Facebook Marketplace laugh of the day.

[Dmitry]

Apparently, inflation hit wood market. You better get this before price goes up for the “twigs”.

 

[begreen]

Inflated notions have been around for a long time. We have a local guy that keeps amping up the price of scrounged wood. His cords are more like half-cords and that is if he can borrow a truck to deliver. A 5 mile trip in his truck with seriously expired plates is a dubious proposition.

 

[Ashful]

A lot depends on where you live. Selling unsplit scrounged wood around here would be like trying to sell snow in Minnesota, but if you live in a more urban area...

There's a new bike trail that connects my neighborhood down to center city Philadelphia. Laying along both sides of the trail are miles and miles (literally) of full straight trunks of ash and oak, from clearing for the trail 18 months ago. More than you could shake a stick at, and it appears that after a year and a half, still no one has touched it.

 

[Simonkenton]

It is a decent load of maple, but he trying to get someone to haul off a load of garbage [twigs] for free.

 

[ericm979]

A lot depends on where you live. Selling unsplit scrounged wood around here would be like trying to sell snow in Minnesota, but if you live in a more urban area...

There's a new bike trail that connects my neighborhood down to center city Philadelphia. Laying along both sides of the trail are miles and miles (literally) of full straight trunks of ash and oak, from clearing for the trail 18 months ago. More than you could shake a stick at, and it appears that after a year and a half, still no one has touched it.

Probably because you can't drive a truck on the bike trail to go pick it up.

There's a lot of down trees right next to a fire road in the local park but they're just sitting there adding to the fuel load because the park people aren't removing them. I haven't asked (I have plenty of wood to deal with already) but I doubt they'd let anyone pick it up due to liability.

 

[Woody Stover]

There's a new bike trail that connects my neighborhood down to center city Philadelphia. Laying along both sides of the trail are miles and miles (literally) of full straight trunks of ash and oak, from clearing for the trail 18 months ago. More than you could shake a stick at, and it appears that after a year and a half, still no one has touched it.

Probably because you can't drive a truck on the bike trail to go pick it up.

Being a guy who will use whatever's at hand to get the job done, and doesn't mind the extra time it takes to work with a minimum of equipment, I'm surprised he hasn't put a few extra pound of air in his bike tires and gone after that stuff! 😆

 

[Ashful]

Being a guy who will use whatever's at hand to get the job done, and doesn't mind the extra time it takes to work with a minimum of equipment, I'm surprised he hasn't put a few extra pound of air in his bike tires and gone after that stuff! 😆

The trail cuts through and along private property the entire way, and I'm friends with most of the property owners along this particular trail connector, as is pretty much everyone in this tight-knit community. So, legal access wouldn't be a problem, no need to drive a truck on the bike trail, you could easily pull it out through the woodlands or fields of the properties through which the bike trail runs.

But eric was right to call out "access" as the issue, nonetheless. With more hardwood either standing dead or already on the ground than the sum of woodburners in our community can consume, even cutting a path through a neighbor's woods to access said "trail wood" makes it less desirable than something that can be grabbed without having to do that.

In fact, what I see laying there is mostly 12" to 24" diameter hickory, oak, and ash logs presently laying in lengths of 15 - 25 feet. I'm not seeing a lot of smaller stuff, so it's possible that neighbors have indeed been scrounging that up, unless the company hired to cut that trail connector just ground up and hauled away the branch wood. While those logs are ideal hauling wood for my setup (I only take full straight logs), most might be looking for smaller stuff they can drag home without a big trailer-mounted winch or crane.

Oh, and "the sum of woodburners"? Judging from visible stovepipes, and how often I see or smell smoke from them, I'd estimate about 80% of local households have a woodburning appliance. Maybe 10% of households are running them 24/7 for at least portions of the winter, rough guess. I'd bet that only 1 in 20 or 1 in 30 (3% to 5%) run them full-time through the entire season.