As a forester on the raw material side of things it's been a real interesting year to say the least. I think regionally, we've really suffered blows by losing a paper mill who was a major purchaser of low grade wood in the Northeast region. Not having low grade markets makes it awfully tough to produce sawlogs. Because realistically you can't go onto a woodlot and just cut sawlogs. There's going to be residual tops and debris that you need the low grade markets for in order for the operation to be feasible. Loggers all across the Northeast have been straddled by weak low grade markets the last year which is absolutely no doubt having affects on raw saw logs going into saw mills. As a sawmill; demand for lumber is sky high going out the door, but the log supply coming in is also very low. It's the perfect storm. The prices some of these mills are paying on raw logs is astronomical. They're desperate for wood.
I think in west most low quality wood goes into chips and OSB. The mills had a hard push filling the log yards going into spring breakup so they wouldn't run out with the high prices. They closed down one of our OSB plant in 2018 and consolidated operations, I'll bet they wish they had kept two plants going now.
