How to SELL FIREWOOD and MAKE MONEY

Transcript

today i’m in the wood yard we’re talking about how to price your firewood so that it will sell here we go so the first thing you need to do is to know your market area so you have to know if you’re in an area with a lot of people and a few trees or if you’re in the other kind of an area a lot of trees few people or something in between i’m kind of in between in my area there’s probably in my my particular area there’s a good 250 300 000 people that i can sell to i’m between green bay wisconsin and fond du lac wisconsin and uh the area i live in is called the fox river valley the city i live in is appleton which is 75 000 people and south of me there’s oshkosh south of that is is fond du lac east of me is green bay and that whole area i can sell to so i have a pretty good size market and there are a lot of people available here to sell to so that’s a pretty good thing but it’s not nearly as good as a big city like chicago would be now if you’re in a rural area which is what a lot of you are there’s a lot of people that are in small communities or even out in the country where there’s not a lot of people now if you’ve got a lot of trees and few people your supply and demand is opposite of what it would be in a big city like chicago so if you’re an area that has a few thousand people in a whole county and you got a lot of woods a lot of trees a lot of private land a lot of public land places where you can cut firewood or the supply is just heavy in your area you’re probably not going to be able to charge a lot for your wood but if you’re in a large city with very few trees with a lot of people you’re going to be able to charge a lot more now in my area the going price for a full court of wood is anywhere from about 300 to 350 on average there are going to be some people who will charge less there’s going to be some people to charge more now if you go out into the very rural areas you’re going to probably be lucky to get 200 for a full cord the reason for that is there’s a lot of wood and there’s a lot of people that cut wood now if you go to a big city like chicago for an instance there are millions of people very few trees and i know a guy in particular that has a very good business and they truck all of their wood down to chicago and they sell semi loads every day a full cord of wood in chicago can go for anywhere from six to eight hundred dollars yes so there’s a huge difference in markets so if you’re in an area with a lot of people you’re going to be able to charge a lot more because the supply is more limited there’s more customers if you’re in an area with a lot of people are very few people and a lot of woods you’re not going to be able to charge as much it is the rule of supply and demand it’s just the way it is so another thing you got to think about in your area is what kind of people are you selling wood to now most of the people that live in a very rural type area are going to have a lot of people that are heating their houses with wood because there’s a lot of wood available so they tend to be people that aren’t willing to pay as much for wood because it’s more available and because there’s a lot of people that have wood and there’s a lot of people that cut wood and there’s a lot of trees available and those people generally heating with wood because they want to save money now my market is kind of the opposite of that i have very few people that heat their homes with wood that i sell to maybe five percent 10 percent at the most most the people i sell to are buying firewood to burn for enjoyment they’re they’re getting wood that they are using in a fireplace or a fire pit or for going camping they literally are just burning it for enjoyment they’re not burning it for heat there are some people that are supplementing their heating with firewood and burning it so there’s that and then there are people that are on the other end that only use it for highly highly specialized type of purposes people that do smoking of meats or smoking of things and they want specific kinds what are willing to pay more for it and they want usually smaller quantities so there’s that so you’ve got people that i sell to our backyard fire pits taking to go with them when they go camping using in their fireplace in their home and then maybe supplemental heating with a small wood stove those are pretty much the people i have now my brother on the other hand has customers that are heating with wood and they want a lot of wood and i want it cheap so he’s in a totally different market than i am now one of the things you got to think about is your competition the way i look at it is i want to know my competition as far as what they’re selling what kind of wood they’re selling i want to know what kind of prices they’re charging so that i can then kind of somewhat decide what to do now don’t worry about it don’t dwell on it if someone’s charging less than you don’t worry about it i don’t want to be in the low end of my market because if you’re on the low end of your market price wise eventually you’re going to go out of business because you have costs that will keep coming up you’re going to need replacing equipment you’re going to need to buy more wood to sell so the lower your price is the less you’re going to make the more you need to sell i want to be more towards the upper end i’d rather sell a little bit less wood and make more money doing it so there’s ways that you can get paid more for your firewood in your area than the other people one of the ways is to have better quality wood which means have wood that is dry ready to burn and it’s fully seasoned which is basically they want wood that’s going to burn right now if you’re selling wood that is green or needs to be seasoned you’re not going to be able to make as much wood on it because you don’t have much time