What's the seasonality of your road systems, average slope of a harvest unit, and typical distance from a log landing to a mill or other endpoint for those residual chip products? It's been studied and piloted extensively in the PNW and does not work here unless heavily subsidized.
Different species mix as well. Less value per stem here as opposed to the eastern forests.
Here, mostly birch, beech, oak, maple, ash, for predominate hardwoods. Pine, cedar, spruce, hemlock, fir, and a few others for softwood. I'm not sure about road restrictions. Paved secondary roads are usually open for heavy equipment by May 1" (closed to heavy equipment around Mar 1 as the frost begins to melt). Average woods road slope ranges 0° to ~15°, mostly under 8°. There are a dozen log yards within 30 minutes. We have a lot of contracted private Canadian loggers operate in our north woods.
I had my land sustainably harvested (FSB) in 2015. They sorted the good logs and chipped the rest. I'm not aware of any OSB manufacturers in my area. There were 3 hardwood pellet manufacturers in the state but all are +100 miles away. I'm not sure where those chips went. There is a paper plant nearby that pioneered biomass boilers, but those are all shut down before 2015.
With the high price of OSB (and other products) these days I would think the PNW would be a goldmine. If your inclines are huge, low end pulp truckers scarce (don't need CDLs on private land), lack of chip trailers and trucks, distance from plywood/OSB factories too far ... I guess I get it. It blows my mind to let all that firewood/OSB chips and pellet material burn off into the atmosphere when I'm staring at +$6/gal heating oil and as low as -25F° at the worst in winter. I'm surprised the West Coast Greenies don't fund it as CO2 suppression by chipping the slag and using it in other products vs burning it. You'd think they would be concerned about global warming from the smoke and heat.
If your inclines are huge, low end pulp truckers scarce (don't need CDLs on private land), lack of chip trailers and trucks, distance from plywood/OSB factories too far ... I guess I get it.
This is the situation here. We're logging in mountains and it's been my observation that foresters trained in the east have no comprehension of the landscape scale on which we operate out west.
Average woods road slope ranges 0° to ~15°, mostly under 8°.
That is exceptionally flat, even for our rocked mainhauls. And they turn to native surface spurs from there, often for miles. It's not uncommon for a harvest unit to drop 500-1000ft in elevation across the unit.
The mills and pulp facilities are just a series of mini-monopolies centered in each wood basket. All several hours apart. Virtually no competition so log and byproduct prices are not sufficient to justify the transport cost. Getting worse since trucks used to run $1,100ish gross $ per day but are not pushing $1,400 easily.
I'm surprised the West Coast Greenies don't fund it as CO2 suppression by chipping the slag and using it in other products vs burning it. You'd think they would be concerned about global warming from the smoke and heat.
You'd think lol. Instead, they just moved into the woods from their urban centers and bitch about the rx smoke so badly and got the DEQ involved so its extremely restrictive to get burning done at acale.
There were 3 hardwood pellet manufacturers in the state but all are +100 miles away. I'm not sure where those chips went.
The chips very likely went to co-gen facilities at the mill. They often power their kilns with the trim from running sawlogs. If they're within 30ish minutes of the site, it's feasible. Beyond that and the every climbing cost of diesel outweighs the per-ton price of the chips.
Also, out here the pulp market is extremely volatile. Last year I couldn't give pulp logs away and was selling them as firewood instead. This year the price of pulp is better than sawlog per MBF on at least pine. Pretty wild. But it's so temporary and swings so wildly that nobody can reliably invest in the iron to get set up to run chips out of the woods long term.
Thanks. I learned a lot.
We're logging in mountains and it's been my observation that foresters trained in the east have no comprehension of the landscape scale on which we operate out west.
I've seen many mountains in CA, usually very steep! I saw a few episodes of American Loggers (I think that was the name of it) reality show years ago, some steep slopes there too. Yes, it is hard for folks to visualize how tough it is working on those slopes if they have never tried it. I sure wish I could teleport some of that slash here for heat this winter! Hardwood firewood is up to $400/cord cut/split/delivered in my area this fall.
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