Got a Tri-Axle Load Today

[PapaDave]

5.5 hours? I spend that much time thinking about what I'm going to do.

Pretty funny.
Heck, I'm just finishing up my coffee at that point, THEN I start thinking. By the time all that's done, I just stay in the house. It's easier that way. :lol:

 

[fire_man]

Bleh. Marquis was a company I contacted that said they wouldn't deliver out this far.

Damn shame about the beetles. So much wood going to waste!

Those Marquis guys delivered me a grapple load. One of the trees turned out to be a four foot diameter cottonwood. At first I was pissed, but I have come to enjoy the cottonwood for stretch fires, shoulder season and start-up fires. I am in Northern MA and delivery was no problem.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Many times if we figure just how much we save by an hourly rate we are a bit behind. It is sort of like my neighbor who likes to always tell that we can buy vegetables in the store cheaper than we can grow them. He is very correct on that too. However, those will never come close to tasting as good as the ones we grow. I love it when we sit down to eat a meal and know that almost everything on the table we produced in some way. I can also tend the crops to make them good.

It is sort of the same thing with the wood. There is just something about going out in the woods and cutting the wood, bringing it home and then splitting and stacking. Then we have to also bring it into the house. We have to clean up the mess. We have to clean the stove and the chimney. We have to empty the ashes, etc., etc. But doesn't it just give you a great feeling providing for your family with your own two hands?! I get immense pleasure just from standing once in a while and looking at my wood piles. I also get pleasure in the fall when suddenly it turns chilly and we get that first fire of the season. I put up that wood myself! I cut the tree. I limbed the tree and cut the wood to firewood length. I loaded that wood in the trailer and hauled it up to the splitting pile where I would then split the wood once the snow melted and then I'd stack it. When you look at the whole thing, it is a lot of work....but I love it and the results of it.

 

[okotoks guy]

How long are those logs? What kind of cord count did they estimate?

I've got a load on order for June, dropped a year ago (birch, but that's the good stuff here). I was told it will be a solid 9 cords, 45' long. It's my first time on a project like that, and I expect we'll have our hands full for awhile.

I am in a similar boat. Good wood is hard to find and birch is about as good as it gets. Even then
it comes froma long way and cost is a fortune.

Where are you located. What was your cost for 9 cord of birch delivered? (if you don't mind me asking.)

If you are near me, I could lend you my gas splitter to bust through your birch and get it drying quickly.

 

[snowleopard]

I am in a similar boat. Good wood is hard to find and birch is about as good as it gets. Even then it comes froma long way and cost is a fortune.

Where are you located. What was your cost for 9 cord of birch delivered? (if you don't mind me asking.)

If you are near me, I could lend you my gas splitter to bust through your birch and get it drying quickly.

Thank you for the kind offer. Unfortunately, Alberta is a bit too far of a poke to take you up on it. I'm in Fairbanks, AK, about three days' drive from your beautiful province.

The sum they are charging for the nine-cord load, dropped a year ago, is a walloping $1700USD. Sounds staggering until I calculate that this is three winters' worth of the good stuff for me, and that heating with fuel oil (assuming prices don't rise any more) for those three winters would run me nearly 10K. I know that people in some areas--especially where labor prices are low and wood is abundant and winters are mild--pay much less. I get that. That's not our reality.

However, there's a rumor that there's someone around here selling a 10-cord load for $1200, which is why I found myself following a truckload of pretty wood down the road tonight. Everyone else was trying to get around him, and I was trying to stay behind him, calculating cordage and length and diameter, and yearning after all that lovely wood, and when the driver turned off and I kept going, and noticed that another loaded truck that had been behind me also turned off. I turned the car around and headed back and parked behind the second truck. The driver of the second truck had been out conferring with someone, and came back to see what I wanted.

I found myself falling into a sentence that there was no way out of, babbling something to the effect of, "I saw your trucks on the road and was admiring you gentlemen's wood . . . wait. Let me phrase that differently . . . ". I avoided eye contact long enough to allow him to swallow his laughter, proving that he was indeed a gentleman.

He wasn't the one I was looking for, but did have sell four-cord load of green spruce for $500. I've got a lead on some good seasoned spruce (a log cabin that needs to be torn down), so if that pans out, I'm set for mixing wood, but it's good to know he's there.

 

[velvetfoot]

I just finished stacking it.
It was about 6 cords.

 

[ChrisNJ]

I don't know how long the tri-axled truck was. It was the kind with a grapple crane on the back. The logger said 7, but I'm thinking about 6. It was 650. I found someone who sells cut/split/delivered for 160, so what am I saving, 50 bucks a cord? Not sure it's worth the effort, but again, what the hay.

I'm thinking of getting a tri-axle load but wonder if it's really worth it. I can get Oak, cut, split, and delivered for $150 per cord while a tri-axle load goes for $100-120 per cord. Not much savings there.

The problem with a comparison including cut/split and delivered wood is the rarity of an actual cord of wood, I know I have never gotten close to an actual cord and so many posts here indicate I am not alone.

 

[blowell]

Not sure it’s worth the effort, but again, what the hay.

When it comes to splitting wood by hand, the effort is the fun. Have fun!!