for those with experience, how does a logging company determine what they will pay for standing timber? and what would he then turn around and sell it to a sawmill for? example, a 100 ft white pine, 30" diameter straight and healthy. how would a logger price that for buying from the landowner and then selling to the mill? hopefully that is clear. i know it varies by location but a rough idea.

It’s a commodity. The market dictates the price and the logger gets a split.

Can of worms,
Infested by snakes.


The business makes used cars look clean and transparent.

You talking about the value of this tree, or a property?

Pricing of timber whether it be pulp or hardwood varies. For me, the value of the timber was a bonus. In MI, the programs offered for selective cutting, I couldn't pass up.

For us, being a recreational property, the property taxes were cut in half and it's good for 20 years. Plus coin in the bank for the wood

They will mark trees and use a formula to determine how much board feet by volume and species. There are markets for timber prices so it is simple to come up with a net value. The sawmill usually buys the wood and the landowner gets a percentage and the logger gets a percentage.

Some sawmills have their own foresters and perhaps sub out the logging operation. There are also independent foresters who do all the legwork and then present what they have to the mills to sale it. He handles dividing up the funds.

Bottomline is the landowner gets a percentage, typically 40-50 % of the total value. Just remember stump prices are a long way from what you buy finished product for. There are a lot of hands in the pot from cutting a tree to buying lumber at the lumber store.

I have had properties logged 4 times so I have a pretty good feel for the process. Remember the quality of the job is almost as important as the bottom line.

First question is...is your logger honest. If he is, then you'll find out what the real price is.

In the western softwood market, mostly, the landowner contacts a licensed forester, the forester evaluates the stand, size, grade, species, logging difficulty, environmental hurdles, total expected volume from that stand. Then the forester, who knows his market, contacts the mills buyers, tells them what is being offered. Likely, a forester with a reputation, the mill's buyer will not even go out to look at the proposed job, and make the forester an offer, by species...xxx dollars per thousand bd ft. The forester takes those numbers to the landowner, advises him of his costs, foresters fees, state permits, est. logging cost...sometimes transport will also be on the landowner or on the logger's total cost...anyway, all those moving parts are put together and the forester tells the landowner a ball park estimate of what he will pocket. Papers are signed if it's a go, the forester prepares the logging and rehab plan, state permits are prepared, a logging contractor(s) will come out and go over the plan on the ground with the forester, a deal is reached with the low bid logger...xxx dollars per thousand bd ft, loaded on the mills trucks or delivered to the mill. You, the landowner, sit back and let the checks roll in. If you live out west, log prices are in the basement due to the historic volume of burn salvage available from the the last 2 fire seasons. Hate to be Debbie downer but pine in the west is and will be low forever, the tree farmers in the SE grow that stuff like row crops.

When we had some timber taken off our place the price was set by the mill. The logger cut and transported to the mill and took a cut. Mainly needed some trees removed near the house and where a turureshop will be. Also want to thin and get some of the marketable timber cut before it got too big for the mills.

Like Joel our property is in forest deferral and our taxes are reduced. You have to cut and sell some to keep it in deferral.

i guess what i am trying to figure out is if a mill can get X amount per bf of lumber, what percentage of that would a landowner get? say a bf is $1. would a landowner expect to get 25 cents? if the deal was on the up and up. i think flinlocke laid out the process pretty clear. just wondering on percentage that could be expected.

maybe too many variables. my mind is kind of mush, i been outside in the cold all day shoveling gravel and have a few brews in me. almost bedtime.

Read this at least 10 times...then hire a forester to mark and handle the sale. Money well spent.

^^^^THIS^^^^

Put it up to bid

If you're serious about selling some wood, or serious about improving your forested property, ask around about a forester. University extension offices can help you find good help.
You can get away with a good LOGGER, but there are all sorts of personalities out there. Always go look at jobs the logger has done and see if you like them. My landlord is a logger, his company has done a number of private projects with satisfied customers, but he's not cheap. The right kind of equipment is expensive, and you CAN'T do it yourself unless you're willing to do it every year and never back off.

One final thought. On almost all these projects, when we've gone over the end result, we almost always wish we'd taken just a few more trees, about 2/3 of the clients agreed immediately. Usually looks great and grows even greater, but it grows....so I'd really think hard about taking off just THAT much more, makes results last longer.

this. if 3 bids are good, then 5 might be better.

timber mart south from uga forest resources school might be helpful depending upon what state, etc.

wet years makes tbr more difficult to harvest; dry years makes timber tracts less difficult to harvest in general and on average.

