I was reading a good article about the Ga timber industry and it was claiming the lumber yards getting bought up from canadian companies and pretty much becoming monopolies. The mom and pop smaller ones cant compete. And if you want your timber cut, there just aren't as many within a 100 miles radius of you as there used to be and these big companies and offering the land/timber owner pennies...take it or leave it type of stuff. There just isn't any competition anymore. Land/timber owners are bending over and taking it.
Part of the problem is huge corporations like Home Depot and Lowe's pushed smaller lumber yards out of business, and the huge retailers only want to deal with huge suppliers so they minimize the number of suppliers. Forty years ago Bob's lumber yard would buy from Joe's lumber mill, but Bob was put out of business by Home Depot, and Joe wasn't a blip on Home Depot's radar, so he's out of business, too, along with all the local loggers. Therefore, local families don't have a market for their 100 acres of timber even though lumber prices are unbelievably high.
