Stacking a cord of wood

There's a lot of variables here.

How close to the split wood will you be stacking?

Long, continuous stacks or shorter stacks with cribbed ends?

What types of wood, straight grained or curly stuff?

What size are the splits?

Are you actually stacking or just tossing into a predetermined area that equates to cord volume?

My honest opinion - even if you are stacking right next to the splits pile, 4-5 cord in an hour is extremely fast and close to impossible. How much are they paying you per cord?

nouknouk said:

I heard that the guys that were working there last year were doing about 4-5 cords per hour.

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We have no way of knowing what they/you mean by "cording" the wood. Maybe you mean scooping it into piles with a front-end loader? Remember the lyrics to John Henry, about an extremely hard day's work in a coal mine? You load sixteen tons, what do you get? One cord of fresh-cut oak weighs nearly 3 tons so 4-5 cords, for example, is in the range of 11-15 tons. Per hour.

Yes it all depends. Are you stacking the wood directly out of a loader bucket, no bending or lifting and at most one step? That would be near perfect conditions and would be pretty quick. Are you building ends? That takes a lot of time. If you need to pick up and move the wood across the yard yourself it will be much slower. The other question would be are you talking about a regulation 128 cu foot cord or something like a face cord that could be considerably less. If they are face cords you can easily do 4-5 an hour. If they are true cords you might be able to do 4-5 in one hour under perfect conditions, including someone feeding you. Whatever you do, get good at stacking airspace into the wood if you are getting paid by volume.

You got a motivational speech -

Translate - one guy stacked 5 cords once and he made $20 that hour.

Sustainable pace likely 2-3 cord/hr, 9 - 13 $hr not bad for unskilled labor

gerry100 said:

Sustainable pace likely 2-3 cord/hr, 9 - 13 $hr not bad for unskilled labor

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I can't imagine stacking full cords at that pace either, but it sounds like the OP is talking about face cords which is doable. Even so, $9-$13/hour could be a bad deal if it's cash under the table. This is a job on which you could easily be injured. Worker's comp is kinda important.