Where to Sell Wood Chips?

Wood chips are a great byproduct and here's how to sell and profit from them

Are you an individual property owner or tree care professional who produces tons of wood chips? 

It's not unusual for tree companies or large acreage owners to create hundreds of pounds of wood chips, and it can be a shame to see them go to waste. Oftentimes these are quality chips which, in the right hands, could sell for a good price. Rather than take them to a dump site to get rid of them, you could potentially profit from your wood chips.

But what uses do wood chips have and how can you turn them into profit? Let's find out.

Producing Free Wood Chips

So what do you need to start producing a pile of wood chips? For starters you'll need a wood chipper and trees.

Many property owners will naturally acquire a large pile of chips from cleaning up their land, including from:

• • Cleaning up loose tree branches and other yard waste

  • Tree removal and land clearing

  • Small-to-medium scale commercial tree care

Whether you're chipping pine or hardwoods, there's a lot of potential for building up a large amount of wood chips. But once you have them, where do you dump your chips to make use of them?

Uses for Wood Chips

There are lots of practical uses for wood chips. While large scale commercial operations like pulp mills or paper mills make use of a high quantity of wood chips, for smaller scale operations, like farms or homesteads, there are much more practical uses for your chips.

Wood Chip & Mulch

One of the most effective uses for wood chips is that they can be added to organic mulch. Wood chips with mulch provides several significant benefits to plants and soil, including:

• • Moisture retention

  • Temperature regulation

  • Weed suppression

Pathways and Gardens

Wood chips are an excellent material for creating attractive garden paths and enhancing garden beds. You may want to dump chips there to create pathways or garden bedding because:

• • Wood chips break down and add organic matter back to soil

  • It requires minimal upkeep

  • It looks aesthetically pleasing

Animal Bedding

Wood chips are an excellent bedding material for animals, offering several advantages over traditional options like straw bedding:

• • High absorption for controlling moisture and animal odors

  • Good insulation for maintaining comfortable temperatures for animals

  • Some species like cedar are a natural pest deterrent: Some types of wood chips, particularly cedar, have natural pest-repelling properties

  • Used wood chip bedding can be composted, creating a valuable soil amendment

Wood Burning Fuel

Wood chips can be an efficient and renewable source of energy when used in wood-burning stoves or biomass heating systems. Wood chips are:

• • Renewable

  • Cost-effective

  • Easy to produce

Locations to sell Wood Chips

So where can you sell wood chips to turn your yard waste into profit? Ensure when your chips drop someone is there to pick them up. Here are a few different ideas you can try.

Set up a Driveway Shop

Are you ever driving through the country and see someone's self-serve firewood stand at the end of their driveway? Customers can come and pick up a bag of logs and deposit their cash into a small lockbox before driving away with their goods in the back of their truck?

Try something similar. Build a sheltered stall to store your wood chips and erect a sign to inform passersby that you have wood chips for sale.

It may be a little unusual to try and sell wood chips on the side of the road compared to firewood, so you may want to get a sandwich board and write some potential uses for wood chips on it to really sell it. Taking ideas from the suggestions above you could write:

• • Great for wood stoves!

  • Use in garden beds!

  • Best material for rural pathways!

Have several bags there so anyone driving past can pick up a few and take their fill to bring back home with them.

Gardening Shops

Independent garden centers and local shops may have a need for a high quantity of wood chips. Wood chips make for great garden bedding or can be used in mulch to create valuable biomass.

Landscaping companies also make use of high quantities of wood chips for creating pathways or filling in areas.

Reach out to these businesses and see if there's a demand for wood chips. Perhaps you can set up a quid pro quo where you provide wood chips in exchange for free lumber? Or you can sell your wood chips by the pound and set up a relationship and do business going forward?

Crowdsource Your Chips

Did you know there are websites and apps out there that connect arborists, tree companies and other wood chip producers with gardeners in need of chips?

Take a look online and check out these services, which aim to help gardeners get free wood chips. It's also helpful for tree companies and other professionals who don't have to pay to get rid of their waste material.

It's a win-win for everybody. Connect with these services and see if you can put your wood chips to use there. You could potentially form relationships with some of the people you meet through these apps and have a long-term plan for getting rid of your wood chips.

Individual Gardeners

Who needs wood chips? Gardeners who want to use them annually. The great thing about getting to know home owners and homesteaders who need wood chips is that there's an annual market as they maintain their property year over year.

Put out classified ads in your local newspaper or online advertising your wood chips and that you're able to deliver them straight to their house. Then just fill your trailer and haul them over.

Set up a good price so you're making fair money for your goods and offer a deal to customers who offer to take more or come back annually. While it may take a bit of travel time to get your chips out to your customers, it'll be well worth your mileage expenses once you set up a good route where you're dropping off to dozens of customers at a time.

While this takes a lot of time to set up the groundwork, you can establish a rapport and end up selling loads of chips year after year, raking in the money.

Facebook Marketplace

Why not post your chips online and let customers come to you? Plenty of small-to-medium scale commercial operations are increasingly posting their stuff on Facebook, throwing out quick posts to get the attention of users in your area.

This is a great plan if you have a lot of wood chips, and you can either have responders come with a truck and pick some up themselves or you can set up a drop off... for an additional fee.

The guys who routinely need wood chips will come back asking for more, and this gives you a chance to form repeat relationships. If you've got wood chips for sale, maybe you also have logs you need gone too? Throw those on Marketplace or let your wood chip customers know and they may offer to take them off your hands.

What's Next for Profiting From Your Wood?

So you've probably figured there's more profit to be made from more than just your wood chips.

You can absolutely sell the logs from your tree care company, or mill them up with a sawmill and make a profit from the slabs or boards.

Pine tree branches also make for useful decorations in the winter, so see if there's a market for that too. Every component of the tree that's just sitting on the ground of your property can be useful to somebody.

Really there's a ton of money to be made from every part of a tree, it's just taking the time, and having the right equipment, to get the job done.

FAQs

Where can I get free wood chips?

If you don't have your own property with trees or a wood chipper, you can always try:

• • Reaching out to tree companies and asking to haul away their wood chips

  • Facebook Marketplace, seeing if anyone is getting rid of their chips

  • Free apps and services that connect gardeners with tree companies seeking to get rid of their wood chips

What wood chips are good for gardening?

You can use any wood chips in your garden, but the best ones are hardwoods with a high level of absorption.

Cedar chips can help keep pests away and pine is easy and convenient. Some species of wood do have high acidity, which can affect the soil as it breaks down. Some plants flourish in those types of environments while others don't, so do your research and see what plants and wood chips make sense for your garden.

What level of moisture should my wood chips be?

Your chips don't have to be very dry to start using them, since often they'll often be decaying into the soil as they age. For burning wood chips you should have a moisture of 30% or less, since dryer material burns easier.