Has the price of firewood dropped due to less demand this winter?

[Dune]

In your area?

 

[blujacket]

Nope

 

[Stevebass4]

i dont buy it but i'd say nope - cause the labor it takes to produce firewood and the gas used in the saws / splitter hasn't gone down

 

[daveswoodhauler]

Adds on Craiglist here in North Central Mass seemed to be about the asme as the last few year. My supplier still gets $175 c/s/d (green)

 

[firefighterjake]

Less demand? If anything I've seen more demand this year with the price of heating oil. Prices on wood seem to hold pretty steady though regardless of the demand.

 

[muncybob]

Don't know about the demand around here but based on the newspaper and CL ads I've seen I would say no.
Been a "winter that wasn't" so far, still about 50% of this year's wood still in the shed. I think we are past the really cold temps but I'm told I may need the plow back on the truck this weekend

 

[Jags]

Around here they seem to be about the same or a bit higher than last year, according to the signs in the yards.

 

[Pat53]

No drop in prices around here either. The paper mills around here are paying over $100/cord for hardwood pulp, so anyone looking for log length wood is having to pay up. Face cords are about $60-$65, $70-$75 delivered

 

[Dune]

Saw some significant droppage here. Average price about 25% lower for seasoned. Could be an additional factor here of being more vendors as well.

 

[PapaDave]

Nope. Still see the ads in local paper for c/s/d at about 180/cord. Price went up a bit a couple years ago, will probably increase in another couple. Or, tomorrow.

 

[StuckInTheMuck]

Saw some significant droppage here. Average price about 25% lower for seasoned. Could be an additional factor here of being more vendors as well.

Dune, Where does your firewood come from? Is there enough white oak harvested on the cape to support the local markets or do they have to truck it in from elsewhere? Don't remember there being much else other than a lot of white oak, a little black oak and some beech (no pun intended and owned by the seashore) up near P'town. I guess there may be a fair amount of Red Maple in the low lying areas too...

 

[PA Fire Bug]

There are far more ads in our local paper than last year. Prices range from $100 for a pick up load to $140 for a cord. I paid $550 last summer for a tri-axle load of logs. I don't know how many cords it made (I measured once but didn't keep the scrap of paper with my calculations) but I'm glad that I won't need to touch it for two more years if next winter is like this winter. This is only my second winter burning wood. It is great to get ahead. The dry wood that I'm burning now is much better than the wood that I was burning last year.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Last year we noticed a big drop in prices. Some drop from a few this year. The reason for the drop in price is because of so much dead ash and there are many folks trying to sell their ash as firewood. So, with the glut of suppliers, the prices began going down. This winter we've seen just a few go down in price and we've also noticed not as many trying to sell wood. Still, we notice a lot of stacks by the roadside with For Sale signs and usually the price. Most I noticed today was $40 for 1/3 of a cord. Every stack of wood we saw for sale was freshly cut...

 

[Dune]

Saw some significant droppage here. Average price about 25% lower for seasoned. Could be an additional factor here of being more vendors as well.

Dune, Where does your firewood come from? Is there enough white oak harvested on the cape to support the local markets or do they have to truck it in from elsewhere? Don't remember there being much else other than a lot of white oak, a little black oak and some beech (no pun intended and owned by the seashore) up near P'town. I guess there may be a fair amount of Red Maple in the low lying areas too...

Pretty sure it is mostly northern, though a few tree services sell firewood, mostly red oak. Lower Cape has some good stands of locust. Swamp maple around here has green leaves and is soft. What I have scrounged on the Cape is white and red oak, hard and soft maple, cherry apple and pear, peach, beech and birch, and locust,hickory, poplar
and some kind of elm (finnish?) I have also burned holly.

 

[Ratherbfishin]

Unfortunately these mild winters means we will pay for it the next 2 or 3 years so no...the price has remained steady here. Most are stocking up, and like one said the price of oil and gas are projected to go through the roof again like in '08 so most are trying to plan ahead and buy all the wood they can before it too goes sky high.

