The great lumber price gouge of 2020 2021

[Jay Hinrichs]

AS anyone who has been buying any kind of dimensional lumber knows prices have sky rocketed as much as 400% for some items in the last year.

To me it seems like price fixing gouging..  at least here in the Northwest which is timber country  Saw mill country etc.

I was talking to my old partner in my land and timber company of the 90s and I was asking him what he is doing this logging season.. Fully expected him to say they are going to do great etc with the demand.
Answer was shocking:

He is probably not going to log at all.. the Mills have LOWERED delivered Log prices to almost 1980s level .

The reason is all the fires here in Oregon have the mills salvage logging like crazy and they have more logs then they know what to do with and they get good stump age prices from the public lands and then private log prices follow that .. so they have a year or so to log like made to get the fire damaged logs in and milled while they are still marketable.

So over supply of logs yet lumber sky rocketed.. whats going on ????  Mills making a killing  Lumber brokers making a killing ?   I am going fishing in a few months with a friend of mine that owned a few saw mills here in Oregon and sold out to Weyerhouser and retired about 7 or 8 years ago see if he has any inside of what is going on.

[Jay Hinrichs]

Originally posted by @JD Martin:

Jay I'll be interested to follow this thread since you have so many inside contacts on this. Lumber is appalling right now and I live in a big logging area and I've been surprised there aren't trucks running everywhere around me right now with prices the way they are. 

what prompted the call to my old partner was B/C as I was driving out to my project yesterday two log trucks weny by me on the opposite side of the road so I got a good look at the logs  All were burnt  so it was salvage timber 

I remember when Katrina hit there was over 10 million  board feet of Blow down in the south .. so prices were weak as they moved that timber to the mills but  finished product did not rise like we have seen.

Just seems to be  good ole Gouging and price fixing.. Now I am sure the mills missed some days with covid etc. that create some shortages and I know the market for new builds in my area is beyond red hot  so you do have supply demand affecting the market but this seems over the top to me.  Plus I know the Tariffs with the BC ( British Columbia ) Timber don't help  but still Really 400% price rise.