Why is the UK Timber Yards Sooo messed up?

[Droogs]

"dressed", soft lad, when I last went I was wearing nowt.

Dressed, wearing nowt! I don't know, you lot don't know you're born. when Ah wer't a lad, Ah went oot in Newcastle, Ah wer' inside oot, man and Ah got home 3 days before left and had change from 3' 6d. 'avin' 'ad a right bender with fish and chips

:lol:

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Luxury

 

[SlowSteve]

As you say, wood does grow on trees, and no one pays to water or feed it, and as everybody also knows, the other guys job is really easy!
Timber Cutting, transport, conversion, and kilning, Shipping, delivery, and waste all factored in at point of sale, say You're local Jewsons.
Well, someone had to grub it all up, and re plant last time that woodland was felled, and 20, or 30 years ago, it was more labour intensive back then, what the rabbits and deer haven't eaten will all grow, all this "free wood"!
All woodlands have to be "responsibly managed" Although the professionals did "responsibly manage" before it was the
political thing to do.

<<snip>>

And all this post is about people who think trade discounts should be abolished, probably because they don't have a trade account to qualify for one.

<<snip>>
CLS, is now given to that that type of timber from Europe as well as Canada and North America, regularised, planed with rounded corners, It's meant for structural use, Building quality, not joinery or fifths.
Far superior to when you had to pay to regularise you're joisting, battens and roofing materials everytime.
Regards Rodders

Blackrodd - I'm going to start by saying I mean absolutely *no* disrespect in my post that follows - you are one of the people I pay a lot of attention to on this forum and I always enjoy your posts. I am going to disagree with you - but purely about facts - i'm not "bashing" you in any way.

The reality is that if you have land, then growing trees is easy money. You're paying about 30p for a 1 year old whip if you buy in bulk, and that gets amortised to essentially zero over a 30 year growing period - which means the accounts can do their thing and magic up money somewhere else. If you have more than 2 acres in one place, you get carbon off-set credits, you get pollinator service credits and you get land set-aside credits. If the land is on a hill above farmland, you also get further credits as well - thats for any wood within the EU ( which is LOTS of wood..)

Thats not going to make you a millionaire, but it obliviates any felling costs you have - you can run a lumber forest totally cost neutral or turn a small profit just by it existing - timber sales are pure profit. There are grants available to any wood yard or company who sends it's wood waste to a pelleting or anaerobic digestion plant and there are a *lot* of clever accounting tricks you can play in a wasteful business like wood - you can make you tax bill go down the more waste you produce. It's NOT cost neutral, but taking the grants and "financial engineering" into account, you can run a lumber yard with an effective tax rate of maybe 15% - which is better than many small to medium sized companies get.

The other point to remember is that shipping, conversion costs come in ALL countries - not just the UK. And in the UK, everything is close together - you can't be any more than 70 miles from the sea or 52 miles from a railway station in the UK - and shipping and rail is cheap.


I haven't got a lot to say about trade discounts - I'm not anti them in any way - and have two myself. But even with those, the wood prices in the UK are still obscene.


I've also got no issue with CLS in itself. It's designed to do a job. The issue I have is that I'm on a budget, and I don't understand why it costs more to buy poor quality 38mm x 89mm CLS with rounded corners in the UK than it does to buy SS grade 2x4 ( actual 50 x 100mm) maple in the US.

In a slightly different way - it costs the same for me to buy 8 foot of 38 x 89mm - (i.e UK "2x4") wany and knotted CLS made of "white pine" which has been left outside, un-sticked, in all weathers in the UK as it does for my friend Lester to go and buy 24 foot of 50 x 200mm ( actual 2 x 8) Douglas Fir which has been kept in an air-conditioned, humidity controlled environment at all times, in a place in the US where the shippings costs will be 2x to 3x higher than for the UK lumber yard. Thats crazy right?

 

[sitefive]

The problem is that it takes a lifetime to actually grow the trees and you would not be able to reap the profits if you don't start young
Is there any Demand in UK for Paulownia timber? I got about 30trees planted 2years ago in country where I come from for a test, and they are growing pretty good, plan was to save up some money over this winter and buy about 10ha of land where to plant loads of them, ready to harvest in around 12-14 years in this Climate at almost a cubic metre a pop.

 

[sitefive]

well the snowstimber got back to me, prices were roughly £340 per cube for sawn redwood for the sizes I asked, Thinking about ordering from them for a test, are they decent? Worrying that you can only order for delivery from them -so they could just bring you whatever wonky boards they got around and wanted to get rid of.
Also maybe anyone knows any other nationwide supplier like them?

