Sorting
of Products
There is a great diversity of manufacturing facilities in the forest products
industry in Wisconsin, so there are a variety of alternatives for selling
the wood that is harvested off of your woodlot. The same piece of wood
harvested from your woodlot may return drastically different receipts
to you depending on where it is delivered. Receiving the maximum dollar
value for your wood requires knowledge of forest product specifications
as well as current market conditions.
Furthermore, logging contractors often work on contracts with specific
mills and their profit margins may not be greatest at the same mill where
you will receive the highest dollar for your wood. If your stumpage
is sold lump-sum then sorting of specific wood products is not important
to you, but if you sell your stumpage by mill scale receipts, then the
sorting of your wood to maximize its value to you can have a significant
impact on your financial returns. If your stumpage is being sold by scale,
then detailed contract provisions can and should be developed to define
how wood products should be sorted to maximize their value to you. Working
closely with an experienced professional forester will help you access
the best markets for the largest return. Jim
Zdanovec speaks in very certain positive terms when he discusses
the gains he has made from his extra efforts to sort out valuable bolts
and logs and to solicit separate bids for each of the product categories.
Jim told me, “Never trust just one person. Shop around.”
On the other hand, requiring lots of detailed sorting of wood products does have some drawback. For example, the number of stacks of logs will increase the size of the area impacted by more intense traffic of heavy equipment. Additionally, there must be a sufficient volume in each sort category to provide a full truckload or trucking costs will rise. At the end of a sale, expect to have only partial loads of several sorts that must be combined to one mixed sort and delivered to whoever will take it.