178 FOREST VALUATION 



financial position and average profits correspondingly, and justly, 

 increased by these earlier sacrifices. 



The costs and profits of manufacture are both included in 

 contract prices for sawing or manufacturing products, which 

 is the basis of operations of many portable saw mills. 



175. Logging Costs and Profits. It is in the logging, rather 

 than the milling end of lumbering, that the greatest variations 

 in costs occur. The cost of felling and bucking the trees into 

 logs, ties or poles may be standardized. But the cost of trans- 

 portation of the product from the site to the mill is determined 

 by a number of exceedingly variable factors, and is the prin- 

 cipal part of logging. 



These factors are: accessibility and quantity of stumpage, 

 and methods of transportation adapted to climate, to the topog- 

 raphy and to the size of the timber. The direct relation of total 

 quantity or volume upon the cost per unit of the combined 

 expense of constructing the transportation routes and moving 

 the product needs to be emphasized (98), and explains the 

 great differences in value of timber of equal quality but differing 

 merely in quantity available. 



Accessibility is a relative condition depending upon the total 

 cost per unit of product to bring the timber to the mill, and the 

 margin of profit remaining for distribution between the owner 

 of stumpage and the logger. When the logger sees so small a 

 margin that he demands it all, the timber is for the present 

 inaccessible. Accessibility depends, then, upon the total volume 

 available as well as upon the location of the site and the diffi- 

 culties and costs of transportation intervening between site and 

 mill. 



Methods of transportation exercise a profound influence 

 upon logging costs. The factor of climate exerts its chief influ- 

 ence upon the bottom, making ice roads possible in some regions, 

 while in others rain greatly increases the difficulties by soften- 

 ing the soil. The driving of streams, supplemented by the 

 sleigh haul, may be superseded by rail transportation involving 

 an investment of an entirely different character. For short 

 distances, in regions of second growth, wagon haul is the chief 



