Lumber future vs cord wood price?

[zmender]

I'm wondering if y'all had seeing correlations between lumber price and cord wood price before? Just read an article on business insider where lumber futures down to 9-month low due to demand drop in new housing as combination of interest rate, inflation, and housing price.

Lumber prices just hit their lowest point in 9 months as mortgage demand sinks to levels not seen in 2 decades

"Some parts of town where finished homes are now taking a month to sell versus hours. Market is definitely correcting," a home builder in Texas said.

markets.businessinsider.com

 

[peakbagger]

I doubt there is a lot. Most hardwood forestry operations treat firewood as a waste product that they can make a few bucks on if they haul it out of the woods. Its really the cost to haul it out and process it into firewood is what sets the cost. My guess is the cost of firewood is far more influenced by the cost of fossil fuel used for heating.

 

[Ashful]

I doubt there is lot. Most hardwood forestry operations treat firewood as a waste product that they can make a few bucks on if they haul it out of the woods. Its really the cost to haul it out and process it into firewood is what sets the cost. My guess is the cost of firewood is far more influenced by the cost of fossil fuel used for heating.

... and the same fuel trends affecting cost of hauling and processing. Agreed with your premise, though. Lumber pricing is set by housing demand vs. supply, firewood price set by fossil fuel costs.

 

[SpaceBus]

I've been keeping an eye on lumber prices since I got a mill in summer 2020. The log prices haven't changed much since 2019, so I'm surprised cord wood has been up anywhere. I do expect fuel wood to be more expensive with higher FF pricing, people like to make money when they can. Not only will the cost to process the firewood go up, but the higher prices of heating fuels will drive more firewood sales, and the price, up.

 

[Sawset]

The fuel to run the splitter here is about 1/2 gallon / cord. Diesel to move it around - 2gallons gets me about 3hrs of tractor time. To haul it 10mi would be a gallon or more. I'm not quite seeing the correlation of fuel to process and cordwood pricing. But I do see a lot of wood burning people that get pretty serious about it when other fuel prices are up. A lot of people around here are capable of burning. When heating costs sored in 2007, it was surprising how much wood suddenly appeared - on front porches, driveways, in horse trailers backed up to their back doors. But they weren't burning 2x4s, or mill slabs

 

[SpaceBus]

The environment is an absolute mess because people put economic cost above all other priorities. This is the reason LA is covered in smog.

 

[SpaceBus]

Los Angeles or Louisiana? Regardless, the average "LA" resident generate much less pollution than the average Maine resident, but Los Angeles is so expensive, we cannot afford! Cut, cut, slash the cost!

I am talking about Los Angeles, and I'm not sure I agree with the "less pollution" thing. You have to take into account that most of CA is a desert with no water. All that water has to come from somewhere. There is a bigger picture to all of this.

 

[Stinkpickle]

Firewood prices in these parts are most dependent on the number of recent severe storms.

 

[ericm979]

The environment is an absolute mess because people put economic cost above all other priorities. This is the reason LA is covered in smog.

The reason for smog in LA is A) there's 19 million people in the greater LA area, and B) it's a basin surrounded by mountains on three sides and the prevailing wind comes from the fourth side. The smog gets trapped in there.

And no, California is not mostly desert. The southern 1/3 of California is. There's a lot of trees and mountains in the rest of the state. Even SoCal has a lot of trees and mountains.

 

[SpaceBus]

The reason for smog in LA is A) there's 19 million people in the greater LA area, and B) it's a basin surrounded by mountains on three sides and the prevailing wind comes from the fourth side. The smog gets trapped in there.

And no, California is not mostly desert. The southern 1/3 of California is. There's a lot of trees and mountains in the rest of the state. Even SoCal has a lot of trees and mountains.

Trees don't mean it's not a high desert. The lack of precipitation is what classifies it as a desert. There would be no smog in LA if people placed environmental health as a top priority rather than economic cost. I love how everyone is acting like industrial processes and concentrating people is not the reason for smog.

 

[ericm979]

Definition of desert | Dictionary.com

Desert definition, a region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all: The Sahara is a vast sandy desert. See more.

www.dictionary.com

​

desert​

[ dez-ert ]


See synonyms for: desert / deserted / deserting / deserts on Thesaurus.com

---

noun
a region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all: The Sahara is a vast sandy desert.
any area in which few forms of life can exist because of lack of water, permanent frost, or absence of soil.
an area of the ocean in which it is believed no marine life exists.

 

[SpaceBus]

Thanks for validating what I said. I'm also an environmental science major and last week we covered desert biomes, among other things.

 

[bholler]

LA uses the wrong way of concentrating people. People have to drive car to anywhere, car exhaust becomes smog.
Singapore is the right way of concentrating people -- build tall, and connect densely built areas with transit.

Agreed but you can't deny that many of our ongoing environmental issues are due to the attitude that saving money is the most important thing. Or maximizing profits which is basically the same thing.

 

[bholler]

Yes I agree it causes environmental problems, but cash is a hard constraint for the poor, so the poor WILL use the cheapest despite whatever pollution.
And it's legitimate, considering businesses owned by the rich pollute much more than the poor combined.
To fix the environment, we have to fix inequality.

before inequality is fixed, what technicians and engineers can do, is to make the cheapest way not pollute so much.
a good example: rocket mass heater instead of fireplace.

Well rocket mass heaters are the current fad. There absolutely is value in them but many of the claims made are completely absurd.

And really there are very very few people actually trying to heat with open fireplaces.


