We are sure seeing this in North MS. IP and PCA are the 2 big pulp/paper mills in our area and they are not only wide open for wood purchases, but they are actually not able to buy as much as they want right now. The guys that I deal with at the mills that are a lot smarter than I am are blaming that on the landowners lack of understanding the timber markets right now. They say the reason they are not able to buy all they want is because the landowner thinks if they sell now that there timber isn’t going to bring much money. Truth is that the only thing that is way down right now is pine saw timber. Every other market is either on par or climbing. My personal thoughts are that the logging force has greatly been reduced the last 1 1/2 years. Not only are some loggers starting to shift over to energy chipping but profit margins in our industry are too small for most to overcome $4.75 per gallon fuel, followed by bad winter weather with tight unheard of winter quotas.
For those that have survived, I think/hope we are about to see some record logging/trucking rates for high volume, quality logging crews.

Google News actually keeps me up to date on all kinds fo topics. I enter the topics I want to receive alerts for and Google sends me email alerts to my gmail account where I can then go through them and delete what I a not interested in and keep what is useful. It is a very helpful tool.

All the best,

Jesse