Timber markets just can’t seem to catch a break these days. Lingering drought, poor housing markets, mill downtime, and rocketing fuel costs have conspired to push prices for most timber products down, or at least not allow them to rise. Even pine pulpwood prices, recently somewhat of a silver lining in the market, have suffered some lately. This is primarily due to record fuel prices and government mandated boiler maintenance at Georgia-Pacific’s pulp mill at Cedar Springs, Georgia.

Lumber, oriented strand board (OSB), and other solid wood products continue to suffer from poor prices and limited markets, although plywood has been somewhat better. As the U.S. housing market has spiraled downward, it has dragged the lumber market down with it. Pine chip-n-saw has fared the worst, as mills have been faced with cutting delivered prices even further due to higher fuel/logging costs or shutting down. Some sawmills have closed, but most have managed to stay open and run on reduced schedules with tighter log specifications to limit their losses.