Originally Posted by timbercruiser
It depends on so many different factors it is impossible to guess. Use to we used about $3200 as a guide on a loblolly stand with a 28 year rotation. Now you can't get a paper mill or sawmill to give you a guaranteed delivery price for a month.

I looked at a logging job this morning in south Alabama that surprised me a little. It was a 18 year old longleaf plantation planted in old peanut fields, very good dirt. Dang stuff won't grow. The landowner couldn't find anybody that would give a price per ton doing a thinning, so he is clear cutting it and chipping it. It was in a government program of some kind, but the time had lapsed.
He figures he can stump it and get $140+ per acre rent as agriculture fields. By the way, across the highway on similar dirt was some loblolly that is probably the same age or less. It has been thinned already and has some very good chip-n-saw standing. I'm not saying all longleaf is like that, but I can show you plenty of it that is.


I wish I had stopped and made some pics a couple of months back of some timber in St. Clair co. The loblolly stand looked about 18 yrs old, and was filled with dead and dying trees. Even the best ones were a sickly yellow color and the whole stand needed to be cut and started over. I don't know the owner or his thinking, but I suspect he has looked at prices like Jarod posted and realized he will get next to nothing if he cuts it now.

But right across the road was a stand of longleaf that was as pretty as any you will see anywhere. I'm guessing that the stands are about the same age, but it's obvious that the longleaf owner is in a much better situation than the loblolly guy. It all depends on the soil for your particular area.

One of the big reasons the timber industry in AL is so depressed now is that millions of acres unsuitable for growing loblolly was planted in it anyway. The government even helped pay the cost of planting a lot of it. And now we have this huge glut of sick loblolly, and many landowners are holding off cutting it, hoping prices will go back up. Instead, they go down every year.

There are reasons that the natural acreage of loblolly was small. I'll never plant another one.

Last edited by poorcountrypreacher; 06/01/17 12:50 PM.
All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.