how to start a portable sawmill business

[Robert Clarcke]

I am so confused! To all the ones out there that post on this site regularly that have a portable sawmill businesses, do you really make much money at it or is it mainly a hobby? I have been reading other sites and many discourage starting a portable sawmill business. Some say you have to charge around $100 dollars and hour to make any money at it. I wonder if this might be true with all the expenses you incur. I know that just starting up is tuff and it will take a while. I plan on working the job that I am in now until things take off. The wife is behind me in starting this endeavor so I have that on my side. I just wonder that after paying big bucks for a hydraulic mill, you will also have to work the other job to make this venture work. Please help me out. Be honest, is this worth it. All I want is to pay my bills and make a little money at it. I am not looking to get rich. I love working outdoors and working with wood. I think this would be enjoyable and interesting to see what you can get out of a log. Thank you in advance for your help.

[Tom M King]

Find the Forestry Forums. Lots of guys there who do it for a living. I would say 100 bucks an hour sounds about right. I don't do it for a living, but do work wood for a living.

[John Upton]

What do I know:
# 1 Is there a need for a sawmill business in your neighborhood ?
# 2 Do you have the ancillary equipment to operate a sawmill ? Fork lift or Bob Cat to move logs ? Truck to pick up or deliver logs ?
# 3 Do you have any experience running a saw mill ? I know I don't.
#4 Do you have a business plan ?
Best of Luck John

[eugene thomas]

sold a jointer to guy that had portable saw mill. he charged $60 hour. meet a nother guy at a home show an he charged around the $60 dollar range to... I was thinking that was pretty good. but if told me 100 per house might of not though so good a deal.

[Al Weber]

I'd recommend you go to the milling forum at ArboristSite.com and post your question and look at the forum for awhile. I think you will find most of them use a mill for their own stock and maybe sell a bit on the side. A lot depends on where you are too. If you aren't in an area where there is a lot of either woodlots or removal of urban or suburban trees, you aren't going to make any money. Most of the successful commercial ones I know have contracts with either woodlot owners or tree cutting services or some other commercial operation. It is doable if all the stars align and have the right attitude and work ethic. Good Luck.

[Mark Bolton]

Not a sawing business but custom shop with a small band mill and small kiln that I have run in conjunction with my business. I am in the process of getting the mill moved into a bit more of a useful component of the business at the moment. Ive owned the mill for about 12 years or so.

To me it would seem there are many many factors that will influence the viability of such a business but I would first say I think your nuts for trying it unless youve got a substantial demand thats already established. The factors (in my opinion) would be things like, is the mill to be portable or stationary? Are you going to only do custom sawing or are you going to also look to retail/wholesale wood sales as well? Are you going to have to handle logs? Fell trees? Cleanup? How far will you have to go if your portable? Will you be dealing with a lot of yard trees? How large/automated a mill are you able to invest in? Will you have a minimum and a setup/move fee? And so on. Last major factor is your location and projected customer base.

Based on my experience, I am not sure you could make it at $60/hr if your mobile, have to go a long ways, are not paid from the instant you leave or have a move fee, and everything doesnt go perfectly smooth. The size of you average job will also be a major factor. I just dont think $60/hr would cover the cost of a truck, mill, man (or two), blades, fuel, and wear and tear on bodies and equipment unless everything went flawlessly.

I can only speak to my local area but here you can buy your bread and butter, green, rough lumber relatively inexpensively. Im talking red oak for 450/MBF. Just load it and go. I know when I started sawing 12 years ago people were throwing around numbers like $0.20-$0.25 per foot as to what they were paying to have logs sawn. Even then there was simply no way I could saw at those numbers but I dont have a high dollar high production mill (log loaders/turners/etc). Sawing a couple MBF/day of inch lumber is for me a BIG day and wouldnt include setup and travel time. At those numbers I would be talking $250-$500/day gross and when you take out the expenses you'd be better off staying in bed.

In my experience with the mill your going to go through about 3 blades/MBF if your trying to saw for time (instant a blade slows, change it). That has you at perhaps $75-90 dollars alone right there though I dont know how many MBF you can saw per hour. Plus fuel in the mill and truck and some for wear and tear. At those numbers you could have $40/hr in out of pocket expenses alone when your sawing and thats if nothing goes wrong and your not sawing trees you have to worry about hitting anything in.

We re-sharpen our blades which helps but only slightly. I have about 20 minutes (again if everything goes perfectly) in a blade so your getting two to three blades an hour sharpened. At $50/hr for shop time that puts you at 16+ per blade til they break.

Again, Im only speaking from my experience, things that would concern me would be:
1. Established demand
2. Short travel
3. Minimum charge or a breaking point for a full days pay.
4. Preferably a setup fee or move fee
5. Premium sawing at a premium price

Its inevitable your going to have someone with two trees in their yard or property they want sawn. 3-6 logs. Your going to have to move and set your mill, get setup to saw, saw for 3 hours, and drive home. Even if you get an hour of travel time in there thats $240.00 @60/hr. Take out your overhead and (in my opinion) your sunk.

All that said, if your in a location where there is a large demand, could stay busy with larger jobs, are not haggling with farmers who say "back in ott nine I paid fifteen cents a foot", and even better will have a small yard where local tree companies or other sources can drop off free trees that you can then saw and sell, it may get juicy.

