First question is...is your logger honest. If he is, then you'll find out what the real price is.
^^^^THIS^^^^
And your forested!
Dirty, dirty business, worked in it, family and friends also.
In this area most loggers are not contracted by the mills.
They are a middleman between the owner and mill.
The best deal will be on a share agreement with an honest logger.
He can pay you good money for a good log, without getting screwed on
one that's junk. If he buy the lot, he has to put a buffer in his favor to cover
unexpected bad wood.
Board feet is easily estimated, quality isn't.
Foresters!
These are professional people.
Procede with caution. You have a white collar guy on the edge of a working job.
The common perception is "Hire a forester! He will mark you timber, bid it out. Top $ for you."
Maybe?
He is in the utimate position to screw you.
All he needs to do is short his report a little, downgrade quality a little.
Now your trees are gonna sell cheap, to someone who knows what they are worth. Someone friendly to him. $$
We had at least one of those here. The guys I worked for would cruise any job of his
they were interested in, and often they got the bid because they found better wood than the report.
Often, we were getting bids that included pulpwood, and we didn't even take the pulpwood.
But that's how far off the forester was, we got the high bid, not even figuring part of the value in the bid.
