Lumber prices WTF?

[Paragon]

I just have not paid attention completely to this market. I use a timber broker to sell my timber

I can’t get a remotely historical price for my timber and have been sitting on cutting a 40acre tract for 2 years. But lumber prices are sky high?

It’s not a supply thing

 

[Void_of_Light]

My brothers father in law hauls logs. He never stopped working, and says he isn’t making a dime more than he was before this crap happened.

 

[DWT]

Helped a friend with some plywood yesterday. $63 a sheet for maple 3/4". Really nice shit, good enough I'd stain it and use it everywhere. Anyway the standard rough knotty shit right next to it is $68 a sheet. WTF?

 

[HillbillyDeluxe]

I have a load of 2x4x12 and 14ft lumber sitting on my trailer right now. Sitting at $3/mi to haul it to Austin from Ms.

Retail prices are fucking outrageous. I actually tarped my load just so its not visible sitting over the weekend. Thieves are getting crazy lately.

 

[Void_of_Light]

Helped a friend with some plywood yesterday. $63 a sheet for maple 3/4". Really nice shit, good enough I'd stain it and use it everywhere. Anyway the standard rough knotty shit right next to it is $68 a sheet. WTF?

Must be old stock, I Bought 2 sheets of 1/2” cabinet grade ply for $39 a sheet. Osb was $35. Yesterday osb was $41. I assume the 1/2 was old and just hasn’t been hit with the reorder cost.

 

[[486]]

bet the bottleneck is in the sawmills rather than the logging side

Helped a friend with some plywood yesterday. $63 a sheet for maple 3/4". Really nice shit, good enough I'd stain it and use it everywhere. Anyway the standard rough knotty shit right next to it is $68 a sheet. WTF?

they don't sell a lot of the cabinetry stuff so it's got an older price

 

[Gtrplyr78]

Dropped $170 on some 2x4x8 on Thursday (shelving/bench for garage use), yes prices are unreal. Just like fuel and other things that went up in price - create artificial shortage and bill for it.

 

[Chevy_man]

My sister has been going through hell trying to sell lumber. All the mills keep turning the wood away as they can't process it and their yard is full.


It's not the supply, it's the processing. The fact that a stupid amount of it is sent to china to be kiln dried is crazy too.

 

[Honky Lips]

It’s a joke. 5k in wood just to frame my basement. Fuck these crooks

 

[Thefishguy77]

My sister has been going through hell trying to sell lumber. All the mills keep turning the wood away as they can't process it and their yard is full.


It's not the supply, it's the processing. The fact that a stupid amount of it is sent to china to be kiln dried is crazy too.

Export timber pays a lot more for shit wood that domestic mills do. Helmock is what most of the Hem/Fir you buy is and its a shit going to warp the first second in the sun. But Asia pays good money for that shit wood. I followed several trucks from east Lewis county Thursday all the way to the port of tacoma exit. All that hemlock was going for top dollar in Asia. A lot of the small time loggers around here don't want o do export because it can add time to their job as the truck can only make 2 runs a day 3 with no traffic vs. the 2 local mills within 30 minutes one way.

 

[east_beast]

My sister has been going through hell trying to sell lumber. All the mills keep turning the wood away as they can't process it and their yard is full.


It's not the supply, it's the processing. The fact that a stupid amount of it is sent to china to be kiln dried is crazy too.

Bingo. There's only so much mill capacity. It's absolutely a supply issue, the chokepoint in the supply chain isn't with raw material, it's with mill capacity so we aren't seeing raw material costs sky rocketing.

 

[Lawless]

Bingo. There's only so much mill capacity. It's absolutely a supply issue, the chokepoint in the supply chain isn't with raw material, it's with mill capacity so we aren't seeing raw material costs sky rocketing.

You nailed it. Up here in Canuckistan the prices got low enough last couple of years a lot of mills just shut down, some for months and some forever. Once their inventory was depleted they still sat idle, then comes the rona and bam people are buying wood, prices are possibly higher then the last few decades and they can't keep up. It's shipping as fast as they can make it and there is no inventory sitting in the yards for a cushion.

 

[Norm]

We have shut a lot of mills in this country over the last 10 years. Now we don’t have the capacity to build at this pace. I think this bubble will burst soon and prices will normalize.

 

[east_beast]

You nailed it. Up here in Canuckistan the prices got low enough last couple of years a lot of mills just shut down, some for months and some forever. Once their inventory was depleted they still sat idle, then comes the rona and bam people are buying wood, prices are possibly higher then the last few decades and they can't keep up. It's shipping as fast as they can make it and there is no inventory sitting in the yards for a cushion.

I'm closing on a property in a week and a half that has a 24x24 carport that I want to finish into a detached garage. I was thinking that I could avoid some of the cost issues by cutting down a couple of trees and have them milled into the wood I need since the property has 4-5 acres of mature timber. The problem is that there's nowhere to get them milled. All the small local mills shutdown years ago and even if they hadn't they'd probably have more work than they could handle at the moment anyway. So, I'll likely just wait to tackle that project.

 

[Fullsize80cherokee]

Dropped $170 on some 2x4x8 on Thursday (shelving/bench for garage use), yes prices are unreal. Just like fuel and other things that went up in price - create artificial shortage and bill for it.

Yep

 

[Deleted Member]

Until people stop buying at those dumb prices and kill demand, the prices will remain high. I am putting off projects, because I refuse to pay those prices.... in fact I have told people that are begging me to build shit to wait. As long as it takes. Fawk em. It's a screwing with no reach around...

 

[Will12785]

We have shut a lot of mills in this country over the last 10 years. Now we don’t have the capacity to build at this pace. I think this bubble will burst soon and prices will normalize.

