Walmart Now Selling Firewood For $3 A Bundle

I don't know why this is so shocking to me, but it is.  I was walking through Walmart in Superior the other day when I came near the sporting goods section and saw an end cap of an aisle with boxes of firewood.  On it, they said 'Premium Natural Firewood.'  $3.00 for .75 cubic feet.  Are people buying this?

To be fair, the wood did look like it was in great shape.  It was seasoned, not rotted, and looked like good stuff.  Then I realized they've been selling firewood at gas stations for years.  I guess it's kind of hard for me to go and buy firewood when all my life our family has been cutting our own.  It seems probably as foreign of an idea to me as the first time someone saw a bottle of water for sale.

So let's do a little math here and figure out the cost comparison between buying walmart firewood and a pickup truck of local firewood... just to see what the mark up is.  Nothing keeps the mind sharp like an old school word problem.

Searching on craigslist, you can get a heaping pick up truck load of dry firewood for anywhere from $60-100.  Let's split the difference and say $80 gets you a heaping truckload.

How many cubic feet in a truck load?  Average box size for a pick up truck is 6.5ft X 4ft and roughly 3ft deep.  That equals 78 cubic feet.  (roughly, you could argue there would be more if it was heaping.)

So $80 divided by 78 cubic feet = $1.02 per cubic foot

Walmart sells .75 cubic feet of firewood for $3.  So what's the price for 1 cubic foot?

3 / .75 = $4 dollars per cubic foot.  That's nearly four times as expensive.

So if you were to fill a truckload using the firewood you bought at walmart, (or really any other convenience  store) it would cost roughly $312.  (78 x 4).

So my point is that Walmart really does have some rock bottom prices, but if you're planning on having more than one campfire, it's worth just buying locally from someone and getting a nice pile.