Buying Wood in North America

Rob Keeble

Member
Messages
12,633
Location
GTA Ontario Canada
I would like to know if anyone has thought or transported wood in quantity across borders in between Canada and US or visa versa.

Here is the background to my question. I am thinking that if one took a drive with a reasonable trailer and made a few stops at small diy lumber yards for me it would around the Buffalo Pennsylvania or even Michigan area and bought wood (would be green wood) directly from the various small sawyers that one could pick up a chunk of wood at very good prices.

I got to thinking about this after seeing the post that Randy Wynn (who is a hobby sawyer) made when replying to Rick. Randy says if I understood him correctly that he sells his own wood that he has cut.
Quote
"and when I sell my lumber I sell it for between $.50 to $.60 BF." End Quote

Now i must have something wrong here when i see prices locally at $5 per board foot.:huh:

Can anyone offer any comments on this subject?

I do know of manufacturers that have imported substantial amounts of wood but i am thinking of a diy sense.
 
i know when the tariffs where in place for canadian lumber being imported to the usa there were lots of "bootleggers" who skirted the border check-points with 20k bf per load....
kinda hard for me to immagine anybody getting upset about a load of personal use lumber from "aunt mitilda`s" storm clean-up..;)
 
Rob,
I don't know about tariff, etc., but I do know that Michigan, Ohio, and (I think) Pennsylvania all currently have bans against moving hardwoods into/out of state due to the Emerald Ash Beetle infestation. While the Ash tree is the only one affected (at least so far...) the general ban is for all hardwoods - maybe because some of the officials can't tell one wood from another.

Anyway, because of this, you may experience problems taking ANY wood across the border.
 
...(would be green wood) ...

A while ago Larry and I chatted about this in PMs.

I found this link
and this link.

Now both of those are clearly about firewood. The trick might be convincing the guy at the border that this is lumber, and not firewood.

You may need to actually check with someone at customs, or do some more digging on this yourself to find out the rules and regs.

I think if it were kiln dried, and NO BARK, then you'd probably be okay.
But being green, I really am not sure.

best,
...art
 
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