"I know the market changes but if pulp wood pays around 6 bucks a ton, i think i would stop and start hauling scrap metal!"

The logger gets paid well above that to cut/skid/load, and most of the time truck the wood. Sometimes trucking is independent contractors that are working not as part of the logger or wood dealer. The $6 is stumpage price, or what the landowner gets.

Stumpage price = The delivered price the mill gives per ton, less other charges for getting the wood to the mill (usually a per ton price to the loggers for every ton they get on a truck and delivered to the mill, and whatever percentage or per ton price the wood dealer gets ...if there is a wood dealer involved in the transaction).

Down here where I worked, the most of the mills required the wood be hauled through a wood dealer... .so if a landowner struck a deal with just a logger, whatever price the logger and the landowner agreed on already had the logger's wood dealer's cut taken out of it. The logger did that automatically... or the logger was providing prices that his wood dealer told him to offer.

Thanks for the info guys.

Obviously we are in the same market area. It's also obvious the rest of Alabama is different. I don't know how theirs is but it's tough here. Way more going out of business than into the business. But that's by design. The dealers do not all get the same price per ton from the mills. The dealers getting the best prices win all the bids. The other dealers have to try to buy timber without a bid. Eventually we will get down to just a handful of dealers. It also sets up the opportunity for MAJOR illegal dealings such as kickbacks. Say if a dealer and the price setter at the mill get together and give the dealer $1/ ton better price. Then the dealer gives the price setter .50/ton and he keeps .50for himself. This dealer would also get more load tickets. For what ever reason now, some dealers get a better price per ton than others. Makes people wonder why?

Milam is big over your way. Most of the pulp he hauls is hardwood to Stevenson mill, it's gonna pay him close to $30 a ton. Then there's the hardwood saw logs , to say they're bringing more than pine is an understatement. Milam been around a long time , pretty big operator now, I'd guess he's doing very well.

Those dealers y'all talk about with "tickets" , or should I say "middle men" why don't the mills cut them out and deal straight with loggers and landowners like it's done up here?

One of the problems with the smaller dealers is getting enough quota from the mills to get rid of their bought timber. A lot of the dealers are starting their own company owned crews and have their own haul trucks. A lot of "stuff" goes on.

It's good for the mills. They only have to deal with a few dealers. It definitely slices the pie more but we, the landowners, have no choice. I don't know how yalls loggers are up there, but here, trying to get the majority to comprehend something, ANYTHING, can be quit a challenge. So, the mills won't cut them (the dealer) out. Slicing the pie one more time only hurts the loggers and landowners, not the mill.

All of the above is why the small landowner can't make a decent return in timber. The returns are comparatively terrible and the business itself is capital intensive on the purchase, holding period and in production via logging crew, hauling, etc.

Capital intensive all the way across the board.

That's not a business for the little guy. That ship sailed when everyone in South AL quit farming and planted trees. Farming got this way and everyone planted trees and now 50-60 years later the same thing all over again.

No money in it for the little guy.

Seems like thats the way it is for most business. Big guys can take a hit or take jobs that lose money just to keep a good crew paid and working until a good one comes along.

I look around and if i want to quit the excavating company i work for, my only choice is 2 smaller companies. There aint nothing to choose from anymore. Just like walmart.

This thread has me thinking.......I just wonder if there is any antitrust issues with the way the big timber companies and
wood mills/paper mills are doing things these days....~

All I can say is that things are much different in the rest of the state than northeast Alabama. I would not call a timber buyer a middle man because they are necessary to keep wood flowing to the mills. A landowner in our area can't call West Fraser, Resolute, IP or most other mills and get them to buy their timber. It just doesn't work that way here. There are very few mills who will buy directly from the landowner. And when you have products on your timber sale they don't accept at their mill then they would become a dealer selling your timber to another mill. Some of the timber we sell has as many as product sorts. A good mixed hardwood/pine stand will usually have at least 5 at a minimum so the wood is going to at least 4 different mills if pine and hardwood pulpwood are going to the same place.

To have plenty of quota at most mills down south you have to commit a high volume of wood consistently to that mill. A single logger can't produce that kind of volume even with more than one crew. The timber buyer/dealer usually has multiple loggers that work for them and some of those loggers have multiple crews. So more logging crews going through a single buyer gets them more quota and possibly a better delivered price so he can pay the loggers and the loggers can stay busy hauling wood instead of sitting at home because they don't have quota to haul to the mill.
There are a few mills that have their own logging crews but they still take a lot of wood from other loggers to supply the mill.

