Firewood Update: Market Solution: Part 4

While waiting for them to arrive, I examined my battered old checkbook. (Who writes checks in 2019? People buying firewood!) I’d written a check to my old firewood guy, the one who’s number I’d lost. A year ago, I’d paid $350 for 2 cords.

Soon I’d pay $300 for what was purported to be 2 cords. Is that a deal? Only if it’s true, which I doubted.

Last year’s delivery was rough. It came late, when it was raining and very cold. He dumped it on my lawn just in time for it to freeze to the grass and get covered with snow. It took me probably 5 weeks (working in dribs and drabs) to stack about half of it. Some of it I had to break free of the ground/ice with a sledge. (A seriously shit task!) The other half I used right from the pile to my woodstove. It was also split large. About 15% I had to resplit myself before it would fit in our stove. It was a huge amount of work. Folks have no idea buying firewood still means huge labor.

On the other hand, I wasn’t ripped off. I got a full 2 cords. Not a bit less. I measured it as I stacked & used it. I value honesty.

Stacking this new delivery meant my weekend just got booked up. If I went beast mode and powered though I’d be done but suffering by Monday.

They arrived on time. (My other wood guy procrastinates anywhere from a week to a month.)

A young adult / teenage boy hopped out of a battered truck. I shook his hand. I was wondering what it would be like to meet someone who only communicates via F***book. He seemed normal.

I eyed his trailer. “Your trailer is not hydraulic dump.” I asked. “How are you going going to unload it?”

He shrugged, “By hand I guess.” Then he started backing the trailer toward my woodshed. Ugh, I reached for my gloves. Might as well help. Two people meant I’d be at it for a while.

A teenage girl emerged from the truck. She was wearing flip flops. Bad idea. Sooner or later you’ll drop a 30 pound block on your toe. I assumed she’d stand around playing with a phone and accomplish nothing.

Another guy emerged from the truck. An older guy. The kid’s dad? He wasn’t driving. That usually means a revoked license from various DUI convictions.

He had boots and gloves. So did the both the teenage boy. Things were looking up.

I made a snap decision.

“So long as we’re unloading by hand, lets stack it?” This didn’t gain traction. Tossing wood willy nilly is faster than stacking.

“I’ll add a $40 tip.”

Bingo! Soon the four of us were stacking as fast as we could go. Burning $40 was hard on my skinflint soul but it was worth it for 2 cords stacked! Also, the girl worked just as hard as the rest of us. Excellent!

I have a woodstove. I need fuel 16″+/- long and split small enough to fit in the firebox door. This was the norm for generations. Most residential fuelwood burned in the last century in North America was about that size.

Despite generations of standardization, the situation changed a few decades ago. Possibly due to insurance concerns(?), people got into external wood boilers. Boilers can handle larger wood. Folks load their beefy personal incinerators with a heap of wet, frozen, chunky wood once a day. It smolders a lot because it’s not really stacked as a fire or maintained by a human. Smart folks set up boilers to be loaded with a skid steer. That means they can handle even bigger stuff because the puny human is taken out of the equation. They’ll shove frozen chunks of green wood the size of a city fire hydrant into a burn chamber. It’ll burn… eventually. Folks love it because it keeps messy wood out of the house.

Boilers also the benefit from hydronic transfer of heat. Hot fluid is piped directly to the slab of your house (which was poured around hydronic hose). In a properly built house it’s cozy. My house isn’t well suited to a boiler. It’s old, decrepit, and has a real basement. I have a regular stove that makes warm air in the hose and not warm water at the end of buried plumbing.

There are pros and cons. It’s messy to have wood in the house but nothing beats the ambiance of a real fire. I’d hate going out at dark thirty to hurl cold log chunks into a metal box but I’m always fretting over fuel quality (boiler folks can and do burn anything burnable). To each his own.

(*Virtually all boilers cease to function when the power is out. They need electricity to operate the pump and electronics. Most pellet stoves have a similar dependency. My woodstove will heat just fine without power.)

EPA regulations recently gut punched the boiler market. New models produce less smoke, cost a mint, and nobody buys them. (Which I suspect was the whole point.) As with other over-regulated situations (like car owners in Cuba) folks prefer maintaining old boilers to buying new. (Assuming proper maintenance: boilers last decades and stoves last forever.)

The relevance is that we were unloading big beefy wood meant for a boiler. Some of it won’t fit in my stove. I explained this and started throwing extremely large chunks off to the side. I’ll have to split them myself before they’re useful. They followed suit but I think a good third of the stack is too large for our stove. I’ll “reprocess” as needed. More labor! But I knew this. I’m committed to avoid “best” becoming the enemy of “adequate”.

Soon we were done. Four of us had made short work of the trailer. It wasn’t two cords… which is what I’d guessed.

I took the kid (who seemed to be in charge for some reason) aside to talk wood. I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his girlfriend (?) and dad (?).

“Look, a cord of wood is 4′ x 4′ x 8′. You promised two cords.”

He nodded. He was looking nervously at the checkbook I was holding in my hand.

“If you stack 4′ tall and 8′ long that’s 32 square feet. That’s called a ‘face cord’. Stack 3 face cords and you’ve got 96 square feet.”

He looked like math was physically painful to him.

“That woodshed”, I pointed at the woodshed, “is 16′ long, if you stack it 6′ high that’s also 96 square feet.”

He looked like he was about to pass out. Lectures about the quadratic equation before he dropped out(?) of high school had scarred him.

“See the pile on the other side of the woodshed?” I pointed to the other side, where I’d stacked my own wood. “That’s 16′ long and at least 6′ high. That’s a cord… that’s a full cord.”

He glanced at the row we’d just stacked. It was somewhat less… not even a full row. There was also a crotch high pyramid of “too big to use until I split it again” wood by the door.

“That pyramid will complete the row and then some… but not enough to make a whole ‘nother row of its own.”

He looked confused. I felt like the professor telling Gilligan to quit breaking a radio I’d made out of coconuts.

“Your trailer didn’t come here with two full cords of firewood.”

He looked ill.

“But I’m sure you don’t stack wood very often, so you don’t know how much you’ve really got.”

He smiled weakly. (He definitely knows how much he’d arrived with. I’m just rare among customers in that I own a tape measure and know how to use it.)

“I’m sure you did your best and I appreciate y’all stacking it with me. That’s makes life a lot easier on me.”

I cut the check. $300 for the wood and $40 for the tip. Every penny I promised. Paying for about 3/4 of what I’d been promised.

“Here,” I handed him the check. “I’m paying the full amount, but just beware, you’re not selling two full cords unless you heap up the load on that trailer. Flat isn’t enough.”

The kid looked like he had no Earthly idea what I’d said. He probably didn’t. I mihgt as well have been speaking in Latin. He was friendly, hard working, and blanked out.

I wrote his number down. He promised if I called again he’d get smaller 16″ length wood and have a fully loaded trailer. I’m sure he intends that my next order would be perfect and full. I know, should the time come, he absolutely won’t do any better. Math is hard. Shortcuts are easy. Most customers don’t have a tape measure.

After they left I basked in the glory of my woodpile. I’ve got 4 cords stacked and a heap to split that’ll add up to maybe another 1/3 to 1/2 cord. It’s a great start (especially for September). I’ll surely accomplish more and might enter winter with an adequate (dare I hope for generous?) supply.

A.C.

P.S. Life is an economics experiment, is it not? Last year’s delivery was the full volume but I worked my ass off. This delivery was 3/4 the amount for ten bucks less. It was stacked (mostly) in half an hour. So which is better? I’m only one man. I think I did OK.