Firewood Delivery Cost Calculator

Keep a tape measure by the door on delivery day. A full cord stacks to 128 cubic feet. If the load measures under 100 stacked, you're looking at a face cord priced as a cord, and the moment to say so is while the truck is still in the driveway.

Delivery is a flat fee, so it costs the same for one cord or three. If you burn more than a cord a season, or know a neighbor who does, one combined order beats two separate ones by $50–$150 every time.

Most suppliers include delivery within 15 to 25 miles in the flat $50–$150. Past that, $1–$2 kicks in, and it's usually one-way distance billed round trip in practice. Thirty miles out on a 20-mile free zone: 10 extra miles at $2 is $20 on top of the flat fee. Not painful. Sixty miles out is $80 extra, which is a third of a cord's worth of wood spent on fuel. Ask for the free-zone radius before you ask for a price, because it's the single input that changes your total the most.

Oak at $300 per cord delivers roughly 24 million BTU. Pine at $150 gets you about 14 million. Twice the price for 1.7x the heat, so oak loses on pure BTU per dollar, but oak burns slower and holds a fire overnight while pine needs reloading and gums the flue. Ash splits the difference: around 20 million BTU, usually $30 to $60 under oak, and it seasons faster than either. If your supplier says "mixed hardwood," that means whatever came off the last lot, and it's priced accordingly.

A cord of oak at $312 delivered puts out about 24 million BTU, and a decent stove converts maybe 70% of that, so call it 16.8 million usable. Whether wood beats propane depends almost entirely on your state: the Maine DOER weekly fuel price survey tracks heating fuel regionally, and states like Massachusetts pay close to triple what Midwest states do. The live comparison in the firewood vs propane calculator pulls current EIA rates for your state automatically. Electric resistance heat runs about 3x the per-BTU cost of propane at national averages and never competes with either.

Northeast cords run $300 to $600 because demand is high and hauling is regulated. Southeast sits at $150 to $250 on abundant supply. Pacific Northwest lands between at $200 to $350. Connecticut's consumer protection guidance puts seasoned firewood at $220 to $300, which is a useful sanity check: if a Connecticut quote lands at $180, either it's green or it's not a full cord.

A standard half-ton pickup bed holds about a third of a cord of stacked wood, and a full cord of green oak weighs around 4,500 pounds, well past what that truck should carry. So self-hauling a cord is three trips. At 25 miles each way and current diesel or gas prices, three round trips burns 15 to 20 gallons plus roughly four hours of your day. The $50–$150 delivery fee is cheaper than that almost every time. Self-hauling makes sense for a half cord from ten miles out, not for a winter's supply.

National Forest permits typically run $5 to $20 per cord through the Forest Service e-permit system, which is close to free wood. What it actually costs: a chainsaw, fuel, a splitter or a maul, a full weekend per cord, and real injury risk. Permits also restrict you to downed wood in marked areas and often forbid moving it out of the district. If you already own the saw and like the work, it's the cheapest cord you'll ever burn. If you're buying the saw for this, the math takes three seasons to close.

Off the ground on pallets or rails, single row if you can, bark side up on the top course, and open on the sunny and windward sides. Cover the top only, never the sides, because a wrapped pile traps moisture and you'll have green wood in April. A single row seasons in six months; a solid four-foot-deep block can take two years in the middle. This is free and it's the difference between wood that burns and wood that hisses.