Y'all Been Checkin' Lumber Prices?

[jyoutz]

Many US sawmills were shut down over the years because of cheaper foreign govt. subsidized competition and various restrictions on
logging in USA.

It's been going on for a long time.

There is lot more to this story - it also had a detrimental effect on pulp & paper mills in the Pacific Northwest because they were using residual wood-chips & sawdust from those sawmills for raw material.

I worked all my life in the paper industry as a supplier of equipment and saw this happen first hand.

Sad.

No politics please.

The U.S. Forest Service has millions of acres of signed NEPA decisions for timber management projects that will yield sawtimber and biomass materials that go unsold because there is currently insufficient manufacturing capacity for timber products in the U.S. What used to be considered as pulpwood is now called biomass because the pulp market is just about dead. Except for toilet paper and box materials, there is little demand for paper products, so small diameter trees and sawmill residues are used to make wood pellets, and bio energy (where plants exist) or sold as low value mulch materials. OSB uses some low grade wood chips, but the market is saturated. Sawtimber sales are still purchased but there is more wood supply than the sawmills can process. The limiting factor for producing lumber and other wood products in the U.S. isn’t currently harvesting restrictions or wood supply; it’s insufficient processing capacity.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

The U.S. Forest Service has millions of acres of signed NEPA decisions for timber management projects that will yield sawtimber and biomass materials that go unsold because there is currently insufficient manufacturing capacity for timber products in the U.S. What used to be considered as pulpwood is now called biomass because the pulp market is just about dead. Except for toilet paper and box materials, there is little demand for paper products, so small diameter trees and sawmill residues are used to make wood pellets, and bio energy (where plants exist) or sold as low value mulch materials. OSB uses some low grade wood chips, but the market is saturated. Sawtimber sales are still purchased but there is more wood supply than the sawmills can process. The limiting factor for producing lumber and other wood products in the U.S. isn’t currently harvesting restrictions or wood supply; it’s insufficient processing capacity.

Yep, the environmental laws of the seventies, coupled with the Environmental Defense Act, (aka the Full Employment for Environmental Attorneys Act), meant that every sale the Forest Service or BLM tried to have, got held up for years in court. The mills all got starved out. By the late nineties, when the agencies had won enough suits, and established legal precedents which allowed sales, the mills were gone. When the trucks can't make a round trip to and from the mill, in a day without a sleeper and co-driver, it isn't possible to sell timber.

 

[jyoutz]

Yep, the environmental laws of the seventies, coupled with the Environmental Defense Act, (aka the Full Employment for Environmental Attorneys Act), meant that every sale the Forest Service or BLM tried to have, got held up for years in court. The mills all got starved out. By the late nineties, when the agencies had won enough suits, and established legal precedents which allowed sales, the mills were gone. When the trucks can't make a round trip to and from the mill, in a day without a sleeper and co-driver, it isn't possible to sell timber.

Absolutely true, but that isn’t the current situation. In my Region (AZ and NM) we have about 2 million acres of timber management projects that have signed NEPA decisions and no court injunctions. But we are only cutting 40-50 thousand acres per year because that is all the manufacturing capacity can handle. There are lots of opportunities for additional wood processing facilities in the U.S. and plenty of supply to sustain new facilities. I will say that part of the reason for the reduction in sawmills was as you describe, but part was due to the industry not adapting to producing products from younger small diameter trees, as the old large diameter trees became less available. The operations that re-tooled to use smaller diameter logs are still operating, but those companies that didn’t invest in modernization of their sawmills are gone.

 

[Rockbadchild]

What idled mills. All the idle mills around me got, taken down and shipped to Canada. Except for one, which went onto a ship, which mills it into lumber while at sea. And then delivers it to Japan.

Out here also, many mills have been purchased by larger company and close down, not for their hardware but for their harvesting rights... The reality of today is the mills are so productive that one produce as much as 3 from 30/40 years ago.

 

[goeduck]

Many of the ones that were here were made for much larger lumber than what is harvested these days. So they'd need new ones anyway.

 

[arto98607]

We had quite a few large "hazard" Douglas Fir's removed not long ago and according to the loggers there was some difficulty finding sawmill that can handle them since most sawmills in the area have been converted to handle much smaller logs!

Some may have gone to export...

 

[ultrarunner]

We had quite a few large "hazard" Douglas Fir's removed not long ago and according to the loggers there was some difficulty finding sawmill that can handle them since most sawmills in the area have been converted to handle much smaller logs!

Some may have gone to export...

I’ve heard the same when my land was cruised…

The massive Doug Fir and Cedar have limited to no markets…

 

[Rockbadchild]

Out here (we have much smaller trees in general) one sawmills can only handle 32inch diameter logs, the other one I beleve is 38 but they trim (lathe) them down to 34 before it gets in the mill... anything bigger is over size and get sold to who ever for what ever they want (mostly firewood)

 

[jyoutz]

Yes, sawmills that can handle oversized logs are dwindling or gone in most places. Where they exist now, they are small niche operations. Large timber companies have done the prudent thing and modernized their mills to handle younger timber, so they are no longer dependent on or can use timber that is hundreds of years old to profitably produce lumber.

 

[ultrarunner]

Godparents family had a small mill for several generations that could handle quite large trees and also small but the equipment was very old and very slow by modern standards so about 50 years ago stopped commercial and only occasionally private sawing for locals…

 

[ultrarunner]

I’ve seen a portable mill operation where local farmers skid their timber for barns and builds and it gets cut to size… the farmers like it… sometimes the saw is there for a week or more