invested in it and the people can’t burn it right away they have to actually store it before they can burn it so the likelihood you’re going to make more money on that is lower i mean it’s possible but it’s lower another thing you can do to make more in your firewood is to have more variety of kinds of firewood so for instance uh my number one selling wood is oak because there’s a lot of people that i like to call wood snobs that they think oak is the only wood that you can burn well there’s a lot of wood that burns there’s 40 some kinds of trees in my area that you could burn for firewood and a lot of people just think oh oak’s the way to go yes it’s good wood but there’s a lot of wood that’s better and there’s a lot of other wood that’s maybe not quite as good as far as the btus that it puts out but it burns great i have a saying i like to say pine is fine you can burn it outside campfires you can burn it in the house in the fireplace you can burn it in a wood stove as long as it’s dry it burns just fine a lot of people have the misconception that you can’t burn pine in a house you sure can it works just fine because pine is fine then there’s people that think oh the lower grade woods are no good for heating well yes they are you just need more of it so your woods like aspen or popple box elder maybe some of the woods that are less desirable or not as readily available are woods that are going to work just fine for heating you’re just going to need more of it now oak is actually somewhere towards the top but it’s not the top locus puts out more btus than oak hickory puts out more btus than oak and then there’s osage orange that puts out a lot more btus than oak some of these woods are harder to get some of them aren’t as popular because people don’t know about them but they actually put out more heat than oak some woods that are just below oak are going to be like your cherry your soft maple hard maple is about the same as oak and some of the other woods like ash all great woods and they burn just fine now in my area that’s the kind of woods that we have another thing you can do to sell wood and make more money is to have better service deliver wood to people that’s that’s huge if you can deliver wood to people in quantity that’s a good thing now my area there’s most of the people that i sell to they don’t have a truck they have a small sedan or a minivan or something like that and they want the wood delivered because they don’t have a way to deliver in quantity i had a lady a few years ago that told me it’s so nice that i delivered because the last guy wouldn’t and she had to take her minivan to go get a quart of wood and it took her multiple trips filling up her minivan to go get wood and haul it back home so she was very happy when i started delivering wood to her so service is huge another thing you can do is to stack for people that’s something that a lot of people won’t do so you can offer a stacking service another thing you can do is to sell in smaller quantities some people do not want a lot of wood they want a small quantity they want either a third of a cord or a half of a third of a cord or whatever quantity you want to come up with as long as it’s in your area it’s okay to do that sell smaller quantities bundles are a prime example you can make more money per piece of wood by selling bundles because people are willing to have the convenience and pay a little bit more for it so there’s that another thing you can do is supply people with kinds of wood that aren’t like available everywhere i sell kindling i supply people with kindling once in a while so there’s that you can do that another thing is to have kinds of wood that they can’t get especially people in my area that do smoking of meats people that do ribs and brisket and whatever else they want to smoke they like to buy hickory they like to buy cherry they like to buy apple they like to buy the wood and oak they like to buy the wood that’s slower burning and has some nice uh flavor or odor to it so there’s one of the other ways you can do uh selling firewood to make extra money is to do things other people won’t do now a lot of people do it’s just called mixed hardwood which means they just throw everything in there and that’s fine if that’s who you want to do i do sell mixed hardwood and there’s some people that are fine with that when i do the next hardwood i actually sell the lower grade wood in that type of batch i try to separate my oak i try to separate the cherry the locus the ash the maple and the hickory i try to separate those kinds out because they’re the higher grade harder to get more desirable now a new kind i’m introducing this year that’s real hard to get my areas birch i know some of you have tons of it we don’t have much here but i just ordered two truckloads and they’re coming so like i mentioned trucking your wood to somewhere else is a very good way to sell more wood because there are areas that don’t have wood i was recently in new mexico and there was a guy there that was loading up wood to go to a different state he was loading up pinyon pine they were loading they call it pinyon they were loading it up and it was going to be going from new mexico to texas and they said that they can get a lot more money selling it in a different state where they can’t get it or it’s wood that they really really like so there’s that um the guy i mentioned about having his wood he’s about an hour north of me and he trucks most of his wood three hours south of me they process several truckloads a day and it goes down to chicago and he’s north of me so it’s probably like a three and a half four hour uh drive with the semi loaded to get down there to where they’re selling it and they’re selling in bulk and then the people are either reselling it or they’re selling it at their location where they’re delivering it so the