Question about selling cedar mulch.

[Curtisjade1]

Hi I have an opportunity to acquire about 28 tandem dump truck loads of cedar that I would have to make into mulch myself and then try to sell but the problem is that I have no Idea if this would be worth my company's time to do this because I have never dealt with any mulch and I have no Idea how I would go about selling it or how much it might be worth. If this helps my company is located in eastern Ontario. Any help would be appreciated.

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www.CJK-Services.com

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Welcome to our forum! That sounds like a huge project. What kind of equipment do you have to do this? What got you even interested in thinking about this?

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[picframer]

Considering Cedar Mulch is around $790.00 a tandem load, I think it would be well worth your efforts, may take a couple of years to use it all however you should be able to turn a considerable profit.

[Curtisjade1]

Well this is the story a friend of mine who lives down the road just cut down about 60 acres of cedar and he actually makes more money on the mulch than the trees and he has some serous equipment including his 53ft long whole tree grinder with automatic bagging. and he will usually grind any trees that are under 12" wide and all the tree tops.
The problem is that he cut down about 10 acres of cedar and took out the logs but he cannot get his chipper in to the spot where all of this stuff is without allot of work. He figures that it is not worth his company's time to get the rest of this out because he has already got about 9,000 yards of mulch from this job plus the lumber and this will only be an estimated 700 yards of mulch when it is done. And he mentioned this to me and said that it is not worth his time but it might be worth my time if I have two or three weeks to get this done.

So this cedar is free for the taking until the snow is gone when the owner of the property plans to burn it all to get rid of it lol.

As for the equipment, I have access to a loader, a 12' municipal wood chipper, a few pickup trucks, trailers, chainsaws etc. So I think that this should all be able to be chipped in a matter of two weeks. All I need to find is a buyer for the mulch lol. And I don't really feel like wasting two weeks of time for nothing.

[Steve]

Maybe you could start marketing the mulch on craigslist or to other you know in the industry in the area and see if anyone responds.

Unless you had other ideas on how to promote it.

Why not try it a little and see what happens and if it works, scale it up?

[JP Landscaping]

If you have the equipment, time, and the lumber is free... go for it

You can call up all the landscaping companies in your area or close to your area and let them know you have that mulch for sale. perhaps offer free delivery on orders over a certain number of yards.

we have a company in my area that does this..they are fairly new and I've used them quite a bit because they offer that free delivery.

I think you can make good profits from this.

[picframer]

Personally I would jump on this like no tomorrow, I too have the gear to mulch/chip it. We went through 42 tandum truck loads of mulch last season and that was our first season, this is a small gold mine.

[Steve]

Are there any concerns one needs to keep in mind when storing that much mulch?

I have heard of mulch piles catching on fire due to the build up of internal temperatures.

[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

Are there any concerns one needs to keep in mind when storing that much mulch?

I have heard of mulch piles catching on fire due to the build up of internal temperatures.

I.m probably the wrong person to ask, yes I have herd of them catching on fire also. What I do know is after a Hurricane in Halifax quite a few years ago, they chipped 10,000 tandem truck loads which was piled 10 min from my house, there wasn't any issues there.