Ethics question

Yesterday I was called by a friend who owns an excavating business. In my opinion, this guy is as honest as a person can get and he is well-regarded and well-liked by all of his customers. He was clearing a lot in a nearby town and knew that I was looking for firewood. He offered to deliver "four cords" in his tandem dump truck, log-length, for $200. I said great, bring it on.

So he shows up late afternoon, loaded full with decent hardwood - mostly ash and cherry with a single massive butternut log. Laying on the ground, it sure doesn't look like four cords, but I don't say anything. It's nice firewood that all I have to do is buck and split.

As I got to thinking about it, I realized that this wasn't anywhere near four cords, and I was probably going to be lucky to get two cords out of the pile. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, an 18-cy dump body only works out to about 3-1/2 cords when fully loaded with C/S/S firewood. That's assuming 128 CF/cord, and in reality, loose packed is closer to 170-180 CF/cord. Being log length, there's also a lot of empty space in the truck bed. Truck bed 18' long x 7' wide x 3-1/2' deep (estimated) = 441 CF.

So, I'm going to cut, split and stack on pallets and I think I should show him, because the next guy who asks for firewood, and doesn't know him as well as I do, is gonna be pretty upset when he expected 4 cords and got two. Only thing I can think of is that he's got "face cords" on his mind, which is more realistic but still not a legit unit of measure. I cut 20" long, so a face cord to me is 25% more wood than to someone who only cuts 16" long.

I'm not upset about it (especially because it's still a good deal at $100/cord even if only two cords), but I think I should warn him before he gets in trouble from someone else. What do you guys think?

Well, I came home Friday night to find that he had dumped two more (slightly larger) loads in my driveway, and he called me Saturday morning and said he was on his way with yet a fourth load. The fourth load, he said, was "free" as it was only about a half load. At this point I had said nothing to him yet.

So he shows up, dumps the fourth load and I said exactly what I wrote above. He smiled and said he'd already had a customer a couple of years ago that was indeed upset, claimed that he got far less wood than was expected. I said 'well do you tell people they are getting four cords of wood for $200, or a dump truck load (quantity undetermined) for $200?' He said 'dump truck load; I tell them my estimate of how many cords I think are on the truck, and by the way I charge most people more than $200 for a load. Except for that one guy, nobody's ever complained'. I said, well I'm not complaining either, just trying to make sure you don't get in trouble.

So the four loads probably is going to work out to between 10 and 12 cords of wood, for $600. Not a bad deal. It is a pretty even mix of butternut, cherry, black birch, soft maple and ash. Few small red oak sticks too.

Best part is, for the same price, he will be clearing black locust in a few weeks and will be bringing me truckloads of sawlogs for locust boards and beams. I said I'll take all he's got to offer.

iamlucky13 said:

Do you sell the locust lumber that you saw or do you have a use for it yourself?

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Self. I don't like pressure-treated wood, so I use locust whenever and wherever I can for exterior projects.

One packed-full dump truck load of 100% black locust showed up last evening. Got a few smaller sawlogs and a few decent straight pieces for fenceposts, so I'll probably yield 1-1/2 cords of firewood from what's left over.