Dec. 1939] Marketing of Farm Woodland Products 21 



crease the quantity and an approach to these capacity figures would be 

 made. 



Setting aside for the present any possible improvement in the eflfici- 

 ency of processing, it appears that during the intermediate time period 

 considered, except for some specialty products, the area is well supplied 

 with wood-using industries. These industries have ample capacity to 

 take care of a noniial production. 



Possibilities for the Future 



Leaving the analysis of present conditions, we will consider possible 

 future developments which may affect the marketing and production of 

 forest products in this part of Carroll County. 



Optimum Organization of Plants 



Theoretically there should be an optimum set-up which would reduce 

 the total cost of assembling and processing forest products to the mini- 

 mum. Problems involved in achieving this objective would be closely 

 akin to those encountered in detemiining the most efficient arrangement 

 of plants and truck routes for collecting, for example, fluid milk from 

 an area. 



Within the range in wdiich economies of size operate to increase plant 

 efficiency, two or more plants at the same point processing the same 

 type of material are less efficient than one larger plant. Likewise, the 

 location of two plants side by side may result in higher total costs than 

 if the same two plants are some distance apart. However, to the extent 

 that there is cross shipping by farmers between the two plants this econ- 

 omy may not be secured. 



If accurate information were available regarding costs of operating 

 plants of varying capacities, trucks over various distances and with 

 various loads, and so forth, a plan of reorganization of the industries 

 might be prepared for theoretical consideration. Lacking such informa- 

 tion the most that can be done at this time is to indicate in a general 

 way how the factors operate and what basic data would be needed in 

 order to detemiine this optimum arrangement. 



First of all, consider trucking costs from roadside to plant. Provided 

 any trucking whatsoever has to be done, a certain minimum expense is 

 incurred which might be called the loading and unloading cost. Conse- 

 quently, a haul of two or three miles is probably possible without adding 

 substantially to the expense. A point is soon reached, however, when 

 increasing distance increases cost sufficiently to be a deterring factor in 

 transporting the logs. 



Consider now the expense of operating the plant. A certain minimum 

 amount of raw material must be available in order to operate efficiently 

 even the smallest of sawmills. Depending, therefore, on the density of 

 production, it is necessary for a sawmill to receive logs from over an 

 area of some size. This is true to some extent even when considering a 

 portable sawmill where, in effect, the mill is taken to the wood instead 

 of the wood brought to the mill, for certain costs are incurred whenever it 

 is necessary to move the mill. Quality of finished product and transpor- 

 tation charges considered, the most efficient size of enterprise is con- 



