Firewood Market

[Soggy Bottom Outdoors]

Hey jymbee, you're probably right. I think the rick measurement became so common locally is that a rick can easily be hauled in a full sized pickup. Thrown in it will come up a little above the bed. By the way what wood varieties are commonly used in your area? I had some friends from Vermont that burned a lot of Maple but down here that trash wood. But here its water maple maybe not the hard maple he used?

 

[IndyIan]

Sugar or 'Hard' maple is the best common wood around here. Red or Silver Maple is OK, and Manitoba Maple isn't worth my time.
Beech is nice too and White Oak is great, Red Oak is fine. I think we have White, Black and Green Ash here too, but I don't know them well enough to say which ones I've burned. Ash is the best for burning green though and splits very nicely. I have a few dead Tamaracks I'll cut this winter, its supposed to be among the best softwoods and has as much BTU's per cord as Red Maple.

 

[deerefan]

Most of you, it seems, are further north. Here in Louisiana, on my place, there are 3 primary trees- pine, oak and gum. I have a couple black walnut and a few mockernut hickory trees. We also have a few of my favorite, cedar. I do not use the fireplace often being we now have central heat. We actually have a heatalator, get the box hot, cut on the blowers and heat the house. I never used pine due to sap and chimney buildup. Gum simply did not burn well, maybe too dense. Water (once cured) and red oak burned great- even, heated up quickly but did not burn too fast. Split very well using my splitting axe.

 

[Steave]

When somebody mentioned supper I heard you calling We still call it breakfast, dinner, and supper.

Around here you hear mostly cord or face cord but sometimes somebody will call it a rick.

Red oak is the first choice, followed by white oak, and then hickory. Of course hickory is used a lot for smoking food but a lot is burnt as firewood. There are some large thickets of hickory around and it burns about the same as red oak but stringy and a little harder to split.

A cord goes for around $180 - $225 delivered and stacked. Most folks in the business buy their wood from the loggers by the truck load and then process it though I'm not sure how much they pay for it but each will tell you they can't go cut it themselves any cheaper.

I know its not much but that's all I know about the firewood business.

On the farm we burn anything that has fallen or about to fall. If it's wood it'll burn.:thumbsup:

 

[dave1949]

Fire wood is sold by the cord here because that is the law. You can sell a half or third cord, but you have to advertise it that way, not as a rick, face cord, etc.

 

[sgtstew]

Lots of folks down here in LA (Lower Alabama) use the term "rank" instead of rick. I asked one merchant what he charge for a rick of wood; he looked at kind funny and said, "whatcha talkin' 'bout".

 

[Gunny]

Up here in Northern Kentucky the most commonly used term for selling firewood is a "truck load"! That almost always works out to a eight foot bed with the firewood thrown in until it's piled slightly higher than the bed rails. I'm sure there are a lot of guys out there that know how to throw it in just right to make it look like you're getting more than you think you are.
Around the smaller towns, a pickup load runs from $45-65, some take it into the bigger cities (Louisville, Cincinnati, Florence, etc) and get right around $125-150, but that involves 50 to 80 miles driving to deliver it.
The big city buyers are usually just people that want to burn in fireplaces, but locally a lot of people use it for primary or secondary heat and I've often wondered if they were really saving any money by spending that much for the wood.
I burn wood in the garage and wood shop, and it's usually locust, plenty of it around here and it does well since I'm there to tend to the fire and add more as needed. Growing up we used a lot of hackberry (good to stoke the stove at night with), a lot of hickory (I never liked that, but Dad did and he made the rules), cherry and white oak. We also burned quite a bit of honey locust, but it had so many thorns, it was a lot of work to take a hatchet and clean them up. You'd always miss some and always find them when you went out to the woodpile at night to get a load!

 

[sam5570]

Up here in Northern Kentucky the most commonly used term for selling firewood is a "truck load"! That almost always works out to a eight foot bed with the firewood thrown in until it's piled slightly higher than the bed rails. I'm sure there are a lot of guys out there that know how to throw it in just right to make it look like you're getting more than you think you are.
Around the smaller towns, a pickup load runs from $45-65, some take it into the bigger cities (Louisville, Cincinnati, Florence, etc) and get right around $125-150, but that involves 50 to 80 miles driving to deliver it.
The big city buyers are usually just people that want to burn in fireplaces, but locally a lot of people use it for primary or secondary heat and I've often wondered if they were really saving any money by spending that much for the wood.
I burn wood in the garage and wood shop, and it's usually locust, plenty of it around here and it does well since I'm there to tend to the fire and add more as needed. Growing up we used a lot of hackberry (good to stoke the stove at night with), a lot of hickory (I never liked that, but Dad did and he made the rules), cherry and white oak. We also burned quite a bit of honey locust, but it had so many thorns, it was a lot of work to take a hatchet and clean them up. You'd always miss some and always find them when you went out to the woodpile at night to get a load!

yeah same thing around here you either buy a pickup load or the loggers will deliver you a dump truck load of logs you cut and split to suit yourself the dump truck load turns out a cord and half you pay $160 thats how get mine every year i keep a year ahead or more now i probably got a winter worth of wood down on my fences and in the moutain rd the pickup loads sell for $60to $85 depends on how cold it is when you call them i have sold a lot of loads on 8 ft bed as high as i could stck it for $40

 

[Ken45101]

In Ohio, the only legal way to sell firewood is by the cord, legally defined as 4x4x8, tightly stacked. From what I've seen, most of the reality is that it's sold by the "truckload" which may be undefined.

I remember years ago calling an ad in the paper and asking how much wood per load and the told me "It's a really big truck, it has lots of gears" !!!! I didn't explore further.

 

[jymbee]

By the way what wood varieties are commonly used in your area? I had some friends from Vermont that burned a lot of Maple but down here that trash wood. But here its water maple maybe not the hard maple he used?

Most plentiful would be maple, ash, and black cherry. Depending on location white/black/yellow birch, ironwood, and beechnut are also common. Hardly any oak in my immediate vicinity but not that far away there's plenty of it. Always interesting to see where the different species take hold. In the fall when the leaves change is as good time to spot the different concentrations of trees as each has it's own color characteristics.

Hard or "Sugar" Maple is among my favorites but the softer maples such as silver, red, swamp etc. are fine by me. I heat primarily with wood and like a variety of types and sizes. Smaller pieces of ash & black cherry for example to get a fire going and larger chunks of hard maple, or beech for those overnight burns. But like others here report, nothing goes to waste and from time to time I'll burn wood that some around here avoid such as poplar, willow, or elm.