Might be a stupid question but what does SCAN V and Scan U/S means?
50 x 200 Scan V Redwood Sawn @£285.00 / 100m - current stock are 4.8’s
50x 200 Scan U/S Red Sawn @£389.00 / 100m - current stock are 4.5’s

 

[Zeddedhed]

Scan V is Scandinavian 5ths
Scan U/S is Scandinavian Unsorted

I think....

 

[DennisCA]

I watched a documentary a couple of years ago about rip off Britain. The big manufacturers refer to us as Treasure Island because of the mark ups they can get away with here. They had an American guy on and he said over there, the question is asked when pricing a commodity, "how much do we need to charge for this product to cover costs and turn a profit?" In Britain the question is "how much can we get away with charging for this?".

I'll eat my hat if the absolute majority of everyone ever doesn't do the latter. And if someone proclaims the first I'll take it with a ton of salt.

 

[Zeddedhed]

I watched a documentary a couple of years ago about rip off Britain. The big manufacturers refer to us as Treasure Island because of the mark ups they can get away with here. They had an American guy on and he said over there, the question is asked when pricing a commodity, "how much do we need to charge for this product to cover costs and turn a profit?" In Britain the question is "how much can we get away with charging for this?".

I'll eat my hat if the absolute majority of everyone ever doesn't do the latter. And if someone proclaims the first I'll take it with a ton of salt.

For me it depends on a number of factors:

How busy am I?

Do I want the job? (If it involves humping around fun sheets of MFC then probably not)

Do I like/trust the client?

Is the client a builder or a punter? (For the record I charge builders more since they normally keep you waiting for payment linger and generally mess you around more)

Logistics such as travelling distance - returning to the job to fix a problem can end up being very expensive if the distance is to great.

I start with an accurate summary of costs, including workshop and business overhead, travel, parking etc based on my desired day rate. Then a profit %age is added, with the percentage changing depending on the above factors (and others that I haven't mentioned.)

 

[Jacob]

......Thinking about ordering from them for a test, are they decent?

I've been using Hanrahans for years and they've been taken over by Snows who so far have been excellent

Worrying that you can only order for delivery from them -so they could just bring you whatever wonky boards they got around and wanted to get rid of.

They are very professional and are not likely to attempt to rip you off. The redwood is all ready graded and stamped with the scandinavian mills grade marks. They should take it straight from the stack without any further sorting

...
Might be a stupid question but what does SCAN V and Scan U/S means?
50 x 200 Scan V Redwood Sawn @£285.00 / 100m - current stock are 4.8’s
50x 200 Scan U/S Red Sawn @£389.00 / 100m - current stock are 4.5’s

V (fifths) is next to best quality, US (unsorted) is best and would be 1st, 2nd, 3rds, 4ths together hence the higher price. Fifths often very good and there may not be much difference between the best 5th and some of the US.
Other european grade systems are not quite the same. it's a very antiquated system and has been like this for 100s of years.

 

[bugbear]

Other european grade systems are not quite the same. it's a very antiquated system and has been like this for 100s of years.

I once started reading a Victorian treatise on wood grading and measurement, aimed
at big timber users (furniture makers) and/or timber merchants; the "trade".

Even with my high tolerance for detailed trivia, I gave up after 50 pages.

There were loads of systems, all very similar, but pointlessly different,
in some cases using different names for the same thing (bad), and in other cases
using the same word for different things (worse).

BugBear

 

[flanajb]

-20% of the places are run by total cheating morons which I would not visit ever again

That would sum up my experience of buying timber from a builders merchant here in England. I am sure some places have a random price generator under the counter. I get a different price each time I go into one pace.

I sometimes chuckle to myself thinking what it would be like going to the supermarket and the price for the contents of the trolley where based on which cashier served you and whether they were having a bad day. My local Travis Perkins is notorious for this type of practice.

 

[YorkshireMartin]

-20% of the places are run by total cheating morons which I would not visit ever again

That would sum up my experience of buying timber from a builders merchant here in England. I am sure some places have a random price generator under the counter. I get a different price each time I go into one pace.

I sometimes chuckle to myself thinking what it would be like going to the supermarket and the price for the contents of the trolley where based on which cashier served you and whether they were having a bad day. My local Travis Perkins is notorious for this type of practice.