This

Like someone else said, be damn clear about the condition your property is left in, especially if you don’t have the equipment or know how to clean up once they’re gone.

It must vary greatly by region. Here in Coulee country , when my BIL and sister owned the land and still had the dairy they got screwed on logging of their 50 acres of woods, imo, and there were some substantial trees back then, oak , hickory, cherry, walnut, etc. The were paid nowhere near 40 to 50%. The loggers made a mockery of the woods as well. They would destroy a couple dozen young trees and saplings to skid out one mature tree. Tops left everywhere after they had promised to skid them to the fields so I could cut them up. It took many years for the woods to recover and invasives completely over ran some areas which I did my best to remedy with my amish weed eater. The rose bushes and prickly ash have completely taken over some areas. YMMV! Does not matter now though as they had to sell the farm.

You write as though you know the routine

A licensed forester in Wash, Ore, Calif, is your legal representative, acting in your behalf. If he screws you, he will lose his license, reputation and will be legally liable. From some of these posts, it sounds like the east is pirate waters with little or no regulation, in which case I don't have a clue. Out west an average truckload may run around 15 to 20 grand a load, no skullduggery allowed. Port Orford and Redwood can run 40 grand a truckload...that's grand larceny or grand theft...and NO mill will accept a load without a birth certificate.

Good friend of mine has about 250 Acres of white pine in Southwest Virginia. Couple of years ago one of the stands had reached practical maturity. Huge trees in there. I've hunted this land for 25 years.

He solicited bids from about 12 different logging companies... of the 12 companies three or four of them actually sent someone out to cruise the stand to be harvested. I forget exactly but maybe 56 Acres. Of the three people that actually put any kind of real effort into the cruise he liked one the best. I don't recall if he went with this company or not but he gained a lot of knowledge on the cruising process.

His contract with the selected Logging Company required that they re gravel any road damage but did not include a replant. The replant was far too expensive for his liking so he did it himself.

I get kind of foggy on the details exactly how many board feet they took, but in my opinion it had to be a masive haul because the trees were gargantuan. As I understand it... all of the wood was be to be processed into Timber homes, I believe that is the ultimate premium desired use of a Harvest.

They were at it for several months. I seem to recall his payment was somewhere between $800 and $1,800 per acre. Like I mentioned before he had 12 estimates. Eight or nine of these estimates for lowball non visit wild-ass guesses.

Overall I was fairly shocked at the low number he received for such a massive amount of wood. He is a smart man and knows what he's doing so I don't believe he was taken.

They also left a tremendous mess. Did a burn the following year and it's still a mess.

In West Virginia a logger friend of mine gets between 500 and 800 for Oak... 500 being Red Oak and 800 being White Oak. That is felled and stacked Lumber of excellent quality trees. Edit... that is per thousand board feet. To recap $500 per thousand on red oak and $800 per thousand board feet on White Oak. That comes out to $0.50 for a 12 inch by 12 inch by 1 inch thick piece of red oak. My guess is the mill charges about 350 to $500 per thousand to process. This wood is sold to the consumer dried at around $3.50 per board foot. White Oak would be accordingly higher. If the White Oak logs are large enough they will quarter saw them for an extra premium on the final sale price. I would expect quarter-sawn kiln-dried White Oak Boards of a 12in width to fetch over $10 a board foot on the consumer Market. If you do not know how to calculate board feet please Google. Quarter-sawn White Oak also known as tiger oak is where that unique medullary Ray occurs. It is highly desirable it is also highly stable. I took down a fence made of quarter-sawn white oak that had been standing for 60 years and was able to resell the lumber as "vintage Lumber"... people went wild over it... wainscotting their den and crap like that.

The third point I will make is depending on the location you may get absolutely nothing. I have a 6 Acre Farm of Premium trees in North Stafford Virginia and could not get a single logger to even come in and take the trees for free. It was simply too small a job and too much of a hassle for them, so we set up a sawmill and are making our own Lumber with it. Got lucky... all of the maples are ambrosia maple.

Good luck in your project, expect to be disappointed and you may not be in the end... 10% chance.

