Can I haul this much Teak?

[Mike Henderson]

+1 on this.
I said the same when I heard the price.

I pay more than $2 bf for Poplar.

It would be very easy to sell genuine teak for, say, $10/bd ft. If someone is willing to take less than $2/bd ft I'd be very suspicious. It's either not teak or it's "hot" (either stolen or brought into country without proper certification).

Most teak producing countries have an export tariff on raw teak to encourage production of products made from teak in their country. Around here, you can buy solid teak flooring cheaper per board foot than standard teak lumber. And teak furniture is cheaper than what you'd pay for raw wood to build it.

Mike

[Bill Orbine]

Yeah, you might want to verify that you're getting what you think you're buying.
Have you seen a sample?

Sometimes when a deal sounds too good to be true, it is.

I was thinking that teak the OP bought may be plantation teak. There seems to be a number of large lots sold like this in a few places at low bulk prices. This is the type of teak you'd see with outdoor furniture companies. Plantation teak doesn't carry the value of the "old growth" teak. It's hard to see in the OP's picture, but I'm leaning towards plantation teak

[Erik Loza]

Somewhat unrelated: Wife and I were just in Ecuador and they farmed teak everywhere areound the city of Guayaquil. I asked a local guy and he told me they typically harvest at 10-15 years of age and those trees are not very big at that size. Long and straight but not a very big trunk diameter, curiously. No idea how much they export but pretty much every piece of furniture I saw anywhere as well as lots of windows and doord were made of the stuff. They go for the thick, pour-on type varnish down there. And every house had a stack of teak boards out drying beside it. Tin shack on stilts with no power and five kids running around, but a big stack of teak boards on the deck.

Erik

[dirk martin]

This was a tax forced bankruptcy sale. Everything had to go. I saw a nice Laguna bandsaw with a huge stock feeder, go for $2,200. The Teak is all FEQ certified.

[Larry Edgerton]

Its $572.16 for a 12" face cord, so its kind of pricey for fire wood..

[dirk martin]

Looks like trucking is gonna cost me $1,700.

I also have to hire a rigger, onsite at OH, to make sure the pallets are secure, and the lumber isn't gonna move.
One of the batches I bought has the teak on about 30 pallets now that can be consolidated down to about 15 (some pallets only have a handful of boards on them now).
The darn rigger is quoting me $1,100 to consolidate, wrap, and load the pallets.

Expenses are adding up....

[Keith Westfall]

If it were mine, for 1100 dollars, I would drive down and consolidate it myself. Didn't you say it was only a couple hours away?

[dirk martin]

6 hours away.
Consolidating it is one thing, but the rigger also loads it on the Semi....which I can't do, since the rigger's got the fork lift, and I dont'

[dirk martin]

Plus it's not just consolidating. It needs to be secured to the pallets, which requires steel banding. And those darn banding kits (which I don't own) are $500 themselves.....

[Brad Schmid]

To put it in perspective, I have a 2012 F-450 and a tri-axle gooseneck. But even with this rig I'd have to make 2 trips to stay weight legal (and safe), I'd be over my 33,000 lb GCWR on 1 load. I'd have about $1K in fuel (2 round trips of 1k miles point to point). Figure about $200 for an 18qt oil change plus the miscellaneous like tire wear on 12 tires, wear on diff oil, 5 gal exhaust fluid, tolls, insurance, etc. If I didn't have a Class A driver/partner to help drive/consolidate/load I'd have to figure 4 days per trip (1.5 days to get there, .5 day to consolidate and load, and 2 reasonable days for return fully loaded if weather conditions were decent; then do it all again. Hotels, food, etc. Chewing up the $2800 you were quoted would not be difficult and it doesn't include drivers wages. I don't believe the number you were quoted is too unreasonable given the alternatives. Good luck, it will be a real treat having that much teak to work with

Edit: Oops sorry, I thought I remembered reading somewhere that you said it was 1k miles away. I guess that was wrong in which case that would reduce the cost and time a bit... Even so, I still think it's a reasonable cost.