was going to sell the wood for fire wood he would have to charge $140= per cord in log length to make up for his time and hassle to sell to residential vs just going to the mill and dumping in a log yard and being payed immediately. I just hope that wood prices go down and that I can actually find log length again!

 

[sapratt]

I tried look ing at it and it say the page was flagged and pulled.

 

[LLigetfa]

There are 2 great big pellet manufacturers here in maine and a-lot of paper mills who pay for the pulp wood so there is a-lot of competition as to who gets the log truck to deliver for them.

Pellet manufacturing is usually a by-product of sawmills, not a primary product. Sawmills do compete for the same hardwood species that are desirable for firewood.

Pulp and paper mills tend to consume softwoods and some hardwoods like Poplar and are not in direct competition with hardwoods used for firewood. They do however compete for the trucks that haul and the cutters. Most haulers don't have self-unloaders as the customer has the equipment to unload them. The few haulers that do have self-unloaders are in high demand.

There also is an OSB plant nearby that does compete for hardwoods. The haulers with self-unloaders are also having difficulty finding supplies of firewood to deliver.

 

[InTheRockies]

Way too many gougers everywhere, but it's catching up to them. People are being more careful as their money buys less. I'm in a national forest, so supply isn't an issue (the bears, especially grizzlies and we have quite a few here, are for me before hibernation). This year the locals who try to sell firewood have really gotten lazy, they're trying to sell huge, un-split rounds that they've simply loaded directly from the forest for $200-$300 a "cord." (Forest permits cost $20 and authorize you to collect 4 cords from the forest so their total cost, if they're collecting legally, is $5.00 a cord.) Not surprisingly, people aren't buying this stuff and you see the same trucks loaded with these huge rounds sitting with for sale signs for weeks on end. For $175, the nearby mill will deliver a large dump truck of seasoned lodgepole pine. The mill is doing very well and can't keep up with orders. I got a dump truck load earlier this year and once I had cut, split and stacked it I had 565 cf.