Called Tod at his business phone # of 360-489-7148 responding to his ad on CraigsList titled "Six yard dump truck of firewood - $200 (olympia) dated 09-02-7:47AM PDT
When I talked with Tod on the phone I asked him if his wood he is selling is dry and seasoned. He assured me his wood is the definitely dry. I agreed to have him deliver a load of his wood. When he arrived I asked him for a random sample piece of wood so that I could test it for moisture content. He said to my 15 yr old son's face and mine that his wood is very dry. It is not wet wood. The industry standard for "dry" wood is no more than 20% moisture content.
I split open the piece of wood and put a moisture meter to it and it pegged all the way to 35%. It maxed out the moisture meter. I showed him the meter reading and he immediately got visibly upset and said "so you don't want the wood!" I said I had asked for dry wood, not wet wood. He go so mad he couldn't get out of there fast enough. I felt a little bad for him and made a "very fair" offer of: if he took just $20.00 off the price of the load, I would still take it. He said "no", picked up the pieces of of the one piece of split tested wood, even the little bitty pieces of it threw it in his truck and sped off. I believe my offer of $20.00 off was a more than fair offer. My son said it should be $50.00 off, but I felt a little bad for him since he worked to load all the wood, and I could use the wood for the winter after this one, maybe sooner if I could get it dry by proper storage under a roof, etc.
My 15 year old son was there and witnessed the whole thing. Good lesson for him to see a business man straight up get caught in his lie to a customer. Tod of Wood Bandits in Olympia/Lacey, WA lied about his wood being dry. Maybe he doesn't really know how to measure it the correct way. He just ran into a customer that knew better and he got caught with a load of wet wood, trying to sell it at a premium "dry/seasoned wood" price. He also seemed to have quite a temper. Got very mad when he saw we had a moisture meter and the wood tested out to be not what he advertised and said to out faces. Was this an uninformed lie or just a bandit outright lying and trying to sell wet wood at dry wood prices?
Before he arrived with his wood, I tested my moisture meter on the wood I do have (split the wood, and put moisture meter on the middle of it). On one stack that I have had under cover and stacked loosely so air can get all around it (cut and split in May) my moisture meter registered 22% moisture. Another stack of wood I had I split in August and put the moisture on the middle of a split piece was 35%, not dry yet. So my moisture meter was more or less calibrated by testing different pieces of wood cut and different times, so I know the meter was working correctly.
I would have been glad to test more of his wood to get a better random sampling, but he was too mad and just wanted to get out of there as fast as he could.
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