Steve

 

[Jerry_NJ]

I purchased a cord of split delivered/dumped seasoned hardwood in the fall, September or October, and it was $200, and less than a cord (128 cubic feet). That's about par for the last several years. But, we had an early snow storm here in October and the hardwoods mostly had leaves on them. We were out of power for 4 days and trees or parts of trees were down all over. This was all green wood, but it could make somewhat of a glut in supply next year. I got about a cord off of what came down on my property, it is split and stacked and will be used next year, free plus labor...well I purchased an electric log splitter for a little more than the cost of a cord of wood... I'll count that against my cost and call the splitter "paid for".

 

[LLigetfa]

I can't say what firewood might sell for from one year to the next cuz I don't buy firewood, I buy logs. I buy enough wood to last me a few years so I cannot compare with last year or even the year before that. That said, I paid the same price this year that I did four years ago so prices didn't go up. Over the last 20 years I saw the price go from $60 to $100 for a cord of logs.

 

[ihookem]

It has gone down here a bit. Tons on Craigslist. The easy winter is making many forget about heating with wood. I also hear natural gas is down too. Oil is up like everywhere but many are getting rid of oil and going natural gas if possible.

 

[StuckInTheMuck]

Saw some significant droppage here. Average price about 25% lower for seasoned. Could be an additional factor here of being more vendors as well.

Dune, Where does your firewood come from? Is there enough white oak harvested on the cape to support the local markets or do they have to truck it in from elsewhere? Don't remember there being much else other than a lot of white oak, a little black oak and some beech (no pun intended and owned by the seashore) up near P'town. I guess there may be a fair amount of Red Maple in the low lying areas too...

Pretty sure it is mostly northern, though a few tree services sell firewood, mostly red oak. Lower Cape has some good stands of locust. Swamp maple around here has green leaves and is soft. What I have scrounged on the Cape is white and red oak, hard and soft maple, cherry apple and pear, peach, beech and birch, and locust,hickory, poplar
and some kind of elm (finnish?) I have also burned holly.

Thanks for the reply. Forgot about all the locust out there. I lived off of Pamet Point road in Truro and worked for the UMass doing timber inventory and prescribed fire for the seashore in a place called Lombard Paradise. We always had some difficulty telling between the red and black oak. I couldn't imagine how many scrub oak trees (I think it was the ilicifolia sub species) you'd have to cut to get a cord.. Maybe 250? Only 20 years ago, but seems more like a two decades....

 

[KINGOFTHENORTH]

Ive paid pretty much the same every year for the last 6 years.$175 a cord green,$200 a cord semi seasoned..My next door neighbor is paying $110 a cord tree length(10 cord min.)

 

[seeyal8r]

Yes. Last year at the time of the blizzards/power outages/snow wood was $80/rick. Now I'm seeing it on CL for $45-55/rick. (in Oklahoma a Rick is 1/3 cord)

 

[lukem]

I'm not a buyer, but from the classified ads it appears prices are up slightly over the past couple years.

When the price of energy goes up, so will firewood. It cost more to process (gas/diesel) and it is worth more (versus the cost of heating with nat gas, propane, heating oil, electricity)

 

[JustWood]

Our low grade saw log/polewood price is 40% higher per ton than it ever has been. I can make more $ selling it in log form than processed. We are getting $110-$160/cord for polewood/log loads depending on species.
I'm slowly dismantling the processing side of the business. Sold one processor last summer and the other will be put up for sale this summer . I can get it done cheaper by subcontracting it out.
I don't see prices dropping much if at all in the near future.

 

[brokenknee]

Just had ten cords delivered last Saturday, seventy dollars a cord for red and white oak mix logger cords. The logger did say he WILL have to raise his prices if the price of diesel keeps going up. He stated he typically sells about 2,000 cords of fire wood a year.

 

[blwncrewchief]

I haven't really seen them go down here as we are normally pretty reasonable around here at 150-175 a cord c/s/d. But what I have seen is usually the selection goes down and the price goes up as winter goes on. Usually it is up around 200+ by now and it hasn't budged. In fact I saw 125 c/s/d last week.