bad thing about that is is that wood is heavy it takes up a lot of space so you have to think about logistics and how you’re going to do that a lot of the wood that’s sold locally here in my area at gas stations is actually cut two counties away there’s a supplier that has a lot of gas stations around here because i see their wood and they truck it in from a couple counties away now in my opinion it’s very low quality wood it’s not really dry and it’s not really high quality wood it’s campfire wood but there are some people that i get as customers that will buy that wood and then they can’t get it to burn and then they tell me i bought this bundle wooden all it does is smoke well it’s because it’s not even dry yet they sell it as being kiln dried but kiln dried means they kill the bugs and it’s not actually dried it’s slightly dry so those are the kind of people that i get customers from or i get a lot of customers from people that try to sell green wood that deliver wood that was freshly caught freshly split from green trees and delivered without any curing time and they tell people oh yeah it’ll be good to burn but i deliver wood to people quite often i get there and they’ve got a lot of wood and i just assume they’re stocking up and i look at it and it was freshly cut i mean with green leaves on it and everything it’s bad so don’t be that person provide a good quality item be nice to the people be prompt that’s one of the other huge things if someone calls you deliver the wood as soon as you can answer their calls as soon as you can stay in contact call back text back stay in contact with people let them know that you’ve got wood or if you’re running low your good customers call them and tell them hey my wood is getting low i know you need you’re going to need more i’d rather sell it to you than try to get a new customer would you like me to bring you some so there’s tons of things you can do for customer service uh to get more business so now in your area you’re going to have particular kinds of wood that may be more specialized or only available in your area and that’s something else you have to think about too if you can come up with wood that you can get from somewhere else that is not readily available in your area you can charge more for it for instance in my area the main wood around here that is easy to get is box elder it’s everywhere cottonwood is everywhere and those aren’t really good woods for selling for firewood for the most part especially for heating they burn fast and then put a lot of btus they’re fine for campfire wood pine is another thing i can get plenty of i can get white pine red pine jack pine another kind of hardwood that’s pretty easy easy for me to get is maple there’s quite a bit of maple around here the other wood that is the good wood that’s fairly easy for me to get that there’s quite a bit of is oak red oak in particular there’s quite a bit of red oak and that’s why a lot of people in my area think oh riddle that’s that’s the best there is well it’s because that’s what’s mainly available in my area now there’s other kinds of wood in my area that aren’t readily available but i can get some and if i go out a little ways a couple few counties away from where i live i can get those kinds of wood and i can sell them here and make more money because not everybody has it and that would be the more specialized type wood so hickory cherry locus and birch is another one those four in particular are woods that there’s not a lot of it around here i can get it but it’s not real easy to get i generally don’t get a lot of it like this this year for instance i got a half of a truckload of hickory so i got summer neighborhood of seven full cords of hickory that’s all i’ve got for this year i wish i had two truckloads because i could sell it but that’s all i can get cherry a little easier for me to get and i can get more of that birch is almost impossible for me to get i’ve been on my logger for a couple years now asking i want some birch because i know people will buy it well just recently i found out he just cut a whole bunch of it and i bought and ordered i should say two truckloads it’s not here yet but it’s going to be coming so those and locus once in a while is kind of wood that i don’t get a lot of in my area it’s kind of harder to get but i do get it once around it’s great wood for heating so and i’ve got several customers now that i gave them some free samples they tried it out and they’re like hey i want more of that so that’s something that you got to think about that’s another thing you should think about doing too is if you want people to start using certain kinds of wood and i did this with cherry also is i gave some away to people when i did a delivery of oak because i wanted to sell some cherries a lot of it at the time so what i did is i grabbed a couple arm fulls and i gave it to the customer and said here try this out you might like it in the fireplace and now i’ve got lots of customers that love cherry so free samples it works so to recap know your market if you’re in an area with lots of people you’re going to be able to charge more if you’re in an area with lots of trees not many people you’re not going to charge as much unless you get the wood to where the people are you’ve got to supply the market and the market is the market you can’t make a market where there isn’t one if everybody in your area every neighbor around you is selling firewood you’re going to have a hard time selling it you want to get to an area where there’s lots of people that aren’t selling firewood that’s it for today folks thanks for watching if you like what you’ve seen here go to my channel there’s 700 more videos for you to watch i also have a new video every morning 5 30 a.m central standard time that’s it good night you

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