Selling Yard Trees

We get many calls from customers inquiring about selling trees in their yard. Sometimes these customers have Ash trees that are dying from the Emerald Ash Borer and would like them removed.

Other times, customers call with Walnut trees, believing they hold significant value. In response to these inquiries, logging companies like Timber Works typically give a straightforward answer: they do not buy yard trees (also known as urban trees).

Timber buyers steer clear of yard trees for several reasons, primarily related to the quantity of trees available in urban settings and their quality.

Urban Trees Often Contain Foreign Objects

Trees that grow in an urban setting are often riddled with foreign objects, especially metal such as nails, screws and bolts. The presence of metal causes the surrounding fiber of the tree to be stained dark blue or black. More significantly, the metal poses a potentially costly threat to the sawmill cutting the tree into dimensional lumber and other wood products like flooring or hardwood slabs.

The Impact of Metal in Urban Trees on Sawmill Operations

Metal appears more often in trees from urban settings than in those harvested from forests, although it sometimes occurs in forest trees as well. When a sawmill blade hits a metal object, it shears off the teeth, rendering the blade ineffective for cutting. This disruption halts the sawing process until workers install a fresh blade. Professionals then re-tip the damaged blade, which adds costs and removes it from production for an extended period.

Metal objects can completely destroy the blade in severe cases, potentially costing the mill hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The value of a typical sawmill blade often far exceeds the value of almost any tree the sawmill cuts.

If the mill closely observes and gets lucky, it identifies the tell-tale stain from metal objects before causing damage. However, removing the metal takes time and significantly reduces productivity. Logs containing metal waste sawmills’ time and money, prompting log buyers to actively avoid them.

Urban Trees are of Low Quality

The other problem with yard trees is that they are often of low quality.

Tree Growth in Urban and Forest Environments

When trees grow under a dense canopy, they reach for light, directing growth upward instead of outward. In contrast, trees in neighborhoods or yards spread out more than those in the woods. As a result, they develop branches lower on the trunk, which reduces the percentage of these trees that can be cut into “grade lumber,” referring to lumber with minimal or no knots or defects in the finished boards.

Further, urban trees grow much faster than trees in a thickly wooded area. This results in lumber that is less dense, more porous, and in general of lower quality than a tree whose rate of growth was slower.

Removing Urban Trees is Costly for a Logging Company

Logging companies rarely use specialized equipment or carry the proper insurance to remove trees from urban settings. Even if they do, the cost of hauling equipment to the site and removing the entire tree, including its top, usually exceeds the tree’s value..

Our company has made exceptions to the standard rule of thumb regarding urban timber, but we always require a number of harvestable trees to be present that exceeds what most yards contain. If you own a smaller, wooded housing lot and would like to see about selling some of your trees, we will certainly consider your unique situation—give Timber Works a call for a one-on-one chat about your urban trees.

While exceptions are made to this rule, most urban trees have little or no value as lumber.