How Much to Charge for a Cord of Firewood, Worked Through

October 26, 2026 · Selling products and running the numbers

How much to charge for a cord of firewood comes from what a cord costs you to make: the logs, your hours bucking, splitting and stacking at your own hourly pay, and your saw and splitter running costs. Divide that by (1 - the margin you want) for the price. In the illustrative example below a cord costs $291.43 stacked in the yard, so a 20% margin needs $364.29 a cord. Delivery and stacking are priced separately, from miles and hours, and a bundle of firewood is priced from its share of the cord’s volume.

None of these figures are what firewood, logs, delivery or stacking sell for anywhere. They belong to one made-up part-time seller and are there to be replaced with your own load prices, timings and records. The one fixed number is the definition of a cord: 128 cubic feet of stacked wood, a stack 4 feet high, 4 feet deep and 8 feet long. Nothing here is about any rule on how firewood is sold or labeled where you are.

The firewood price formula

cost per cord   = log load price / cords the load yields
                  + hours per cord x your hourly pay
                  + saw and splitter running cost per cord
price per cord  = cost per cord / (1 - margin)
face cord share = piece length in inches / 12 x 4 x 8 / 128
delivery        = miles x your cost per mile
                  + (driving + unloading hours) x your hourly pay
stacking        = hours per cord x cords x your hourly pay

Step 1: what a cord costs you, from bought logs

The example seller buys a $1,200.00 log load, delivered to the yard, which yields 7 cords of stacked wood by their own measure from past loads.

The logs are the largest cost at $171.43 a cord, and splitting is half of the 4.00 hours. The whole load, processed, costs $2,040.00. That $291.43 already pays the seller $25.00 an hour, so anything charged above it is profit on top of their wage.

Step 2: is cutting your own cheaper?

If the seller cut their own instead, paying a landowner $40.00 a cord for the wood, it adds 3 hours of felling, limbing and hauling, more saw time at $25.00 a cord, and 30 truck miles a cord at their own $0.70 a mile. That comes to $261.00 a cord, $30.43 less than bought logs, even with the extra hours paid at the same rate. If the wood itself cost more than $70.43 a cord, bought logs would win. Your own figures can flip this either way, which is why it is worth running before a season, not after.

Step 3: how much to charge for a cord of firewood, and a face cord

A face cord is 4 feet high and 8 feet long, but only one row of pieces deep, so its size depends on your piece length. With 16-inch pieces it is 42.67 cubic feet, 33.3% of a full cord.

At $291.43 a cord, a 20% margin needs $364.29. The example’s own $360.00 cord falls $4.29 short at 19.0%, while its $130.00 face cord clears the $121.43 it needs. Priced in line with the $360.00 cord the face cord would be $120.00; the example charges more per cubic foot for the smaller order. Those prices are the example’s own, not a claim about what anyone pays. A 20% margin is not a 20% markup; the markup vs margin chart converts between them.

Step 4: firewood delivery and stacking firewood

Delivery is costed from the trip, not guessed. A 30 mile round trip costs $21.00 in vehicle at the seller’s own $0.70 a mile, plus 1 hour of driving and 15 minutes unloading at $25.00 an hour, $31.25. That is $52.25, above the seller’s $40.00 minimum delivery charge, so the cost is what is charged.

Stacking firewood at the customer’s takes this seller 1.50 hours a cord, so stacking 2 cords is $75.00. Both charges are set at cost, the seller’s own hours at their own rate with nothing added: they pay the wage but earn no profit. To earn a margin on them, charge more hours or a higher rate for that work.

Step 5: a bundle of firewood

A bundle here is 0.75 cubic feet of wood, measured as stacked, so a cord makes 170.67 bundles. Each one carries $1.71 of the cord’s cost by volume, $0.60 of wrap, netting and label, and 3 minutes of the seller’s time, $1.25: $3.56 a bundle. A 30% margin needs $5.08; the example’s $8.00 bundle clears it with $4.44 profit.

Sold entirely as bundles, a cord earns $758.17 against $68.57 sold whole. That gap only exists if every bundle sells, and it takes another 8.53 hours of bundling per cord, already paid in the bundle’s cost. How many bundles you can actually sell is yours to judge, from your own stand or store.

The insight: the card fee lands on the whole ticket

One delivered, stacked load of 2 cords looks like this:

That is $55.86 a cord, not the $68.57 from step 3. The difference is the 3% card fee, $12.71 a cord, and it is charged on the delivery and stacking as well as the wood. Because delivery and stacking are priced at cost, they carry no profit to pay their share of the fee, so the wood pays it. Price the add-ons at cost and take cards, and every delivered cord earns less than a cord picked up for cash.

The season, in hours

Selling 40 cords in 2-cord loads is 20 deliveries. With the customer wanting stacking on 50% of cords, the season takes 215.00 hours, 160.00 of them (74%) bucking, splitting and handling in the yard. At 15 hours a week that is 14.33 weeks. With $2,234.40 of profit on top of $5,375.00 of pay, the season works out at $35.39 an hour against the $25.00 the seller set. The tree removal pricing post works the other side of the wood pile the same way, from your own crew hours.

How these were calculated

The cord is defined as 128 cubic feet of stacked wood, 4 x 4 x 8 feet; a face cord is 4 x 8 feet by your piece length. Cost per cord is load price / cords per load + (bucking + splitting + yard hours) x hourly pay + saw and splitter running cost. Price at a margin is cost / (1 - margin). Delivery is miles x cost per mile + (driving + unloading hours) x hourly pay, or your minimum if higher; stacking is hours per cord x cords x hourly pay. A bundle’s wood cost is cost per cord x bundle cubic feet / 128. Load profit is everything taken, less the card fee on all of it, less wood, delivery and stacking at cost. Deliveries are rounded up to whole trips. Figures are carried from step to step as the spreadsheet shows them, to the cent. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that works costs per cubic foot and builds the season delivery by delivery, and the two agree. All inputs are illustrative, not market prices or measured rates. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own loads, timings and prices, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from face cord size to a season’s hours and pay.