Daily edition
October 7, 2026
Prepared from public sources. Links lead to original material.
By the numbers
U.S. on-highway diesel: $6.199/gal for October 5, down 18.3 cents from one week earlier. EIA
Madison’s Lumber Prices Index: $505/MBF for the week ending October 2, unchanged from the prior week and down $20/MBF from one month earlier. Madison’s Lumber Reporter
CANADA — ONTARIO / HARDWOOD MARKETS
Thunder Bay pitches underused poplar and white birch to Scandinavian manufacturers
A three-day Scandinavian trade mission wraps up in Thunder Bay today with a specific forest-products target: finding new manufacturing uses for northwestern Ontario’s underutilized poplar and white birch. Organizers expect roughly 50 delegates, including representatives from as many as seven Swedish companies, in a business-to-business effort aimed at attracting value-added manufacturing.
The fibre issue is operational. On Crown land, companies cannot simply remove the preferred softwood from mixed stands, so stands can be bypassed when there is no economic outlet for the hardwood component. A new user for those species could improve utilization of existing harvest opportunities as well as create a new manufacturing market.
Organizers are also pitching residuals and processing byproducts for engineered housing, automotive, agriculture, energy and advanced biochemical applications. The useful test now is whether the exploratory meetings produce an actual fibre-consuming project.
Action Detector
NORTHEAST — PENNSYLVANIA / BID DAY
418.96 MBF of mostly red oak closes at 11 a.m. today
Pennsylvania DCNR’s Homecoming timber sale reaches its electronic bid deadline at 11:00 a.m. Eastern today, October 7. The Clearfield County sale covers 207 acres and includes 418.96 MBF of sawtimber, led by red oak, plus 609.90 HCF of pulpwood led by red maple.
The sale is one of two Bureau of Forestry solicitations shown with the same October 7 deadline on the state’s Bid Express page. For hardwood buyers and logging contractors, it creates a same-day market signal from north-central Pennsylvania rather than a future watch item.
WEST — MONTANA / SALVAGE TIMBER BIDS
7,029 tons of wind-thrown Douglas-fir go to bid tomorrow
Montana DNRC’s Luke Mountain 2 Salvage sale reaches bid opening at 2:00 p.m. tomorrow, October 8, in Missoula. The sale offers an estimated 7,029 tons of wind-thrown Douglas-fir sawlogs — about 1,100 MBF Scribner net — on 482 acres in the Anaconda Unit.
The minimum bid is $14.12 per ton and bids require a $4,961 deposit. The purchaser must salvage all down or wind-damaged trees using whole-tree skidding, with the operating period generally running June 1 through March 15 as soil and hauling conditions allow.
Under the Radar
WEST — FEDERAL TIMBER DATA / MARKET INTELLIGENCE
New Forest Service dashboard opens western cut-and-sold data for download
The Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station released a new dashboard October 5 that puts national-forest timber-sale and harvest data for the western United States and Alaska into a filterable, downloadable format.
The tool reports annual volume and value for sawtimber and other wood products by ranger district, using Timber Information Manager data. For contractors, mills and analysts, the practical value is less time reconstructing federal sale activity from scattered tables and more ability to compare what was sold, what was cut and at what reported value across districts.
FOREST BUSINESS SCHOOL RESOURCE
Forest-products tax credits in one searchable sourcebook
The National Forest Products Tax Credit Sourcebook brings federal and state tax-credit opportunities together for mills, logging companies, wood-energy businesses and other forest-products operations. The searchable site also includes the complete 2026 PDF.
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