Daily edition
September 6, 2026
Prepared from public sources. Links lead to original material.
What matters this morning
- LP Building Solutions will indefinitely curtail its Jasper, Texas OSB mill, taking roughly 475 million square feet of annual 3/8-inch-basis capacity out of production. A Texas WARN notice puts the affected workforce at about 150.
- A new Auburn-led Southern log-trucking study, based on 573 drivers across five states, identifies experience requirements, insurance qualification and startup capital as the recurring barriers to bringing new third-party drivers into the wood supply chain.
- A 1,119.7-acre timber tract near Astoria, Oregon is on the market at $5.7 million. More than 90% is listed as Site Class I or II, making it a useful live marker for productive coastal timberland rather than a recreational-land comp.
- ForestSource's freshly refreshed slab dataset now contains 24,324 observations from 94 dealers. Black walnut asking prices sit at a $18/BF median, with figured stock at $32.49/BF.
- A new Forest Service road study and the SlashScan mobile app both offer practical field takeaways: better-surfaced forest roads modeled better for runoff/erosion, while SlashScan can estimate and map slash-pile volume on a LiDAR-equipped iPhone or iPad.
Mills / Capacity / Procurement
East Texas
LP to indefinitely curtail 475 million sq. ft. of Jasper OSB capacity
LP Building Solutions says it will indefinitely curtail OSB production at Jasper beginning in October, citing soft demand. The mill is rated at about 475 million square feet annually on a 3/8-inch basis; LP says it weighed operating costs, capital needs, logistics and long-term asset utilization and may restart the capacity if markets warrant.
Local reporting on the Texas WARN filing says roughly 150 jobs are affected, with cuts expected November 1: 80 production positions, 34 maintenance/electrical, 30 salaried or management, and six technical. For the East Texas wood basket, the operational question is how quickly Jasper's curtailed furnish demand redistributes among competing OSB, lumber, pulp and biomass outlets.
Forestry & Timber
U.S. South
Insurance and experience are the choke points for third-party log-truck recruitment
An Auburn University team surveyed 573 company, independent and third-party log-truck drivers at 23 fuel stations in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. The average respondent was 48 years old with about 15 years in log trucking; across driver types, experience requirements, insurance qualification and high initial investment repeatedly surfaced as the central entry barriers.
The retention picture is less bleak than the recruitment picture: about 80% said they did not want to leave log trucking and roughly seven in ten would recommend the job. But only 9% of drivers not already working third-party said they would consider that model absent clearly better pay and benefits. The study will be presented at FORMEC on September 17; presentation materials are already posted.
Investment & M&A
North Oregon Coast
1,120-acre Tucker Creek timber tract asks $5.7 million
American Forest Management has the Tucker Creek Tract near Astoria listed at $5.7 million for 1,119.7 acres. The listing says more than 90% of the tract is Site Class I or II, that it carries multiple timber age classes, and that many domestic and export log markets are within roughly 80 miles.
The property has reportedly been operated as commercial tree farm for more than 80 years and is SFI certified. An asking price is not a transaction comp, but this is an unusually visible test of how the market is valuing high-productivity coastal timberland with established market access.
Under the Radar
Hardwood Markets
A 24,000-slab dataset offers a new asking-price window into live-edge hardwood
ForestSource's Slab Report was refreshed September 5 and now tracks 24,324 slab observations from 94 dealers across 130 species, with 20,736 listings currently available. Its strongest sample is black walnut: 3,066 priced slabs from 64 dealers show a median asking price of $18/BF and an interquartile range of $13.04-$26.69/BF; 937 figured slabs carry a $32.49/BF median.
These are dealer asking prices, not closed transactions, so they should not be confused with wholesale lumber or stumpage data. Still, the scale and dimensional detail make the dataset useful for custom sawyers, urban-wood businesses and hardwood producers trying to understand the downstream value ceiling for exceptional logs.
New Publications, Data & Tools
Estimating runoff and erosion on forest roads under various climate projections in Florida Panhandle region, USA
Chen, Wang, Elliot and colleagues used WEPP to compare a typical unimproved road in the Chipola Experimental Forest with compacted graded-aggregate-base and gravel designs under historical and projected climate. The improved road designs consistently produced better modeled runoff/erosion performance than the unimproved road, while CMIP6 inputs generally produced more consistent projections than CMIP5. For practitioners, the value is not the climate-model comparison itself so much as another quantified case for surfacing and compaction choices in long-lived road systems.
SlashScan: real-time slash-pile volume and mapping on an iPhone or iPad
SlashScan uses the LiDAR sensor in supported iPhones and iPads to scan, estimate and geolocate slash-pile volume in the field without a drone or separate scanner. In validation against UAV LiDAR on 14 piles, the researchers reported R²=0.948 and mean absolute percentage error of 6.76%; the Forest Service says a pile can typically be scanned in about 30 seconds and the app works offline. This is slightly older than today's news cycle, but it is the sort of field tool worth putting in front of operators who routinely inventory biomass or burn piles.
Industry Ecosystem & Service Providers
Lake States
Great Lakes Logging & Heavy Equipment Expo opens Thursday in Green Bay
The Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association's 2026 expo runs September 10-11 at the Resch Complex in Green Bay, with two full 9 a.m.-5 p.m. days and more than 300 indoor and outdoor exhibitors. The mix includes logging and construction equipment, portable sawmills, compact tractors, wood/pellet heat and related vendors.
The practical reason to watch it is concentration: for Lake States contractors and mill-side equipment buyers, it is one of the few places to see a large cross-section of machines and specialized vendors in two days rather than through months of dealer visits.
Opportunities worth watching
- Jasper's curtailment is a procurement event as much as an OSB event. Watch East Texas roundwood and residual flows for displaced furnish, especially where competing outlets have limited appetite for the same material.
- The Southern trucking study points to a business-system bottleneck rather than a simple driver shortage. Insurance products, staged ownership models and qualification pathways that lower the first two years of risk could matter more than another generic recruiting campaign.
- The Tucker Creek listing is worth tracking through disposition. A completed sale would provide a useful current benchmark for high-site coastal Oregon timberland with strong mill/export access.