A ton of wood = ?

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Skier76

Minister of Fire
Apr 14, 2009
1,468
CT and SoVT
I saw in ad in our local weekly paper in VT. Someone is selling firewood by the ton for $185. Any idea how much wood that "roughly" is? I'm all set for wood, the ad just caught my interest.
 
Dunno about VT, but here in Ohio, it's not legal to sell firewood in anything but cords.

A ton of wood = ? is about right.... Because "?" is about as good a guess as you can get.

The density of different types of wood can vary greatly, which will vary the weight of a cord significantly.

Green wood will also weigh a lot more than properly seasoned wood. When paying by the ton, especially for green wood, one would be paying a lot of money for water that hopefully will evaporate by the time the wood is burned as fuel.

-SF
 
P.S. I'd stay away from that seller.... (i know you said you were good for firewood, just throwing that out there)
 
Just call them up and ask...probably a small operator that already got an over weight ticket. If you come back and say ..' it's a cord and half of maple and ash' we'll have a better idea.
 
Maybe 1/3 to 1/2 cord, depending on species & moisture content. Example: wood that weighed out at 40 lbs/ft³ ( a reasonable number), would be 5120 lbs/cord, or a little over 2 1/2 tons. So a ton of that wood would be about 0.4 cord. Rick
 
A cord of green oak weighs over 2 tons think about that...


Ray
 
interchangabLEE said:
I weighed a 2 year seasoned 16-18" face cord of red oak/hickory not to long ago and it came in at 1900 lbs on a certified scale at a feed mill.

Yeah, those are heavy woods. The Red Oak prob'ly around 45#/ft³. The Hickory, depending on the species and the local growing characteristic, could be well over 50#/ft³. Rick
 
There is a very good reason that many states prohibit selling firewood by weight

Initially, same cord measure of different species can vary dramatically: example oak=6000#/cord pine=3600
Secondly, unseasoned wood will easily weigh 25-30% more than same batch when ready to burn

Basically, wood by weight is buying pig in poke
 
woolybugger said:
A ton of wood is 2000lbs. Hope that helps
Golly, wooly, that's purdy heavy. I bet a ton of feathers is a heck of a lot lighter!
 
fossil said:
Maybe 1/3 to 1/2 cord, depending on species & moisture content. Example: wood that weighed out at 40 lbs/ft³ ( a reasonable number), would be 5120 lbs/cord, or a little over 2 1/2 tons. So a ton of that wood would be about 0.4 cord. Rick

Buyer bewayre that he might be buying 1,200lbs of water in cottonwood containers.

That said, once seasoned, all species contain about the same number of btu's per pound. Just takes more volume of seasoned popple or pine to make a pound, than say rock maple or white oak.
 
I'll take a ton of balsa, would be almost 2 cords. ;-P
 
Those charts were really helpful. Amazing how much that stuff weighs green. Unless you're getting a really really really dry pine, there's no way you'll get close to a cord.
 
smokinjay said:
http://mb-soft.com/juca/print/firewood.html

That second chart is great. I bet it had nothing to do with science and they actually just got 30 guys together to hang out and rank the greatest firewood of all time.
 
When I saw that OP, I thought, wow! Stay far away from that.
 
I don't see a problem with selling wood by the ton. It's been going on for years. Papermills, biomass, and chipboard plants buy this way.
Going rate has been $25-$40/ton for log length for as long as I can remember and this is usually what log haulers base there firewood prices on.

$185 ton is rediculous for green or seasoned. Buyer beware.
 
I don't really know anything about selling pulpwood, but I overhead a couple loggers talking about how the area papermill buys wood from them by the ton, not the cord. This was a few years ago.
interchangabLEE said:
I don't see a problem with selling wood by the ton. It's been going on for years. Papermills, biomass, and chipboard plants buy this way.
Going rate has been $25-$40/ton for log length for as long as I can remember and this is usually what log haulers base there firewood prices on.

$185 ton is rediculous for green or seasoned. Buyer beware.
 
the mills buying wood for paper, chips, lumber, etc it may be perfectly acceptable to buy by the ton. but most states say that FIREWOOD must be sold by the cord or fraction there of.
 
PapaDave said:
woolybugger said:
A ton of wood is 2000lbs. Hope that helps

Well, there 'ya go.
Just to clarify, a ton of anything is 2000 lbs., or in less absolute terms, "holy crap that's a ton of wood"!

Not to be confused with a sh!t-ton of wood, or even odder a metric tonne =>2200 lbs
 
If I'm a mill buying wood, then the ton is a good way to measure it. it's green almost guaranteed, so there's no question about how much wood you are getting.

Now, for firewood, then we have a different story. If there was a way that we could ensure a certain moisture level in ALL firewood, then weight would be the way to go and would in fact, probably be the best way to measure it short of telling someone how many BTUs they are buying from you (kinda like buying therms from the gas company)
 
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