Lumber tariffs in opposition to new commercial stick frame buildings
Maybe a bit controversial and political this week as I dip into politics and (gasp) the environment. But hey you guys sent me these articles so I only have my great audience to blame for this episode. Honestly I love this aspect of the lumber industry and how global it all is. The butterfly effect is in full...well...effect when your raw materials come from all over the planet and at the same time are a MAJOR factor in the health of the environment. So as the governments sabre rattle and impose lumber tariffs on each other, the sawmills get crushed and lose major business thereby reducing the amount of material available for sale.
Meanwhile, lumber is recognized as a highly sustainable and renewable resource so its usage in construction climbs. Not a good prospect when you consider the drop in near inventory due to closure of sawmills all over the globe due to reduction in business over lumber tariffs. Here's hoping this won't dampen the increased usage of this wonderful green material. And here's hoping we continue to plant and manage those forests to produce all the material we will need as construction turns its sites onto more stick frame construction for things outside of residential.
No need to apologize for talking about climate change – the percentage of Americans that outright believe it isn’t real is only about 8%. While 19% “Don’t know,” the remainder understand that climate change is real. It’s some people’s jobs (often researchers in University Communications and Psychology programs) to conduct surveys of beliefs and attitude about major issues. The above mentioned data came from research centers at dirt-worshipping, hippy Yale and George Mason Universities (sarcasm: two business-oriented and relatively conservative institutions).
The more interesting finding is that most Americans overestimate the number of people who doubt climate science, when in fact the majority of Americans “worry about climate change.” This is one of the main reasons people express unwillingness to talk about it. I am glad you brought it up!
There is nothing inherently political about climate data and projection models. The only political part is deciding how, and to what degree, we respond to the changing climate.
I think this was your best episode. Thank you and keep it up. My day job is as an analyst for a global company and am a late night woodworker by hobby. This episode tickled my interests on both sides.
Here in Portland, OR there are a lot of people processing urban lumber. The odd thing is that they want the same price per bdft for slabs on Craigslist as you would pay for rough lumber at a store.
It is also interesting that there are at least 3 small scale vacuum kilns that have popped up around here. The prices on that tech must be coming down significantly.
Slabs are like figured lumber and because of the unique nature they can’t really be priced per board foot. At least not with any kind of eye on the market price. The problem with slabs is that they are not all that unique anymore. Certainly each one is unique but the access to them isn’t that rare now. But rather than seeing the price drop, I suspect they will just disappear from the marketplace and go back to being sawn into “regular” boards.
Regarding the RF Vacuum kilns, they price on a smaller scale hasn’t dropped that much nor was it particularly prohibitive. Its just that they are small scale and the larger yards can’t justify fitting them into their existing infrastructure with such limited capacity. But for the boutique sawyer this is a great opportunity to differentiate your services.