I've had this too but wood is a commodity and the price will vary with the market, like petrol, bananas and whatnot. The difference is perhaps, that in a supermarket, the retailer will maintain the price of bananas in general as they are probably considered a staple, so the customer doesn't notice fluctuations. The retailer then makes up for the loss on bananas during a high market, by increasing margin elsewhere. However, a timber merchant, even a large one, probably can't risk the swings in profit/loss so places a fix above their buy in price to maintain profits and the price moves with the market.

Just a guess.

 

[flanajb]

-20% of the places are run by total cheating morons which I would not visit ever again

However, a timber merchant, even a large one, probably can't risk the swings in profit/loss so places a fix above their buy in price to maintain profits and the price moves with the market..

My local TP price changes intraday! It's on par with foreign exchange trading.

 

[xraymtb]

Hopefully my comments weren't taken to mean I'm against trade discount - I have no issue with that or with bulk pricing. Its as the last couple of posters have said - the random pricing based on whether your face fits, what time of day it is, the phase of the moon and if the person you are talking to can be bothered.

 

[flanajb]

I don't like being blunt with people, but sometimes I find it's the only way when dealing with trade counter staff. I tend to use phrases like the below when getting a price.

"You are joking?"
"I can get it for .... at xyz store"

Best bet is to do your research before going to a merchant and never, never appear like you are a retail customer.

 

[BearTricks]

-20% of the places are run by total cheating morons which I would not visit ever again

That would sum up my experience of buying timber from a builders merchant here in England. I am sure some places have a random price generator under the counter. I get a different price each time I go into one pace.

I sometimes chuckle to myself thinking what it would be like going to the supermarket and the price for the contents of the trolley where based on which cashier served you and whether they were having a bad day. My local Travis Perkins is notorious for this type of practice.

I've had this too but wood is a commodity and the price will vary with the market, like petrol, bananas and whatnot. The difference is perhaps, that in a supermarket, the retailer will maintain the price of bananas in general as they are probably considered a staple, so the customer doesn't notice fluctuations. The retailer then makes up for the loss on bananas during a high market, by increasing margin elsewhere. However, a timber merchant, even a large one, probably can't risk the swings in profit/loss so places a fix above their buy in price to maintain profits and the price moves with the market.

Just a guess.

Seems to me that they're completely aware that wood is a commodity which fluctuates in price and are using that as an excuse to up prices where they think they can get away with it. I'd bet that there's little correlation between the prices they pay, especially for exotics, and the prices that they charge.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

 

[lurker]

I don't like being blunt with people, but sometimes I find it's the only way when dealing with trade counter staff. I tend to use phrases like the below when getting a price.

"You are joking?"
"I can get it for .... at xyz store"

Best bet is to do your research before going to a merchant and never, never appear like you are a retail customer.

As site five and others amply illustrate, the counter staff know who is trade and who isn't before you open your mouth.
I doubt very much they are swayed by your comparison with others strategy.
Find a small independent have cash in your pocket, understand you need to pay more for decent stuff. Be nice to them, their day is full of a holes treating them like dirt.

 

[lurker]

Might be a stupid question but what does SCAN V and Scan U/S means?

It's not a stupid question if you don't know but anyone in the trade would.
I did not know until this reply but I bet any 2nd year apprentice would be fully conversant
That's why you get treated like retail.

 

[artie]

I tend to use phrases like the below when getting a price.

"You are joking?"
"I can get it for .... at xyz store"

When people say that to me. I say "That's a very good price, you should grab it, I couldn't

do it for that"

You might be surprised how many times, they say " O I'll just take it from you since I am here" or " He said I had to have my order in for yesterday" or some other excuse.

But it can work if the guy is gouging you.

 

[Jacob]

To get the best out of a supplier there is no point in concealing ignorance you just have to say you don't anything about timber and ask for their help and advice. Most people like being helpful and they want you to come back and buy more - hopefully better informed.
Reps are good - they go out of their way to get new customers and will often give you masses of info on what to buy. They are limited to what they know of course and if they sell fence posts they may know nothing about good quality redwood.
All this paranoia is a bit stupid. You do encounter a stupid uncooperative salesperson every now and then but they are just craap at their job
As lurker said "Be nice to them, their day is full of R soles treating them like dirt". :lol:

PS and the answer to our OPs question "Why is the UK Timber Yards Sooo messed up?" is that they aren't messed up at all, it's just that he knows FA about wood. He's learning however and I'm sure the Snows experience will help him along!