Im not very old but i dont ever recall timber prices booming and bursting. Ive only ever seen them shoot up and level off until they shoot up again.

 

[HillbillyDeluxe]

Until people stop buying at those dumb prices and kill demand, the prices will remain high. I am putting off projects, because I refuse to pay those prices.... in fact I have told people that are begging me to build shit to wait. As long as it takes. Fawk em. It's a screwing with no reach around...

If you dont take their money to build what they want, someone else will. Then who's the fool?

 

[Thefishguy77]

If you dont take their money to build what they want, someone else will. Then who's the fool?

A fool and their money are soon parted. Would you rather let people accuse you of missing a few dollars in profit. Or would you rather be the person the spent 200% over budget because “you had plans” and then put yourself in a financial hole you might not be able to get out of? (Talking house sized projects here).

 

[Deleted Member]

If you dont take their money to build what they want, someone else will. Then who's the fool?

The fool is the one that spends money they will never get their investment back on. I couldn't sell my home right now for what it would cost me to build a new one. There is just no way... I try to explain it to others and they just don't care. Foolish is just that.

 

[Thefishguy77]

Im not very old but i dont ever recall timber prices booming and bursting. Ive only ever seen them shoot up and level off until they shoot up again.

Here is a 25 year average and you can see its astronomically inflated over the last year. This is not a sustainable price point. It will fall back down or lumber will be a thing of the past. Its now cheaper for me to use ICF vs lumber. 2 years ago ICF, price really hasn’t changed, was almost 2X lumber. So they will either have to jack up everything, hyper inflation will cause this, or they have to prive their stuff competitive to other building materials or face falling out of favor with builders. Ever builder I know hates the quality of the lumber they are getting even more than the price, 2x10 PT material varied between 9 1/4 to 9 7/8. Seriously adds time and bullshit.

 

[Jes]

Ever builder I know hates the quality of the lumber they are getting even more than the price, 2x10 PR material varied between 9 1/4 to 9 7/8. Seriously adds time and bullshit.

Now that you mention it, was bitching with my coworkers last week about poor quality plywood. We were building a bunch of platforms and ripping a unit of 1/2" in half. The things were between 1/8"-3/8" short of 96"s. I was wondering why one piece was coming up short until I actually measured a sheet.

 

[SomeGuy]

Here is a 25 year average and you can see its astronomically inflated over the last year. This is not a sustainable price point. It will fall back down or lumber will be a thing of the past. Its now cheaper for me to use ICF vs lumber. 2 years ago ICF, price really hasn’t changed, was almost 2X lumber. So they will either have to jack up everything, hyper inflation will cause this, or they have to prive their stuff competitive to other building materials or face falling out of favor with builders. Ever builder I know hates the quality of the lumber they are getting even more than the price, 2x10 PR material varied between 9 1/4 to 9 7/8. Seriously adds time and bullshit.

Ugh, been building a deck for my neighbour and the 2x8's we're using vary from 7" even to 7 1/2" thick, and up to 3/4" variation on length. Talk about a pain in the ass for getting everything flat.

 

[hooligan shmulligan]

Helping a buddy build a frame for a Whitewater raft. Told him we'd go old school and build it out of wood and keep it on the cheap. FML 87$ for 3 2x10 and 70 for a sheet of 3/4 AC plywood. Tried to get MDO but fuck that noise right now. Our local lumber yard always has us over a barrel but God damn I could almost build it out of aluminum for this price.

 

[Splib]

The quoted delivered price for my 1/2-inch 4x8 CDX went from $32.47 to $40.32 from September 2020 to March 2021. About a 25% increase.

My 2x6 10ft studs went from $12.06 to $14.73 about 22% increase. Not really an earth shaking quaking factor.

 

[Thefishguy77]

Ugh, been building a deck for my neighbour and the 2x8's we're using vary from 7" even to 7 1/2" thick, and up to 3/4" variation on length. Talk about a pain in the ass for getting everything flat.

Yea we bought a track saw and a few gallons of the PT preservative shit and rip everything uniform. Add a day of work off site including dry time for that shit. But allows us to still look like we have our shit together on site.

 

[Thefishguy77]

Now that you mention it, was bitching with my coworkers last week about poor quality plywood. We were building a bunch of platforms and ripping a unit of 1/2" in half. The things were between 1/8"-3/8" short of 96"s. I was wondering why one piece was coming up short until I actually measured a sheet.

We just started sending the short shit back instead of trying to make it work. Fuck that. If your going to fuck us without a reach around then you better actually deliver what we paid for. I am charging the customer for 96” boards. Get that fucking BS 95 5/8 off the site.

 

[SomeGuy]

Yea we bought a track saw and a few gallons of the PT preservative shit and rip everything uniform. Add a day of work off site including dry time for that shit. But allows us to still look like we have our shit together on site.

Yeah, can run some through the table saw pretty quickly or just use the handheld planer after assembly to clean up the worst ones. 1/8" is usually not noticeable for joists, even a 1/4" variation you can get away with, but 1/2" is just ridiculous, so those ones get a quarter taken off to come back to nominal.

 

[TRINDU]

Im not very old but i dont ever recall timber prices booming and bursting. Ive only ever seen them shoot up and level off until they shoot up again.

We're living in a clown communist world.

Until the govt quits paying people to sit on their ass and not pay rent, the rest of us suffer.

 

[Thefishguy77]

Yeah, can run some through the table saw pretty quickly or just use the handheld planer after assembly to clean up the worst ones. 1/8" is usually not noticeable for joists, even a 1/4" variation you can get away with, but 1/2" is just ridiculous, so those ones get a quarter taken off to come back to nominal.

Just make sure a seal them. As you are probably putting the trimmed side up and have lost the protection from the PT process where cut, and yea PT sucks hind tit these days.