A logger cuts a tree which contains, let's say, 600 board feet. He'll haul that to the mill and they'll say it contains 550 and try to pay him for 500. He'll pay you a portion of the 500 and charge you for fuel costs. In the end, you and the logger will have paid the mill fifty cents a board foot to take the log off your hands. Just kidding. but my father in law had a logging company and my uncle ran a sawmill. The father-in-law claimed the uncle cheated him on the scale. The uncle claimed the father in law was always trying to dump crap wood. The log seller thought both were conspiring to cheat him! At any family gathering, I liked to ask leading questions to stir them up. GD

Geno, Who'd you work for on the Coast?

I was told by a lumber man, they look the trees over, figure what board feet of lumber they will get, consider the trucking, and all other expences, and bid from there.

FYI, although lumber prices are skyrocketing the logging industry is genuinely hurting. Most of the people that I know that try to log now are completely struggling. I can't explain why it's just what it is.

Maybe the tree should wear a mask to protect the loggers from Coronavirus?

Get a few bids at least 5 or hire a forester and have another one check his numbers. Had 200 acres cut 4 years ago and there was a $55k spread between the high and low bid. Loggers are nothing but timber thieves. Sell your wood by the ton and count the truck loads. They'll screw you on the grade sometimes but you usually only get one chance to sell your timber in a lifetime.

PM coming to you.

Johns Manville, pacific division

Close, big operation, but very safety conscious unlike the kings of the 'bestos

Hire a forester. The timber industry is fraught with crooks and if you don't know their games you will get taken.

The last tract of timber I sold was 88 acres. I have a local forester, Craig, I trust that I use whenever I sell anything. I wanted this tract clearcut so I could replant it so he came in and cruised the timber to determine the volume of timber. His cruise got put in a request for bid packet that he sent out to the timber buyers in the area. Most interested buyers will come cruise it themselves to check the foresters cruise and get an idea of the lay of the tract. I think when Craig sent out the request for bids he gave them two weeks until the bid closed. We received twelve offers ranging from $90,000 to $172,000 on what was a mixed stand of timber. I was happy with the price as the stand was kind of thin, mature properly groomed pine would have brought a lot more. The only thing I had to do with the deal was show up at the bank to get my cashiers check and sign the timber deed. Craig's commission on the deal was 7% which was well worth it, I'd much rather have 93% of $172,000 than 100% of $90,000 which I'd have been lucky to get if I'd tried to sell it on my own.

I've also used Craig several times on timber thinning, he lines up the buyers and negotiates a better price than I could by myself. In that case instead of getting sold as a whole like for the clearcut they'll sell it by the ton and you get paid based upon the weight tickets of the trucks when they take it to the mill. The forester's job is to keep them honest here too, along with making sure they're not tearing up your land and thinning the stand the way it needs to be thinned.

I don't have any timber ready for market right now so I'm not up on the current prices, but it's my understanding that timber prices are low right now even though lumber is sky high in the stores. Covid has messed up everything and it's hard to get workers now. With the juiced up unlimited unemployment and stimulus checks most laborers like you find on logging crews would rather sit at home if they can get paid almost as much for not working.

When I logged on the Coast of Washington all logs were scaled by 3rd party scalers independent of the mills and loggers if you can't get that done sell it by the ton and get the weight slips, you can steal more with a pencil than you can with a saw.

We get a price per ton for logs, chips, or long wood.

If you actually have timber to sell, There is a really good forester from somewhere in West Central PA. Somerset County I think. I have his number at work. He bids logging contracts for the mining companies, wind farms, and power companies. I used him on a small piece to do some select cutting. Even after his commission my price was about 25% higher than I got putting it out to bid myself.

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.

We hired a Forester that specializes in deer habitat, which was our number 1 goal. We walked the property and after about a week he showed me multiple plans and bids from various logging companies.

The plan we went with went to 2 different companies. A hardwood and pulp.

The hardwood guys were nuts. Did everything by saw, no fellers, and a skidder. The owner actually took a couple of hours to show me how to properly cut a tree and drop it where you want it to.

Our back 40 was tough. We have a 100yard swamp separating the 2 partials and ridges on both sides are between 25-40ft and it's not gradual incline. The hardwood mill rep was out one day and watched the skidder driver going through the swamp. He just shook his head laughing. He said we were lucky to get this company. He didn't know of any other company who would tackle that swamp.

Pulp mill wouldn't even touch the swamp.

We also negotiated better prices. I got my neighbors on board also. So instead of just an 80 acre parcel, it was well over 200 acres.

