Logging 100 acres of timber near Martins Ferry
This post is a cautionary study of what happens — far too often — when you sell your timber directly to a sawmill. You should never do this, and the story of what happened to this family shows exactly why.
While all the facts in this case are true, names have been withheld to protect the family’s privacy.
Step 1. Reaching out to us to consult on a prospective timber sale
On December 28, 2024 a woman reached out to us through our contact form, and asked us if we could help her find a buyer for 100 acres of timber growing on her property near Martin’s Ferry in Belmont County.
A stand of that size typically holds significant timber value and we called her to get the location’s address, ask for details and learn her objectives.
She explained that in the summer of 2004, she had made an all-cash, handshake agreement with an Amish logger with a portable sawmill to come out and harvest timber from the property.. She told us that he paid her $40,000 for the timber he cut.
She also said that since 19.5 years had passed since it was last logged, she expected another good timber crop to be ready to harvest, and she was looking forward to another profitable sale.
When we explained the importance of getting an accurate timber inventory, she asked us to come out to do it and give her an estimate of what a sale would bring in today’s market.
Step 2: Evaluating the timber stand
Our certified forester drove out to her property on January 2, 2025 and entered the woods to cruise the timber and evaluate it. To his surprise there was no timber value at all to be found, beyond just a handful of barely mature trees.
Due to his training and experience in forestry he was able to quickly determine what happened. In 2004 that sawmill’s loggers cut down all trees larger than 12 inches in diameter at the base, and milled them right there.
This was an extremely hard cut, that the stand could not support. And the loggers did no timber stand improvement work at all. They never even spoke to the landowner about a plan to grow more timber in the future. They just took all the logs they could find and left.
Because of the way this sawmill raided her property, all that grew back in her stand over the past 20 years is underbrush and several hundred skinny pole trees – with no timber value at all.
Worst of all, had that 2004 timber sale and harvest been planned and overseen by a qualified and experienced forester, this family could have reasonably expected to sell much more than $40,000 of timber from their land today with our help.
In fact, we just sold timber in Muskingum County for $33,650 from a stand one-ninth the size of hers!
How to prevent this from happening to you
This was a very discouraging situation, and reading it might surprise you, but it is far more common than you might think. The sawmill pulled two classic scams on this family: Low-balling and the point-of-cut scam. We explain how both of these tricks work in detail here.
Here are our three best tips to protect yourself from predatory actors like this:
1. Never sell timber directly to a sawmill, no matter how religious and pious they seem to be;
2. Never trust a timber buyer under any circumstances;
3. Never let a sawmill rep, timber buyer, or logger set foot on your land until you speak with a qualified forester first.
You can get a free consultation with a highly qualified, certified forester today if you contact us