I follow you. Still don't get it . Our pulp mill buys straight from loggers, if it's company property they have their preferred crews that cut them. We have a guy that just hauls for loggers, he has about 6-8 tractors and a bunch of trailers. Farmer Jones can cut his own timber, get Lee to haul it to the paper mill , saw logs to the saw mill and get paid. Free enterprise . I don't see why loggers down there can't trade with the landowners and then haul pulp straight to the paper mill , pine logs to that mill, any hardwood to where ever that goes. The mills are still gonna get what it takes to run the place , without a middle man, ours do. No dealer or tickets. Sounds like a way to keep the loggers under their thumb and prices cheap as possible. A cartel if you will, prolly run by Democrats too.

I think you pretty much nailed it 2Dogs.... it's nothing but a racket. Big Business just works that way when the dollars get commas and several zeros.

I have often wondered that too.

In order to find out, it would take a forestry organization with very deep pockets that was willing to go to bat for the landowners. And since the forestry organizations are ultimately controlled by the big mills, it ain't gonna happen.

Well, the AFOA supports landowners, but I don't think they are big enough for something like this. If there are anti-trust violations, we are never gonna know.

There are some great people involved in forestry in our state, but overall, I think it is the most crooked industry that we have. Enter at your own risk.

2 dogs always nails it. He is the man!

Any logger can set up their own dealership and buy direct from landowners and sell direct to mills. Most choose not to because they prefer to handle their crew and not worry with buying Timber. It takes time and effort to buy for these high production (75+loads/week) crews down here. They partner with a dealer for this very reason.

‘Tickets’ are only issued when their are quotas. The problem in south Alabama is a shortage of mills.

Dollar General

I am NOT saying Parnell is crooked but with names likes him as dealers, no one at the state level will go after them and keep a job. As PCP said, I view the timber business in my area as having the same kind of integrity as college football. But the problem begins and ends at the mill and it dang sure isn't them shift workers doing their job.

What a dealer does is eliminate the need for a consultant. Here we no longer can sell lump sum or at least it's rare. A cruise is rare. Usually, the dealer gives a $/per ton of wood for each category. That's it. That's it, take it or leave it. A landowner can contact as many dealers as he wants. Remember, dealers don't all get the same price at the mill. The dealers will mark property lines, different quality trees, etc. The landowner can and should get a performance bond. That's money held by the landowner and returned to the dealer at the end when all commitments are met, ie roads repaired.

One increasing problem I'm seeing that is pure theft by deception are with some dealers (,companies) going out of business. That's when a dealer knows he's going out and when. The last week or two he doesn't pay the landowner. Then BAM! He's out of business, or should I say the company is out of business, and there's no way for the landowner to collect. Reckon where all those load payments go???

And after all this, like college football, I'm still very pro timber business especially so for the landowner.

Question, I'm a large landowner with a bunch of pine, ready to cut, I want my logger pal from another area , that normally doesn't sell in the area to cut my timber. He has the right equipment and is a big operator in his area . Can me and him go to the mills and deal with them?

I am not sure the Prattville, Selma, Childersburg bigger mills where I used to work would give a dealership to a 'temporary' transient logger. Heck, I heard stories of them denying dealerships to timber buyers that broke off of established dealers to start their own company... and it seemed the only thing the mills care of the landowners is their last name, to name the tract for their internal auditing systems.

Why would he want to leave his own high production area to come cut his friend's wood anyway? Doesn't he have quota to fill at the other mills he hauls to? If he drops a substantial amount of that quota (cutting his friend's timber for 5, 6, 7 months and hauling to other mills) it likely would be detrimental to his home base of operations. In other words, the logger's regular mills would be pissed to miss that guy's production and likely would punish him severely when he came back by limiting him quota... or blacklisting them from the mill altogether.

Believe it or not, I tried to sell some pine pulp to a mill that our company rarely hauled to. I contacted the mill rep by phone and talked with him about what I had bought and that the haul was going to be 30 miles shorter coming to him rather than coming back to Prattville. He told me that our company only contacted him when we needed something, and that he wasn't inclined to give anyone like us any quota at all, because if he did, then that would restrict his regular suppliers. Now keep in mind, I wasn't asking for a special price or anything out of the ordinary. I just wanted to haul him about 800 tons of pine pulpwood at regular gatewood prices. He told me to forget about his mill, and suffer the trucking to Prattville. And it wasn't dry at the time, and restricted quota was not an issue... I just wanted to treat my logger to a shorter haul, but the darn pig headed guy wouldn't even let us haul him cheap pulpwood. That's the absolute truth!

2Dogs: you are probably shaking your head at my response, but this is my knee-jerk reaction.