Species and price: why Douglas-fir isn't ponderosa

Species drives a tract's value more than its volume does, which is why two sales of the same size can be worth very different money. Each species feeds a different end market, from structural framing to mouldings to shingles, and each market sets its own price for logs. A cruise that comes back heavy in one species and light in another is really a read on which markets the tract will sell into. Here is the hierarchy behind the numbers.

Douglas-fir, the workhorse

Douglas-fir is the most economically important lumber tree in North America and the backbone of the west-side market. It is dense, strong and straight-grained, which makes it the default structural framing lumber, and it dominates the forests west of the Cascade crest. In most Pacific Northwest sales a heavy Douglas-fir component is what lifts the stumpage, because the logs feed the largest and steadiest market for wood there is. When people quote a regional stumpage price without naming a species, Douglas-fir is usually the wood they mean.

Ponderosa, hemlock and the rest

The other species sell into their own markets and price accordingly. Ponderosa pine is largely an east-side tree, valued in its higher grades for mouldings, millwork and shop lumber rather than structural framing, and it generally carries lower stumpage than west-side Douglas-fir. Western hemlock is the H in hem-fir, a sound but lower-priced framing and pulp species. Western redcedar is the exception that runs the other way, a high-value wood for siding, decking and shingles that can out-price Douglas-fir where a tract carries enough of it. True firs and lower grades fill in beneath. Each is a separate market, not a discount off one price.

Why the mix beats the volume

This is why offered volume alone is a poor guide to what a sale is worth. A large tract of hemlock and low-grade pine can be worth less than a smaller one of clean Douglas-fir and cedar. The logging cost and the haul weigh on every tract the same way, but the species mix sets the ceiling, the mill value the logs can reach before any of those costs come out. A buyer reads the species breakdown in the packet first for exactly that reason. It tells them which markets they are really bidding on.

Read it on the board

The board above shows the sales, and the species pages gather them by the wood they offer, Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine, hemlock and the rest, where a source reports the species. Species is only shown where the agency published it, so a blank is missing data, not a missing species. Compare prices within a species and within a unit to keep the read honest. The site reports species and price as the agencies publish them and never forecasts where a species is headed. For what that price represents, see what is stumpage.