I was picking up some wood today at the local lumberyard. The woman processing
my order was on the phone explaining to another customer that Alder was very
hard to come by these days.
I asked her about it when she hung up, and she explained that Alder just seems
to be increasing in popularity, with lots of folks substituting it for cherry.
They are having a hard time finding reliable sources for the wood.
I built a few things from Alder over the years, I really enjoyed working with
it. At the time, I wondered why it was priced closer to soft maple and poplar
and not closer to cherry. I guess it's not priced that way anymore.
Rich S.
Now I thought you drove the price DOWN to eliminate competition.
Situation seems made for a small operator to job a few high cost logs to
undersell the big guy. Or is the contention that the "contracts" made,
presumably for delivery of alder cornered the entire supply? I know you
folks out there don't have a lot of privately held forests to buffer the
market. Ours are diminishing under rapacious tax laws that take more than
twice the money from a private holder than the government gives in PiLT.
"Steve Dunbar" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Rich Stern wrote:
>
> ...
> > Alder was very hard to come by these days.
> ...
>
> Timber giant Weyerhauser has been accused of driving up the cost of alder
> logs in order to drive smaller mills out of business. See
> <http://www.kezi.com/content/contentID/4431>.
>
> --
> Steve