Firewood is one of the last things people buy by a unit nobody agrees on. You call three sellers, you get three numbers, and two of them are quoting a unit that has no fixed amount of wood in it. The word cord sounds official. The word face cord sounds like a slightly smaller version of the same thing. It is not. A face cord can be a third of a full cord, or less, or more, depending entirely on how long the seller cut the pieces.
This is not usually a scam. Plenty of honest sellers quote in face cords because that is how their region talks. The trouble is that a buyer comparing a face cord price against a full cord price is comparing two different amounts of wood and usually does not know it. Here is how to put every quote on the same basis before you pay.
The Two Units, Side by Side
A full cord is a defined stack. Four feet high, four feet deep, eight feet long. Multiply those out and you get 128 cubic feet. That number includes the air gaps between pieces, which is why a cord is measured as a tidy stack and not as a weight or a count of logs. When you see firewood described as 4x4x8, that is a full cord.
A face cord keeps the height and the length and drops the depth. Four feet high, eight feet long, one piece deep. That is a single row of split wood standing against a wall or a rack. The face of a full cord, hence the name.
Here is the structural difference that matters. A full cord has a fixed depth of four feet. A face cord's depth is whatever length the seller happened to cut the wood to. That one variable is the entire story of this article. At the common 16 inch stove length, a face cord works out to about 42.7 cubic feet, which is exactly one third of a full cord.
Why Face Cord Depth Is the Variable That Matters
Three face cords of 16 inch wood stack up to a full cord. Sixteen inches is a third of a four foot depth, so three rows deep gets you there. That is where the familiar one third rule comes from, and it is worth being clear that the rule only holds at 16 inches.
16 inch, 12 inch, and 24 inch cuts
Picture the same four by eight footprint three times. At 12 inches, you have a thin wall of wood, about 32 cubic feet. At 16 inches, you have about 42.7 cubic feet. At 24 inches, that wall is twice as thick as the 12 inch version, around 64 cubic feet, or half a full cord in a single row.
All three of those are legitimately called a face cord. Same term, wildly different amounts of wood. A buyer who assumes every face cord is one third of a cord will be right only when the seller happens to cut at 16 inches.
Shorter pieces are not automatically a bad deal. A 12 inch face cord at a price that reflects 32 cubic feet is fair, and short pieces fit small stoves and fire pits better anyway. It becomes a bad deal only when you pay a 16 inch price for a 12 inch stack, which is easy to do when nobody mentions the cut length out loud.
Ask one question before anything else
How long are the pieces cut. That is the question. Ask it whether the seller says face cord, rick, row, or anything else. Everything else about the quote becomes computable once you have that number, and nothing is computable without it.
While you are asking, check the length against your own firebox. Measure the inside of your stove or fireplace opening and subtract a few inches so pieces load without wedging. Plenty of people buy 24 inch wood for a box that tops out at 18 and end up re-cutting the whole load in the driveway. Long pieces that do not fit are a problem no matter how good the per cubic foot math looked.
Rick, Face Cord, and the Other Terms Sellers Use
Rick and face cord generally mean the same thing, a single row stacked four feet high and eight feet long. Rick is the more common word in the Midwest and the South, face cord turns up more in the Northeast and the Great Lakes, and some sellers use both in the same sentence. Neither term carries a guaranteed depth. Both require the log length question.
Then there are the phrases that mean nothing measurable at all on their own.
- Truckload or pickup load. Depends on the truck, the sideboards, and whether the wood is stacked or thrown in.
- Pile. A pile is a shape, not a quantity.
- Bundle. Fine for a campfire, meaningless for heating.
- Cord, used loosely. Some sellers say cord when they mean their own face cord. This is the one that costs people real money.
Quarter cord and third cord quotes are at least volume based, which puts them ahead of a pickup load. Still confirm what the fraction is a fraction of. A third of a full cord is about 42.7 cubic feet, one third of 128. A third of the seller's own 16 inch face cord is roughly 14 cubic feet, one third of 42.7. Those are not close.