Btw none of us said it was mainly the poor who pollute the most because of economics. That absolutely isn't true

 

[SpaceBus]

Indeed, poor people are responsible for a tiny fraction of carbon emissions. Especially when you do a life cycle analysis of most products.

 

[SpaceBus]

Anyway, back to lumber. It's back down, but I wouldn't call it cheap. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber I could still operate my chainsaw mill at a profit, a slim one, but still a profit.

 

[bunfoolio]

Agreed but you can't deny that many of our ongoing environmental issues are due to the attitude that saving money is the most important thing. Or maximizing profits which is basically the same thing.

Maximizing profit is also the maximization of effiency. Not sure what you are getting at here. The only way to negate humanaties impact on the enviroment is to end humanity. Is that what you want?

 

[bholler]

Maximizing profit is also the maximization of effiency. Not sure what you are getting at here. The only way to negate humanaties impact on the enviroment is to end humanity. Is that what you want?

No maximizing profits and maximizing efficiency are very different things. They can absolutely be closely related or completely opposite.

I am not talking about negating human impact on the environment. But we can certainly reduce it allot. Ignoring the environment will end humanity sooner or later.

 

[ABMax24]

Back to firewood costs. One needs to also consider the cost (and rising costs) of labor in any given area. If labor rates go up, logically so does the cost of firewood as it is labor intensive to harvest, cut, and split the wood. If you're a small business paying employees you probably need to pay them more now. If your a single person operation you likely need to charge more to justify continuing the business vs getting a job employed by others.

Looking online right now I can get a cord of spruce, pine or poplar (no we don't have hardwoods here) for $300. If I paid myself $15/hr I would be about that price after paying for fuel, and wear and tear on my truck and saw.

 

[peakbagger]

One of the sad outcomes of working in a rural area where the economy collapsed due to major plant closings is that some folks are unable or unwilling to move to find work or get retraining to get reemployed. The standard script is the government usually comes into town with training and enhanced unemployment benefits to try to carrot and stick folks into getting retrained but usually there are some retraining programs offered that are just placeholders for folks to keep getting their unemployment benefits. Eventually they run out and then the disability firms start advertising, and some percentage of unemployed folks go on disability. There are numerous hard to prove long term medical issues that the right law firm (paid by the government) can suggest to get the claim approved on the second round. This gets the person off the state unemployment roles and onto the federal governments budget. Those folks are now paid not to work, frequently their spouses work in health care or retirement homes with benefits, and not allowed to work yet they do so under the table and selling firewood for cash is one of many ways to make a buck. If they are worried about getting caught, they just say that they are cutting firewood for their own use.

 

[bholler]

Chips are better than cord wood because it dries faster and can be pumped/augered like pellets.

What residential stoves on the market burn chips?

 

[bholler]

One of the sad outcomes of working in a rural area where the economy collapsed due to major plant closings is that some folks are unable or unwilling to move to find work or get retraining to get reemployed. The standard script is the government usually comes into town with training and enhanced unemployment benefits to try to carrot and stick folks into getting retrained but usually there are some retraining programs offered that are just placeholders for folks to keep getting their unemployment benefits. Eventually they run out and then the disability firms start advertising, and some percentage of unemployed folks go on disability. There are numerous hard to prove long term medical issues that the right law firm (paid by the government) can suggest to get the claim approved on the second round. This gets the person off the state unemployment roles and onto the federal governments budget. Those folks are now paid not to work, frequently their spouses work in health care or retirement homes with benefits, and not allowed to work yet they do so under the table and selling firewood for cash is one of many ways to make a buck. If they are worried about getting caught, they just say that they are cutting firewood for their own use.

We see it in this area allot. Most of our major factories have shut down. Every time we advertise for help we get a pretty big portion of the people asking if we will pay cash so they don't loose their benifits.

 

[bholler]

Can the same folks run a chicken coop, pig farm or fish pond, or grow veggies and mushrooms?
Farmers' market has more affluent buyers than firewood.

Did you miss the point that they are getting disability payments?

 

[bholler]

If they can hide the firewood sales from IRS, why can't they hide the food sales?

They shouldn't be hiding anything. And private cash sales of some firewood would be much easier than sales at a farmers market.

 

[SpaceBus]

Maximizing profit is also the maximization of effiency. Not sure what you are getting at here. The only way to negate humanaties impact on the enviroment is to end humanity. Is that what you want?

What kind of efficiency? Doing something fast is efficient, but it might also be messy or hazardous. Efficiency isn't everything.

Labor is quite replaceable by capital for the proper scale of operation.

Two essential equipment for producing wood chips from bush/shrub, bush cutter and wood chipper trailer, are priced $10K-$150K each for different sizes (0.5-2 times of an employee's annual wages) Chips are better than cord wood because it dries faster and can be pumped/augered like pellets.

Like @bholler said, firewood is usually a byproduct of forestry and sawmills, rather than dedicated production, but I cannot see what stops dedicated harvesting of bush/shrub if prices are high enough. Right now, the west coast have shubby hills that burst into wildfire every year that they cannot afford harvesting

I disagree with most of what you said. Chips only work for industrially sized boilers and CHP plants. There is actually a resident expert, @peakbagger who may give us some more information about the topic.

Also harvesting all of the native plants in a desert biome is the definition of unsustainable. Those shrubs take decades to grow that size with the limited precipitation offered in a desert.

Have you ever run a wood chipper/shredder? They are hard work and very labor intensive machines to operate. I think your figures need some more attention as well. Not only does $10k not come anywhere close to buying a machine that could provide usable quantities of sized biomass, but it's also a lot more than half of a person's wages for a year. Not to mention these machines require maintenance and fuel.