Firewood Business Plan, With a Projection

A firewood business plan is a plan for wood bought and split a year before it's sold. Green wood has to season before it burns well, so the logs for this winter were bought, cut, split and stacked last year, and the first year of a new firewood business is spent paying for wood it can't sell yet. Then nearly all the money comes from September to January. In the example below, a firewood seller in northeast Washington sells about 280 cords' worth a year, as delivered cords and half cords, bundles for shops, and kindling, and ends a selling year about $40,400 ahead on $112,600 of sales, with every hour of splitting and driving paid at $20 an hour. But it needs about $85,000 to start, nearly half of it for the first year's logs. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the rules for selling by the cord, the selling year, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: the wood, the yard, the delivery area, the goals.
• Cost a cord: the logs, the processor, your hours, the delivery, card fees.
• Sell by the cord and fractions of a cord; many states don't allow "face cord" or "truckload".
• Bundles turn a cord into far more money than delivering it, for more hours.
• Buy and split a year ahead; the first year's logs are part of the startup.
• September to January is the year; plan the cash for a slow summer.
• TaroStack keeps wood by pile and split date, bundles as a recipe, and every delivery on an order. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Kettle River Firewood, a made-up firewood seller near Colville, Washington, I use in these examples, writes:

Kettle River Firewood buys tamarack and fir logs from local loggers, cuts and splits them on its yard, and seasons them under cover for a year before delivering cords and half cords within 30 miles, selling wrapped bundles to grocery stores and gas stations, and kindling at the yard.

Part 2: selling by the cord, and the rules

Washington, like many states, follows the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Handbook 130 for how firewood is sold. Under it, firewood is sold only by the cord and fractions of a cord, or the cubic meter. A cord is the wood in 128 cubic feet, ranked and well stowed: the pieces in a row, touching, parallel, and stacked compactly, which is a stack 4 feet high, 4 feet deep and 8 feet long. "Face cord", "rack", "pile" and "truckload" aren't allowed. Packaged wood under an eighth of a cord, 16 cubic feet, shows its quantity on the package: in liters in the 2026 handbook, which may add cubic feet, so a 0.75 cubic foot bundle is about 21 liters. Every delivery of loose wood comes with a delivery ticket or invoice that gives the seller's and buyer's names and addresses, the date, the quantity delivered and the quantity the price is based on, the price, and the kind of wood (NIST Handbook 130, section 2.4; Washington State Department of Agriculture).

Check your own state's weights and measures office for how it applies, and its agriculture department for any rules about moving firewood, which some states limit to keep insects from traveling in it. This is general information, not legal advice.

Part 3: what a cord, a bundle and a box cost

The logs come by the logging truck, at about $95 for each cord of firewood they make.

A cord makes about 150 bundles. Kindling comes from the offcuts and the pieces too small to sell as firewood, so the wood in it costs almost nothing.

Part 4: customers and prices

The delivery is most of the difference between a cord and a half cord: two half cords leave $148.60, a little more than a full cord's $135.25, for twice the driving. Bundles are the surprise: a cord of wood made into 150 bundles leaves about $434, more than three times what the same cord leaves delivered, but it takes shops willing to stock them and the hours to wrap them. How to set a price for shops that resell is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

Part 5: a selling year, month by month

Fixed costs are $1,135 a month: yard rent ($400), insurance for the business and the truck ($300), truck and processor upkeep ($250), marketing ($100), a phone ($50), and software and card fees ($35). Month 1 is January; the year below is a selling year, with the wood it sells split the year before:

The year's sales are $112,645 and the profit $40,368, with every hour of cutting, splitting, bundling and driving paid at $20 an hour in the variable costs. That's 180 cords and 119 half cords delivered, and about 6,000 bundles, or about 280 cords of wood. The projection counts each cord's logs when the cord sells; in a steady year that's the same money as buying next winter's logs this year, which is why the first year's logs are in the startup budget instead. Campground bundles sell in summer too; this projection keeps to the heating season. How to plan stock around a season is in seasonal inventory.

Part 6: the startup budget

The first year's logs, about 280 cords' worth, cut and split, are wood the business can't sell until it has seasoned, and every year after, the wood for next winter is bought before this winter's is sold, so that $40,000 stays tied up in the yard. It's the same arithmetic as any stock held for a long time, in inventory carrying cost. A hydraulic splitter costs far less than a processor but takes far more hours a cord; the hours in Part 3 assume the processor. The $38,700 of equipment is earned back in about a year of selling.

Get the template

Download the firewood business plan workbook. Four sheets: your cords, bundles and kindling with price, variable cost and October's volume; the selling year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash, and month 1 set to January; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash and the first year's logs. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Piles split in different months, some ready and some not, logs from three loggers at three prices, 6,000 bundles a year to a dozen shops, and 30 deliveries in a busy month, each with its own ticket. A notebook can't say how many cords in the yard have had their year, what a cord costs now that logs went up, or which shops are due bundles this week.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps wood by pile and split date, bundles as a recipe, and every delivery on an order.

Wood by pile and date. Each pile is a lot with the date it was split, at its spot in the yard, so the wood that's had its year is a number by pile, counted on a phone in the yard with no signal.

Bundles as a recipe. A bundle is a recipe of a 150th of a cord, a wrap and a label, so a day of bundling takes the wood and wrap off stock, and the cost of a bundle follows the price of logs. Logs are bought by the load and sold by the cord, the half cord and the bundle; TaroStack does the unit math.

Deliveries on orders. Each delivery is a sales order for its day with a delivery note, and each shop a customer with its own orders, so the week's deliveries and the bundles due are one list, and the price creep report shows which logger raised prices.

Counting, lots, recipes and sales orders are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How much does a firewood business make?

In the example, a seller delivering about 180 cords and 119 half cords and selling about 6,000 bundles a year ends the year about $40,400 ahead on $112,600 of sales, after paying $20 an hour for every hour of splitting and driving.

How much should I charge for a cord of firewood?

Enough to cover the logs, the splitting, your hours and the delivery, priced against other sellers near you. In the example, a delivered cord sells for $325 and leaves $135.25; the delivery is $40 of it.

Is it legal to sell firewood by the face cord?

Not in Washington, or in states that follow NIST Handbook 130 the same way: firewood is sold by the cord and fractions of a cord, and "face cord", "rack", "pile" and "truckload" aren't allowed. Check your state's weights and measures office.

How much does it cost to start a firewood business?

In the example, $84,700: a used processor and dump truck, saws, a bundle wrapper, racks and tarps, signs, $6,000 of working cash, and $40,000 for the first year's logs, cut, split and stacked to season.