Sawyer Fees

[Tom Gojmerac]

What would a reasonable fee for having some logs cut into lumber?
My Father is retired, lives in Central Tn. has recently purchased a personal band saw mill and is wondering what he could charge for his services. He has cut some beautifull red oak from his property
Have any of you used the services of a sawyer? If so what are reasonable rates to pay per hour, per board ft., log etc.
Thanks for your input

[Chris Barton]

Hi Tom,

I live in central TN and last I head the going rate for a sawmill on site was around 50 cents/ft with a set up fee around $75-125 and a minimum of 1,000 bdft. Some guys charge less and will do smaller jobs if the timber is brought to their site. The challenge in this region is that red oak can be had for less than $3/bdft and after you figure in waiting for a year to use the lumber and having to have a proper drying place and taking it to S2S... it's cheaper to just buy from the lumber yard.

On the other hand, there is certainly room for someone that has storage space to get into small batch lumber milling. I have often wondered how successful a one man mill could be sawing nothing but the rarer and more difficult to find local exotics. It would require enough space to store plenty of stock but, after your first year of harvesting lumber for free and then selling it as rough stock you could probably make a tidy profit. This is essentially what Steve Wall Lumber does but, at a slightly larger scale.

[Jim Becker]

The local sawyer I use charges about $55 per hour with a 1/2 hour travel charge and a $25 "metal" charge for ruining a blade on nails, etc.

[Karl Laustrup]

It's been a couple of years since I last used a sawyer. At that time he charged a "travel fee", which I didn't have to pay, as he is only two miles from me.

He had two different rates, an hourly or by the board ft. His hourly was around $40/hr as I recall. I don't recall his board ft. rate. He would use whichever was a better deal for the customer.

Karl

[jerry cousins]

sawyers in my area charge anywhere from $300-$350 per 1000 bf. some travel time if it's a far setup site.

jerry

[Rob Diz]

I recently paid .30/bf for around 500 bf. Of course, I also ended up paying to have the butt logs delivered to his place, and the delivery of the very wet and very heavy wood back to my house, to have it stickered in place. My total costs were around $1/bf, which is about a third of what rough oak would cost locally (assuming I could find the wide board) and satisfy my daughter's need to have something made from the tree in front of the house.

I had offers from others to come and mill it on site for around $80/hour, but I would have to do a lot of clean-up and I just didn't know how long it would take.

HTH