My last article — the one about selling firewood in smaller amounts instead of only full cords — got shared a lot and argued about even more. The comment I kept seeing, over and over: “Nobody pays $350 for a cord. I get mine for $150.”

Fair enough. So let's do the math nobody does. Here is what it actually costs to produce one honest cord of seasoned firewood — cut, split, delivered, and stacked in your yard. These are my real numbers, from my operation.

THE WOOD ITSELF — $100 BEFORE ANYTHING HAPPENS

A cord of firewood starts as a cord's worth of logs, and logs are not free. My target cost for logs is $100 per cord, delivered to my yard. That's the first $100, spent before a saw ever starts.

CUTTING AND SPLITTING — 1.2 TO 2 HOURS

Turning those logs into a split cord, loaded and ready: on a firewood processor it takes me about 1.2 hours per cord. On a box wedge splitter, about 1.7 hours. On a vertical splitter, about 2 hours. Same logs, same cord — the machine decides how much of your day it takes. (It's also why the equipment matters, and why two sellers with different machines can have very different costs in the same cord.)

DELIVERY — $50 AND 1.5 HOURS

A typical delivery run costs me about $50 in fuel and truck wear, and takes about 1.5 hours round trip. That cost is in every delivered cord whether anybody writes it down or not.

STACKING — 1 HOUR

Stacking a cord where the customer wants it takes about an hour. It's the part everybody forgets to count, and it's pure labor — a cord is 128 cubic feet of wood moved one piece at a time, twice: once onto the truck, once off it.

ADD IT UP

With bought logs, one delivered and stacked cord carries $150 in cash costs — $100 in logs and $50 in delivery — and 3.7 to 4.5 hours of work, depending on the machine:

Cash costs are the same $150 on every row. What changes is your time.

WHAT ABOUT “FREE” LOGS?

Some sellers cut their own logs, and I do some of that too. It takes me about 2 hours per cord just to have logs ready to process, plus about $30 in fuel, bar oil, and chain wear. So the “free” version of a cord costs $80 in cash — $30 in supplies and $50 in delivery — and 6.7 to 7.5 hours of work instead of 3.7 to 4.5. Sell that cord at $350 and you've made $270 for more hours, which works out to less per hour than buying the logs. Free logs aren't free. They just get paid for in time instead of money.

And if you cut your own firewood for your own heat, none of this says you're doing anything wrong — your labor is your own and the math is different. This is about what it costs when firewood is a product somebody delivers to your door.

SO HOW IS A $150 CORD POSSIBLE?

Run the same math at $150: $150 minus $100 in logs minus $50 in delivery leaves zero — zero for nearly 4 hours of work, before a single chain gets sharpened or a bar wears out. So when a cord sells for $150, something in it is different. Usually it's one of these: the logs were free and the labor was never counted — a fellow selling a little extra off his own woodpile, which is fine as long as you know that's what you're buying. Or the wood is green, not seasoned. Or the “cord” stacks out to two-thirds of a cord. Or there's softwood mixed into what's sold as hardwood.

A $150 cord exists. It just isn't the same product as a full-measure, seasoned, delivered-and-stacked cord — and comparing the two prices without the math is exactly how buyers get burned and honest sellers get called crooks.

Sell that $350 cord and what's left after the $150 in cash costs is $200 for 3.7 to 4.5 hours of work — roughly $44 to $54 an hour — and equipment payments, repairs, insurance, chains and bars still come out of that. At $300 a cord it's $150 for the same hours. That's the business. It's a fair living. It is not a killing, and it is nobody getting gouged.

When you pay for a delivered cord, you're not really paying for wood. You're paying for about four hours of somebody's work, $150 of his costs, and wood that was cut a year ago so it burns the way it should. Price firewood however you want — just do the math first.

Premium Firewood Supply LLC also sells firewood equipment — processors, splitters, and conveyors — to make firewood easier to produce.