Some landowners getting huuuuuuge checks around here now.

Interest will vary on timber, depending on what you have (species and grade of species) and location. Also, the time of year is critical, because of rainfall. Access and log-ability when the weather is rainy will often time drive prices either up or down.

I used to buy timber several years ago. I could tell you some great stories that actually happened that could not have been dreamed up by the best fiction novelists of all time!

I work in the lower 2/3 of the state and stumpage prices have been relatively flat for the past 10 years. Some small peaks here and there but overall they're the same. Meanwhile, lumber prices are continuing to rise. I'm talking about pine sawtimber, pine CNS and pine pulpwood. We are seeing some decent hardwood pulpwood prices and decent hardwood log prices but nothing to get excited about. Most of our hardwood log markets are for cross ties and not high quality veneer logs. Few markets in east central Alabama for quality hardwood and they know they don't have to pay a premium for it. Northeast Alabama is a totally different world as far as the hardwood log markets go.

I have a friend that I have been working with for the past two years to find the right time to cut his 40 ac that has never been touched since Camp Seibert days.. I told him to pull the trigger NOW.

[/quote]... stumpage prices have been relatively flat for the past 10 years.[/quote]

Just to remove the potential confusion...

Delivered prices = what the mills are paying when the trucks run across the scales or after a guy stick scales a load of hardwood logs.

Stumpage prices = what the landowner gets after the logger and timber dealer are paid.

But the low grade stuff is what’s so expensive right now. Cross ties and flooring oak are at all time highs.

What landowners don't understand is that what some others are getting for timber in NE AL, isn't going to be the same as what they might get for similar timber in central AL. I had a landowner bless me out one day when we were finishing up his tract. He told me that he'd talked to a cousin of his that sold timber off his farm in southern TN. His hardwood prices were more than double what I had paid him for his hardwood.

I could never get that guy to understand that the TN timber was going to different mills, with different delivered prices. After grumbling, he then asked me why didn't I deal with that TN mill. I told him that hauling a load of hardwood pulpwood over 200 miles wouldn't work. The extra freight it would take to get it there would more than eat up any extra money that would exist. My logger at the time only had two trucks and he would have never agreed to let half of his trucking get tied up with a one load a day haul... effectively cutting his production in half.

Wasn't any saw logs good enough to send north? If you have some really good stuff , mills up here will come buy it and send their truck.

If low grade oak logs and crosstie logs aren’t high down there right now then somebody is ripping y’all off. Crossties from south Alabama are bringing $30 apiece just like crossties from north Alabama

I USED to buy wood, and my example is from years past. I still do a little contract work cruising and flagging property lines, but I have been out of the 'knowing what the prices currently are' for a while now. Which kinda goes back to time of year scenario I mentioned in my first post. Prices fluctuate, and what is hot now, might not be hot 3 months from now... or 3 days from now.

Back in my day, though, in the areas I manly worked (east of 65, north of 85, and south of 20)... if you cut an average square 40, you may have 60 loads total of wood. Out of that 60, there may have been 3 or 4 loads of hardwood logs that weren't hollow, or defected, or oozing something out through the bark. Basically, you'd cut the best hardwood off the low areas or SMZs... a far cry from what is seen up in that NE quadrant of the state (I know, because my wife is from DeKalb Co.). Down here, it was hard to get any kind of special deal with volumes that low, and most of the time, I was only able to get gatewood prices on any logs. Occasionally, there would be a tract that had a higher percentage of that material, and you could work with the mills we sold hardwood logs to, getting a bump in price, or getting a bump in price of certain species, if it was in demand at the time.

It may have happened, but I never heard anything about hardwood mills sending their trucks to come get central AL wood.

Kykenkee. They have a woodyard in Portersville (Dekalb Co.) and ship back to their mill in Bibb Co. Keep I-59 hot. I see them weekly.

$30-$35 per ton for mixed hardwood tie logs

In the pine market, the landowners are definitely NOT getting rewarded for high lumber prices.
I like to sell by the ton btw. Fair on both sides imo.

Hard wood pulp up here dang near that much! In winter, when the paper mill is needing wood they prolly pay their guys making long hauls what ya'll getting for tie logs. I think Brent has it figured bout right, somebody getting ripped.

Do you mean for pulp?
I just signed a contract for $6 per ton on a first thinning, so all pulp; however it is a good bit more than that for chip-n-saw or saw timber.

I believe you but that’s unbelievable. $55-$60/ton up here and all the little Amish mills are fighting over them.

bwhunter: $30-$35 was what I was thinking for our part of the state.

We didn't (and still don't) have the little Amish mills fighting over it. Your markets in your part of the state are stronger for this product than what I was used to. Again, read my first post. Prices are going to be different in different parts of the state for different products. And when landowners get wind of what someone in southern TN is getting for hardwood logs or pulp (if the price is up) then we get a lot of heated questions down here asking why. As a buyer, I couldn't call the local mill I dealt with and demand $60 a ton for mixed hdw logs, they'd laugh me right off the phone. And if I did do that, they'd likely have cut my quota when things dried out...

I understand that. But I guarantee you that 7X9 ties from down there are bringing $30-$31 per tie just like they are from up here. And they are going up. I won’t be surprised if crossties are. $35 apiece before long. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again......... I think the whole system in south Alabama is seriously flawed. Seems to me it’s all about making the big guys rich and keeping the little guys right on the poverty line.

It's not flawed if you are on the right side of the money. I just never could make the transition....and is the reason I am no longer a timber buyer.

I couldn't tell you the nights I'd lay awake in bed, wondering if a tract was going to cut out, or if the logger was going to separate the products correctly, or if it was going to rain on the job site, or if the mills were going to call Monday morning and restrict us to 3 loads a week, or if a skidder was going to blow, or if the log truck driver was going to kill somebody on the highways, or if the logger was going to accidentally cut over the property line, or if the landowner was going to be mad for some reason, or if.....