treeless -
I have pursued buying some lumber from TATF off and on, as has gistheman and perhaps others. Their preferred method of shipping seems to be container or half-container loads. As they also mentioned LTL (less than (truck-)load) on their site I dug into that a bit.
I have been interested in an amount of maybe 1000 bf for flooring in my house, thought that I might get a deal by buying in bulk at the prices TATF reports as local market price and then milling it myself in my small workshop.
According to info I have received in a long-term communication with TATF of 3 or 4 e-mails each way over 3 or 4 months, they are offering their lumber at prices ranging from about $1.50/bf for 7-year teak up to a couple of dollars more for 13-year. I would imagine you could get 15- or 17-year-old teak soon.
Those prices:
a. do not include shipping, duties, taxes, "phytosanitary" etc. to get the wood into the US
b. are for unselected timber. If you want additional services of selecting by size (quality?), etc. then add another $1-2 per bf. It was suggested to me that I should expect that maybe a third of the unselected lumber would be usable for my purposes (for 7-year-old teak).
I was quoted about another $1/bf for shipment of the 1000bf (by sea to a US port of entry and then by land to my location in PA). I don't know what additional costs would be incurred for paperwork, taxes, etc.
I was also quoted about $.50/bf for a container load (about 8000 bf) shipped to Eastern US, including phytosanitary and other paperwork.
TATF did the legwork to pursue these shipping estimates with an occasional poke or two from me. I wasn't extremely pleased that it seemed as if they didn't already have some very standard shipping info - this seemed to be a fairly- to very new process for them, particularly the LTL piece. Not what I would have expected for a company that is eager to sell lumber and has done it successfully at least a few times. Still, I did get the info and I feel like I can pursue a purchase and there would be somebody on the other end to work with if I choose to do that.
