AbstractsEconomics

Many centers of population in the Pacific Northwest are dependent upon employment in the forest based industries. Mary of these timber dependent communities look to the public forests for their raw wood requirements. In some localities the installed capacity has outstripped the local wood supply. This necessitates reaching into other areas within the same subregion or into areas, such as the pine subregion, east of the Cascade Range. This interchange of logs between subregions creates problems, in log scaling, grading, and marketing, that are not of common knowledge nor fully understood by those affected by them. This is the problem we are concerned with in this study. A public timber sale purchased on the east-side ws partitioned into three subsales. One subsale, representative of the timber on the east slope of the Cascades, was used for a source of a log population for the model in this study. From a population of 999-log loads a sample of 105 loads was selected. Each truck load was scaled by the rules of the east- and west-side at the same time, location, and conditions. Loads from each day of operation were included in the sample. These paired loads were analyzed using the Student’s "t” to test the null hypothesis, that no difference existed between scaling practices, at the five percent significance level for length, gross, and net volume. The hypothesis was rejected for there were significant differences between practices for all categories. There were 1514 logs in this study model with a gross volume of 705 MBF and 827 MBF for the west- and east-side practices respectively. These volumes were expressed as a ratio of . 853. Every load was examined and each log was paired by the two lengths as determined by the two scaling practices. All logs that were unpaired because of mismatched lengths were discarded. The remaining 1029 paired logs represented 68 percent of the original log count and 80 percent of the original gross volume. The gross volumes of 568 MBF and 658 MBF for the west- and eastside practices respectively were expressed as a ratio of . 864. The difference between the gross volume ratios from the original 1514 logs and the 1029 paired logs were (.864) - (.853) = 1.1 percent. This 1. 1 percent was attributable to length and piece accountability. The difference between the paired logs gross volume ratio of 864 and unity was 13.6 percent. This percentage was attributable to the differences that were a result of taper scaling on the east-side. The net/gross ratio differences between the east- and west-side scaling practices was 3. 9 percent. This was attributable to the subjective judgment of the individual scalers. The study model logs were scaled, graded, and log prices assigned to each grade. These volumes and values were weighted by log grade and species and a single value was expressed in dollars per net MBF Scribner scale for each subregion. The log value, stumpage values, and operating costs expressed in dollars per MBF were placed on an equivalent…