To inform the people about your firewood delivery service, you can post ads in community centers. Place ads in newspapers and shopping guides. Ask satisfied customers to recommend your services; offer a bonus or discount for any business they refer to you. You will need to purchase or lease a heavy-duty truck and pay for licensing, maintenance, and repair. You may need a ramp and hand truck or cart to transport wood. Other expenses include advertising and promotion.
Many states regulate commercial wood sellers by defining quantities of wood (this to protect consumers); most use a standard cord size or cubic footage. In some places dealers are prohibited from selling by undefined “rack,” “pile,” or “truckload” sizes. Prices for firewood vary by location and by difficulty of pickup and delivery. A typical price for a full cord of hardwood delivered and stacked in a rural or suburban area would be in the range of $200 to $250; a half cord might range in price from about $125 to $150. Special-order fruitwood can be as much as 50 to 100 percent more costly. To determine your price, start with your wholesale cost of wood. Add to it the expense of owning or leasing a truck, travel to the woodlot, time to measure and load an order, travel to the customer, and time for unloading and stacking the wood properly. You should increase your price to cover extra time when you are required to carry wood into a home or apartment. There are four ways to sell wood, at increasing levels of difficulty; the price to the customer climbs accordingly:
- Self-serve pickup at a wood lot
- Delivery of orders to a client’s property
- Delivery and proper stacking of wood outdoors on a client’s property
- Delivery and stacking of wood inside in apartments and condos, including
- carrying wood up stairs, where necessary