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Do you have access to natural resources like trees and wood? Are you a young man that does not mind working hard? Then you can count yourself lucky. These are my experiences and thoughts about the opportunities in the firewood business.

Easy to sell

When I was 16 years old I chopped wood all summer. I sorted the wood into bags and stored it in a dry place. When winter came, I put a classified ad in the local newspaper. The day the ad was in the paper people started to call me.

It was easy to sell because the demand for firewood was high at the time. The reason for this was the rising electricity prices in Northern Europe at the time (2001). The alternative cost of using firewood instead of electricity to heat your home was favourable, therefore the demand was high for my products.

Hard work

The downside of the firewood business is that it is very hard work to do for a lifetime. People working with lumber have one of the highest "wounded at job" ratings in the world.

It can be very hard to expand the business due to limited natural resources. I only had a tiny forest to work with so the potential for producing more firewood was not very great.

Another thing you have to be aware of is something psychologists phrased "delayed gratification." You work hard during the summer to produce the firewood, then it has to dry for a few months before you can sell it. When winter arrives there is finally some demand it. Essentially, this means that you will not get your money until 4-7 months after the work is put in.

How to get filthy rich in the firewood business?

The summer I worked with all this wood I had a lot of time to think about that particular question. After lots of thinking I came up with a solution for how this could be done at a larger scale. I would need to import wood from countries with low wages and plenty of resources. In Europe this would be Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The upside by importing the firewood was:

1) No more hard physical labour for myself.

2) The business became easily expandable because you could easily import more if you wanted to sell more.

Of course, this transformed the business from production based to the art of promoting and selling firewood.

At the time I considered this opportunity there were several other people in my local community doing this import of wood from low cost countries. I decided to not go through with it because the competition seemed fierce. A few years later the local price of firewood have dropped 20% due to the high supply and limited demand.

An OK option for young people?

Firewood is a commodity. It would be pretty hard to become filthy rich by selling it. However, we can not all become filthy rich! If you are young, eager and enjoy hard work on your own, I think it is a nice little earner for teenagers who want to earn some extra in their vacation.