I agree. They like people who show up with saws and common sense. In fact....I see all sides of this and have been on so many angles of the dangle.To answer your questions: Yes. No, never have and never will. Yes, I am picky; i don't want sycamore, elm, sweet gum, willow, cottonwood, small limbs/brush, etc. No, but I want wood that can at least be split once---say 5" and up to however big, 36+".
I have some friends with a tree service. Ideally, I go to the site where they are working and cut, and load what I want and they haul off the rest....win win for everybody. Like Rob said---pick of the crop. They love when I show up because of my saws , I help them process, I haul off a trailer load or 2 that they don't have to dump, and I am free. They have a mini-loader and load my trailer as fast as i can cut.
I hate when they just dump a load. I don't take 'em anymore....too much brush and small stuff (that I have to haul off), too many diagonal cuts creating a lot of waste, too much knotty stuff, too many odd lengths creating more waste, too much punky stuff. Call me a whiner if you want but I got better things to do. If a tree service want to dump whole logs I would be glad to oblige.
It all depends on your situation. If you are desperate, which I am not, i could see taking whatever you can get, however you can get it.
Do you have time to get paid to cut dead hardwood?I was starting to get desperate. I have been buying triaxle loads of logs. The guy have been dealing with lately, would not call me back. I called him 4 times. The last load of logs he brought me were dry, off his personal pile. So I thought I was getting in good with him. I called another guy that I had dealt with and he did not call me back. I decided to call him again and he answered and he said he got my call but never called back. He is supposed to have me a load the first part of Febuary.
In the midst of trying to get a logger to return my call, I talked to a tree service guy at a gas station. I see him go by my house all the time. He went by Saturday, and I jumped in a vehicle and went up the road thinking be may stop at the gas station. He told me to get the number off the truck and call his boss. The stuff he had the truck that day was 42-48'' stuff. I really don't have a way to handle it, well if it was 42'' I could get it in my grapple. I would probably have to cut it into quarters to get it on my splitter.
I'm still kicking the idea around of calling this tree service guy. His worker said they also sold logs, but a load on a smaller truck would probably be more than what I pay per cord off a triaxle. If I could get a little free wood here and there, that would help things out. I have thought about calling some tree services before but haven't. I think most sell firewood. Then I am afraid of getting a load like @Hinerman described. If I did get a load I thought I could give them a lunch money. They would also be more likely to remember me, and maybe bring me some decent stuff. Thanks for the advice, you all gave me some food for thought.
I don't really have the time to go anywhere and cut. If I have a load here and have a couple hours of free time I can go cut it, versus going somewhere to cut, a couple hours of going somewhere to cut would not be worth while. Also people here charge to cut firewood off their land. My neighbor charges $45 a pick up load when a cord of firewood brings $180, or a cord off a triaxle works out to $70-80. A guy stopped in one day wanting to know if I sold wood. He said he had trees on his land that needed cut, he got $25 a load.
I made a guy on craigslist mad last week. He had an ad for logs. I called him. The ad said 2 cords. Then he asked me how big of a load did I want. I said as big as you can haul. He said he had a 18' and 20' dump trailer. I asked how long he bucked the logs. He said these aren't saw logs this is firewood. I said firewood? I thought this was logs. Then he said yeah logs. I was asking how long they were being bucked because is they are 12' he could put one row in his 18' or 20' trailer because two 12' is 24.' He then said he would put some logs on the trailer then some rounds too. I had googled his number and he was a tree service. I think his trying to sell a bunch of random length rounds. He got mad when I asked him to text me a picture.
it is hard for me to believe that people will charge you to clean up their blowdowns and remove trees for them. It seems you should be charging them.
Here is my thought on tree services. If you want their wood you are going to have to take whatever they give you and how ever they give it to you. Tree services don't have time to make straight cuts, measure cuts, cull out knots, cull out the small stuff, cull out the big stuff, etc. I understand that, so I don't expect them to.
it is hard for me to believe that people will charge you to clean up their blowdowns and remove trees for them. It seems you should be charging them.
