Thread: Question on pricing

Travis over the years anytime I have anguished over any commercial or business decision involving capital input i have always just looked at the worst possible outcome and then balanced that against the mental anguish that I may be left with if I was to scared, nervous or unprepared to have a go.
In your case it's not as if you have to learn the skills and knowledge of a whole new industry from the get-go. You have the ability to judge the logs to believe they have a commercial value and you have a sound knowledge of small timber milling. In my opinion you should go for it! If the idea excites you and your worst case scenario is; You buy a new lucas mill, you mill all the biggest logs available in your exclusive patch, you realise you have to work to hard ,too long to make real money and recover the cost of your mill then you sell it (they have great resell value). Off set the loss of fire selling your new low hour mill against the fact you still would have ended up with some timber of commercial value for you or your client. It may have cost a few thousand dollars at worst and some of your time and labour. If you are never prepared to risk you never receive the reward. Fortune as they say, favours the brave.

Thanks Millwise, I am in a similar mind if I do it I might lose, I might win but if I don't have a go I will never know and may end up kicking myself for years to come. As I say I do not want to make a fortune out of what is in front of me (basically if I made no more than my loan repayments off of it I would be happy,) Then I would be able to look at what I want to do with it further down the track (milling more top end furniture timbers and such.)

Al If you want to you are more than welcome to come down for a trip, I am sure that the navara and Bo will handle it, and we could put you onto some log and maybe some pacas, and introduce you to some other folks down this way. Would be good to meet ya if ya did come down. If worst comes to worst I might even have a few Pines that we could drop that we could unload as lumber to pay for your trip. Welcome anytime bro even if I do have to pitch a tent in the back yard for ya!!!


I have a bloke local who is looking for pine so unloading the lumber is no prob, structural and sleeper sizes, for treating, and the trees are fairly large.

Sometimes its a bit hard to tell the size of the trees from the pics, a quick rule of thumb for saw logs is if you can put your arms around the tree at shoulder height & touch your fingers together at the back of the tree they are on the small size, by the time you take off the bark & sapwood there is not much left. On a cubic rate its slower to make your money as more time is spent setting up logs.
regards inter

Originally Posted by InterTD6

Sometimes its a bit hard to tell the size of the trees from the pics, a quick rule of thumb for saw logs is if you can put your arms around the tree at shoulder height & touch your fingers together at the back of the tree they are on the small size, by the time you take off the bark & sapwood there is not much left. On a cubic rate its slower to make your money as more time is spent setting up logs.
regards inter

Didn't pick you as the tree hugger type inter...lol, sorry just had to put a pun in.

It would be a BIG tree for me to not get my arms around at shoulder height (got a pretty big arm span, and shoulder height is 6 ft up the tree.) But I understand what you mean and yes, they are not huge logs, but I reckon that there should still be a fair bit of recovery in them. They are too good to just leave there to rot.

Originally Posted by Travis Edwards

Al If you want to you are more than welcome to come down for a trip, I am sure that the navara and Bo will handle it, and we could put you onto some log and maybe some pacas, and introduce you to some other folks down this way. Would be good to meet ya if ya did come down. If worst comes to worst I might even have a few Pines that we could drop that we could unload as lumber to pay for your trip. Welcome anytime bro even if I do have to pitch a tent in the back yard for ya!!!


I have a bloke local who is looking for pine so unloading the lumber is no prob, structural and sleeper sizes, for treating, and the trees are fairly large.

Sounds like a bit of an idea mate, whats ya estimate for the drive down, would love to drop in on Lucas HQ, and getting some sawing under my belt to pay for the trip sounds really good, with no work one goes broke pretty quick

Originally Posted by Travis Edwards

Al If you want to you are more than welcome to come down for a trip, I am sure that the navara and Bo will handle it, and we could put you onto some log and maybe some pacas, and introduce you to some other folks down this way. Would be good to meet ya if ya did come down. If worst comes to worst I might even have a few Pines that we could drop that we could unload as lumber to pay for your trip. Welcome anytime bro even if I do have to pitch a tent in the back yard for ya!!!


I have a bloke local who is looking for pine so unloading the lumber is no prob, structural and sleeper sizes, for treating, and the trees are fairly large.

Sounds like a bit of an idea mate, whats ya estimate for the drive down, would love to drop in on Lucas HQ, and getting some sawing under my belt to pay for the trip sounds really good, with no work one goes broke pretty quick

Originally Posted by Sigidi

Sounds like a bit of an idea mate, whats ya estimate for the drive down, would love to drop in on Lucas HQ, and getting some sawing under my belt to pay for the trip sounds really good, with no work one goes broke pretty quick

According to google it is about 1515 km, Unfortunately I go back to work tuesday, So I probably wont be around much, I should have worked it out a couple of months earlier.

Yeah Travis, timing is everything

so Travis, is it gunna happen or is it just a dream, let us know either way, we are all interested

Originally Posted by johnnyroberts

so Travis, is it gunna happen or is it just a dream, let us know either way, we are all interested

At the moment all plans are on hold. It will happen but just at the moment I have a few too many other commitments. Like BobL said there are those guys who are happy to go fishing with a rod and reel off of a jetty yet others spend more than commercial fishermen on a boat and gear and still fish with a rod and reel. At the moment I can do the rod and reel bit but the boat (lucas) is just out of reach. I have set myself a bit of a goal to save the cash and buy one within the next 2 years, I just thought this may have been an opportunity to do it now, and it still may be. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to look at doing anything this last week as I spent most of it cutting rails for my fathers horse yards. as the saying goes it mightn't happen overnight but it will happen!!!!

Yeah I hit this stump head on Travis, Similar sort of deal and to be honest It was easier to buy a fire wood processor. But then you get customers who want this and that and the other an for $90 a load they can go em selves ( especially when you see they been buying bags of wood from the servo ). Atm wages is there the commitments are met. For me I dont want a boss but working for my self I find I ve got more bosses an stress then ever before. Save your money and when you find that magic block by that mill and build your own home that where I see the true benifit of owning a lucas
either that or to have had the forsight to buy one when they first started out. I still want a mill its just a case of when ?.