Wood logs by the ton, sounds like gravel sales. Timber should be scaled by a licensed scaler. Saw logs to the sawmill and peeler logs to the plywood mill! The peeler mill will pay more for most hardwood species. They will use low priced softwood as core, and overlay with hardwood! Foresters handle timber sales for a living! Check your options. It is nothing to haul logs 150 miles to the mill that pays the highest price! Learn a little about scaling, and taper of log, and its effects on log price. A good logger will separate logs, attempting to receive the most dollars from each load! Insist on scale tickets. Good luck

well, as a follow up, this is not for me. its for someone i know. he already made the deal and the operation is commencing. he told me that he is getting nothing because a lot of the wood is dead, small, etc. he just wanted the land cleared. however, there was a lot of good stuff. tall, straight, 30" white pine, white and red oak, smaller hickory, black cherry, sycamore, walnut, etc. plus lots and lots of firewood type stuff. i think he got screwed really bad. they seem to also be leaving the place a friggen mess. tops all over, skidder ripping the schit out of everything, etc. i don't own the land but i have a view of it. me and the other neighbors are not happy but there isn't anything we can do about it. i just wanted to know how fuggen stupid this guy was. he is not a friend to anyone around there so other than the schitty view, no skin off my ass.

That sucks. I asked for tops to be left, deer love the cover and after our loggers left, they graded all roads, trails, etc. They even put in a new culvert for me cuz the pulp mill screwed up.

I had it marked but they still piled up 20ft worth of trees on it. They called me one day as I'm driving to a hockey tournament with my daughter that the road was flooding. I told them they better fix it

the other thing is that this is river bank and we are concerned about erosion. there is some question as to the ownership of the bank as well. we have deeded access only. my property does not have river front but my friends and neighbors down there do. he had almost all the trees on the bank cut down and so far the tops are still there along with skidder ditches that look like they will erode badly. looks like hell from what i can see from the pics. bad deal all around. some bad blood around there. i try to stay out of it, but like i said, i gotta look at it and my friends all along that stretch have a real mess right in front of them. the only saving grace would be that this guy got skinned on the deal. he deserves it for some of the schit he has pulled over the years.

This is how it is done throughout the South. I am a "Craig." In my area, the mills themselves don't buy tracts of timber. There are a bunch of independent suppliers who contract with loggers to do the cutting of tracts they buy. The mill gives the supplier a price they will pay per ton for timber delivered to the mill. The supplier works out a rate per ton to pay the logger. What's left is what the supplier can pay the landowner plus a cut for himself, per ton. The supplier cruises the timber and makes his bid to me based on the tons he estimates to be on the tract, the amount of that volume that is sawtimber or pulpwood, pine or hardwood, and the rate he has to pay the logger. Or he might bid based on the tons I have estimated to be on the tract. Either way, he pays in a lump sum up front, then has 2-3 years to cut. I check on the logging to make sure that the terms of the timber deed aren't being violated. That's for clearcuts, thinnings are sold by the ton and require more supervision on my part, to insure both a good residual stand and accurate payments to the landowner.

No doubt it is done differently in other regions and other types of timber. But the best thing someone can do is hire a consulting forester to advise them, both on pricing and overall management of your timber; as well as assuring compliance with regulations concerning water quality.

Bad blood between neighbors sucks. I got it with ours to the NE. We needed access from their property to properly log ours. Offered them 5k plus fixing their roads even at time when they don't have crops in. They told us to pound sand.

40 acres of pulp and still 110 hardwood trees standing.

Hardwood guys pulled 125 trees before our swamp filled with water.

I added gas to the fire recently. They have a natural drain from the SW corner of their field going through our property into the swamp. I dammed it up. They didn't grow much in that area with water build up.

Fugg them

@OP, IF you are concerned with getting a fair price, if you are concerned with how your property looks after the cut, if you are trying not to get screwed ... hire a professional consulting forester. MOST private property owners only do one or two timber sales in their life time. And there are 50 ways for an unscrupulous logger or timber buyer to skin a property owner. A professional forester may not be cheap. But, is money well spent.

Everyone pushes foresters.

Please be careful with these guys.
It's a business fraught with crooks.
Do not assume that a foresters is the ticket to a fair deal.
They should be.
Just like lawyers should be honest.


Be very careful with your choice.

You might be choosing the guy who will make it all work great.
Or, the guy who facilitates the scam.

Thing is, you will never even know if he screws you.
If he s good, everything will come off beautiful.
You will just unknowingly get paid less money for less timber
than you sold.

Solid advice here