To price a cord of firewood you add up its full cost first: the logs, fuel and bar oil by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the delivery, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one cord costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a delivered cord of seasoned hardwood that costs $222.00 to make, a 30% margin after 3% fees means $331.34, rounded up to $335.00. Your time is the biggest cost: about four hours of cutting, splitting and stacking a cord. Wholesale to a campground store that bundles it is a different price, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a New Hampshire firewood seller prices a delivered cord for the fall.
The short version
- Full cost = logs and fuel a cord + your time + delivery + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Count the hours a cord takes; they're most of the cost.
- Price delivery by distance, or include a radius.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack keeps logs and cords counted and costs every batch. More below.
What goes into a cord's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Logs and fuel | The batch's cost ÷ cords a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ cords × your hourly rate |
| Delivery | Per cord |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the cords you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What a firewood business looks like over a year is in firewood business plan, and pricing work in general in how to price handmade items.
An example: a delivered cord
Granite Ridge Firewood, a made-up firewood seller near Concord, New Hampshire, buys tree-length hardwood by the 10-cord load and cuts, splits and seasons it:
| Ten cords | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Tree-length logs, delivered | 10 cord | $900.00 |
| Fuel and bar oil | $80.00 | |
| Splitter upkeep | $40.00 | |
| A batch | $1,020.00 |
| A cord | Cost |
|---|---|
| Logs and fuel, $1,020.00 ÷ 10 | $102.00 |
| Time, 2400 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 10 | $80.00 |
| Delivery | $15.00 |
| Overhead | $25.00 |
| Full cost | $222.00 |
At a 30% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $222.00 ÷ 0.67 = $331.34, so $335.00. At $335.00 a cord, each leaves $102.95. It had been asking $300, which leaves $69.00, and moved to $335 for the fall. A campground store asked for cords at $260.00 to bundle, which leaves $30.20: thin, so the seller offered $280 for orders of five cords, which leaves $49.60. How a price becomes a margin is in what is a good profit margin for a food product.
Get the calculator
Download the firewood price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's logs and fuel, amounts and costs, the cords it makes, the hands-on minutes, the delivery and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices a cord on paper. A load of logs that splits slowly, and wood that needs another season to dry, change what each cord really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps logs and cords counted, and costs every batch.
Supplies in their units. Logs bought by the 10-cord load are counted by the cord, and bundles by the each.
Designs as recipes. Each cord is a recipe of its supplies, so a batch takes them off stock and is costed from what they cost, and good and rejected pieces are recorded.
Reordering. Supplies come up on a reorder list in days of cover, worked out from how fast they're used.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Supplies on hand | Count the shelf | Stock in its own units |
| What a batch cost | Prices you type | Costed from what you paid |
| Wood still seasoning | Guessed | Lots with a date |
| When to reorder | When it's low | Reorder list in days of cover |
Recipes, units, costing and reorder lists 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.