With anything less than a massive production sawmill your of course going to have to compete on "juicy" sawing. The hard part is many individuals think the tree is a major part of financial equation. Its simply not. The money is in the felling, skididng, trucking, sawing. The tree itself is often times a very small portion.

Lastly, as another post mentioned, are you a sawyer or do you have any experience in sawing? Do you understand how to cut tension out of a log? The principles behind sawing logs and how they behave on the mill? Sawing for grade? Many people think its just a matter of tossing a log on a sawmill and hacking it into boards but there is actually a lot more to it than that. If you just chop a log up into boards your more than likely going to have thick and thin, and wind up with a pile of burdensome boards. There is quite a bit to understanding how to read the log on the mill, watching and paying attention to tension as your taking boards off the cant, and so on. Its not rocket science by any means but there is a lot to be said for a sawyer who can take a less than desirable log and get decent lumber out of it.

Just my $0.02

[Bradley Gray]

Excellent response! I have dealt with local portable band mill owners for 30 years and I don't know anyone who works one full time. There is quite a bit of logging and stationary saw milling and that keeps the prices down on lumber. In most cases it is less expensive to buy boards than to have my own logs sawn. The logs I do have sawn are for live edge work, extra wide boards and big timbers and band mills work great for this kind of specialty stock. Seems like a tough way to make a living though.

[David Weaver]

The numbers discussed when people talk about using a portable mill that might cost tens of thousands of dollars remind me of farmers who custom combine (custom being a term that's standard in farming, there's not really anything custom about it), except the old guys i remember custom combining were just trying to pay the bill for their combines when they had some spare time - they weren't actually hoping to make any free cash flow.

[johnny means]

Everyone I've ever run into that had a portable sawmill regretted it and was trying to sell me lumber at firesale prices. I on the other hand eventually regretted buying amateur cut lumber.

[David Eisenhauer]

And finally - It is very difficult to make a very decent living off of your own labor (as a one-man business) in any kind of business if you truly add up all of your expenses. Invariably, you end up needing to hire a few "helpers" or a "crew" to do anything that produces any kind of steady revenue stream of any value at all and now you have a business to run. The lack of being able to accurately figure out the cost of the business is the single most contributing factor in failed businesses. Example - "Well, I already own the truck so I don't have to put any cost in for that". It wears out and will need replacing, never mind maintenance. By decent living, I mean raising kids - putting them into some kind of schooling when they finish public school, health insurance all the way around, maybe buy a (modest) home or put a roof on the one you already have, put aside a little for old age, etc. Probably many of us have been where you are now and it is not an easy path you are thinking about in general, much less when you apply the excellent info provided by Mark B above.

[Jim Andrew]

I have a band mill, and can guarantee you that yes it is a hobby. I will not saw for anyone on their property, as that requires an insurance policy, and if I saw at home, it is protected under my farm owners policy. You can read up on insurance and other issues at forestryforum.com Since I bought my mill, others have shown up in the neighborhood, a couple home built, and a couple timberkings. There was even a Woodmiser at the farm show this year. Most of the trees in my neighborhood are not of the highest quality, I'd rate most at 3 common.

[johnny means]

I think you need to start off with the basics of any new business endeavor. What's your product? What's your target market? Is there a demand?

[Tai Fu]

It seems any sort of farming/cultivating work is a bad business venture all around. I routinely hear in documentaries and stories of how farmers barely make enough to make ends meet, pay for equipment maintenance, etc.. The only reason people do it is heavy government subsidy or they are just stuck with the land.

But at the same time, if everyone just decides to go sit in an office as a consultant, then where will our foods come from? Seems like just about everything essential about society doesn't make much money or are a poor business venture. I feel like if you ask anyone if it's a good idea to start a business doing X a lot of people will say how hard it is, or how little money is in it unless you have giant contracts. I'm feeling this could start a famine if farmers decide to quit or if not enough farmers are around to replace the ones that retire due to lack of money from farming... I mean you can't eat computers or filing cabinets or even dollar bills. At the end of the day various skills essential to society (plumbing, electrical, carpentry, welding, etc.) are getting depleted because people get the idea that they should go to college and work at some office pushing papers around.

So all I can say is, yes it sounds like a poor business venture but think of the possibilities. I would say you should be skilled at whatever you're doing, if you lack that skill then don't even think about it. Marketing is important but if you are good at marketing but lack the basic professional skills in your work, then even the best marketing experts can't help you... besides someone else can always figure marketing out (or it will somehow figure itself out once words of your skill gets out). What's important is someone's gotta do those jobs, and quite frankly a lot of people doing those jobs are going to retire without anyone to replace them. Anyone aspiring to replace them should be welcomed.

[Ed McEowen]

I have a sawmill (manual w/o hydraulics). I'd starve if I had to rely on it to earn a living. But, I'm not saying it's impossible. If I could market products derived from my milling --- finished slab tables, wide boards, sculpture with interesting grain and figure, gun stocks, etc. --- well, you get the picture. You should market from tree to finished product. Anything else and you are just a middle man, and middle men only make wages, if that (after expenses).

[johnny means]

I have a sawmill (manual w/o hydraulics). I'd starve if I had to rely on it to earn a living. But, I'm not saying it's impossible. If I could market products derived from my milling --- finished slab tables, wide boards, sculpture with interesting grain and figure, gun stocks, etc. --- well, you get the picture. You should market from tree to finished product. Anything else and you are just a middle man, and middle men only make wages, if that (after expenses).

That would be like being the farmer, the miller, and the baker. Almost impossible to do.