Here is my thought on tree services. If you want their wood you are going to have to take whatever they give you and how ever they give it to you. Tree services don't have time to make straight cuts, measure cuts, cull out knots, cull out the small stuff, cull out the big stuff, etc. I understand that, so I don't expect them to.
Most tree services will not let you cut wood on their property because of liability issues. I know we won't. That being said we are happy to dump wood at someone's property if we are working in the area.
Most folks who are heating with firewood don't want softwood unless they are using an outdoor furnace, and that's understandable. If the truck is getting loaded we are generally not going to sort out what is "to big". Everything 15" and under goes through the chipper unless we are trying to save space in the chip box, so too small is generally not an issue.
Bottom line, be flexible with wood size, but not with species. Nobody wants a bunch of Willow or Cottonwood dumped at their house. Look at it this way, with all the money you save on heating oil/gas you can go out and buy a big saw. And big saws are fun
Avoid the people who won't do it your way, problem solved.
I can cut a hell of a lot of wood in two hours. More than two men just loading can handle. Two guys can knock out a cut cord and load it in an hour. Hire a helper to get wood off a jobsite or just pay them 50 to load you. Load first. Pay second, happy days. Getting free wood delivered is not always your best bet. Find a place to advertise for tree services wood or just call the locals. Around here they give me wood all the time. Just show up and be reliable. Hell....the smart guys ask where can we dump a load or two when we are in your area. I never take wood like that. Could never keep up.
Yes I get quite a bit of tree service wood. No I don't pay for it. It saves them a lot of money not having to pay to get rid of it. Even if they tub ground the whole tree they'd still have to make the mulch go away. They city is actually really rude to the local tree services.
Obviously these days it's mostly ash. There is some elm and cedar. There's also quite a bit of oak and the occasional cottonwood. I'd burn pine too but we just don't see a lot of that being taken down by the tree services.
Occasionally a chain gets bit by an eye bolt or cable they left in. < no I don't go over it with a metal detector first> I ask them to try and avoid that. Other than that I don't specify size they can dump. If it didn't go in their chipper than it's perfect for the outdoor wood boiler.
I have bigger saws and meaner chains than they do; so if they can cut it down, I can buck it up.
Their new schtick last year, so they could put an extra crew out on the weekends they needed to, was if I would buck it up quick for them on site, they brought it to the boiler in their dump trailer.
So they basically get an extra groundie for free in town on the weekends by hauling my free firewood home for me. Since the extra crew doesn't get the bucket truck or crane, it's either a shorter rental boom like a JLG or an SRT climber. Sometimes they'll drop the tree on Thursday or Friday and ask me to take care of it on Saturday. I almost prefer it this way now. I hope we do some more trees this way this year.
I really only got hosed once this way. I was figuring 6 hours on a Saturday to buck up an oak tree, take the last 20 feet down, and load it.<yeah sometimes I'll drop part of the tree for them> It was full of minerals and sand. So it was 9 hours. They offered to buy chains. It was easier to just keep cutting and filing. They brought the wood and beer. It was definately one of those days you piss and moan about how you're gonna switch to square chisel chain or carbide chain. And yet my *pretty boy still hasn't tried square chisel chain yet, so it could still suck just ar bad.
I usually love bucking the stuff up on site. The chunks always come down on ropes or straps, so there's nothing to hit with the saw. The logs aren't pushed around in the dirt, so they're clean. And the 461 and 660 go through it like a lightsaber. <unless it was growing out of a damn sandbox>
If I was less of a *pretty boy I should also probabably learn everything I could about climbing from the real arborist while they are still around. It's not that I'm against SRT climbing per se. I'm just not keen on the idea of falling out of a tree.
Yeah tree service wood is great. But, there's no such thing as a free lunch, a free beer, or totally free firewood.
it is hard for me to believe that people will charge you to clean up their blowdowns and remove trees for them. It seems you should be charging them.
Here is my thought on tree services. If you want their wood you are going to have to take whatever they give you and how ever they give it to you. Tree services don't have time to make straight cuts, measure cuts, cull out knots, cull out the small stuff, cull out the big stuff, etc. I understand that, so I don't expect them to.
I can give you the $45 a pick up load guy's phone number.
It sounds like you have a really good deal worked out with a tree service.