Meh. The market is gonna crash again, lumber prices will drop. I could go pick up at least a trailer load of 4x4x8's for free, but Im not a lumber salesman.
We are in the customer service business. We want the customer to have exactly what they want for dunnage. So they can provide their own. We don’t show up with empty pallets to load a load of shingles do we?
Steel doesn't pay well? You must not be in Blytheville or Osceola very often. $5 a mile easy out of the dozen Steel mills there. I basically do everything I can get to get right back there
What a waste. You could have built a deck or something like that from them. Former co-worker did that. Solid as they come.
I carry 3 8 footers, 4 4.5 footers, more than that, not my problem, and im not buying pine to carry a load of steel
Our lumber trucks carried their own dunnage, usually DF 4x4x8. We had a rack built under the trailers to carry extras. The sawmills will supply dunnage but it's usually short and junky.
I have a dwindling stack of hardwood 4X4s in my back yard even though I have not pulled a deck since 2010.
Oak 4x4s are the best after they dry out for a year or so. We used to haul for a guy with a gypo sawmill way back up in the woods. He usually couldn't get trucks to come up there but we'd always go. He'd cut a couple of loads every week and most of it went to SanDiego for export to Mexico for mine timbers. He cut a lot of oak and always had a few that wouldn't grade so he'd let us have them for practically nothing. Those were the only times we ever had to lock up our dunnage. People would steal that stuff in a heart beat.
Theres a few places i go that drivers just toss their spare dunnage and the place burns em or the employees do in the winter, i pick over it a bit every time im there, 99% of it is absolute trash, but its good for a few excellent true oak dimensional 4x5s over the course of a year, i take em home and let em dry out some more in my garage.