The only term with a stable definition across sellers is the full cord. It is the one unit where everybody is talking about 128 cubic feet of neatly stacked wood. Normalize every other quote back to it and the comparisons get easy.
Normalizing Quotes to the Same Basis
The multiply by three rule
When the cuts are 16 inches, the conversion is simple arithmetic. To compare a face cord quote against a full cord quote, multiply the face cord price by three. To go the other direction, divide the full cord price by three.
Run it with round numbers. Seller A quotes a face cord of 16 inch oak and the number sounds fine. Seller B quotes a full cord of oak and the number sounds steep by comparison. Triple Seller A's figure and the two quotes land on the same shelf for the first time. Often the one that looked cheap turns out to be the expensive one, because a small number attached to a small unit reads as a bargain even when the wood costs more per cubic foot.
That is the psychological piece worth naming. A face cord price feels reasonable because the number itself is modest, not because the wood is cheap. The multiplication is what makes the real price visible, and it takes about four seconds.
Price per cubic foot
The multiply by three rule breaks the moment log lengths differ between sellers. Price per cubic foot does not break. Divide the quoted price by the actual cubic feet in that stack rather than by the unit name on the invoice.
Getting cubic feet for any face cord is one line of math. Four times eight times the log length in feet.
- 12 inch cut is 1 foot. 4 x 8 x 1 = 32 cubic feet.
- 16 inch cut is 1.33 feet. 4 x 8 x 1.33 = about 42.7 cubic feet.
- 20 inch cut is 1.67 feet. 4 x 8 x 1.67 = about 53.3 cubic feet.
- 24 inch cut is 2 feet. 4 x 8 x 2 = 64 cubic feet.
Now every quote in front of you converts to a single number you can rank. A full cord quote divides by 128. A face cord quote divides by whichever figure above matches the cut.
One more thing belongs in that number before you compare anything. Delivery and stacking fees ride on top of the wood price, and they do not scale with volume the way the wood does. A delivery charge spread across a full cord barely moves the per cubic foot figure. The same charge spread across one face cord moves it a lot. Add the fees to the total first, then divide. A cheap face cord with a delivery fee attached can quietly cost more per cubic foot than a full cord delivered free.
Checking What Actually Showed Up
A dumped pile is not measurable. That is not an accusation, it is geometry. Loose rounds and unsplit pieces leave a large share of air space between them, more than a stacked row does, so a pile that looks impressively like a cord can stack down to noticeably less. If a seller quotes you a cord and dumps it loose, the volume you are looking at in the driveway tells you almost nothing.
Stack it, then measure. Height, length, depth, multiply the three. Compare that number against 128 cubic feet for a full cord, or against the face cord math above for a single row. A stack is the only honest form a cord takes.
A few practical notes on measuring:
- If the stack is not a neat rectangle, and it rarely is, measure the height at several spots along the length and average them. Measuring at the tallest point flatters the total.
- Measure the depth in a few places too, since the ends of a row tend to be ragged.
- Pull five or six pieces and measure them end to end. Cut length drifting short across the entire load changes the total more than people expect. An inch off every piece in a face cord is an inch off the whole depth of the stack.
Do this the day of delivery if you possibly can. The invoice is fresh, the driver's route is still in somebody's memory, and a phone call about a short load is a normal conversation. Three weeks later, after you have burned a chunk of it, that conversation is not realistic anymore.
Questions to Ask Before You Pay
Most firewood disputes trace back to a question nobody asked. Work down this list on the phone before you commit.
- What unit is this quote in, and how long are the pieces cut. If the answer is face cord or rick, the cut length is not optional information.
- Is the quoted volume stacked or loose. A loose truck bed volume is not the same as a stacked cord, and the gap between them is not small.
- What species, and is it mixed. Dense hardwoods like oak and hickory burn longer and hotter than softer species. A mixed load is fine if it is priced as mixed.
- Is it seasoned, green, or kiln dried, and how long has it been split. Green wood is heavy, hard to light, smoky, and not worth seasoned money. Split and stacked time is the detail that actually tells you something.
- Are delivery and stacking included or extra, and is there a distance charge. Ask about stacking specifically. Many sellers dump by default.
- Will the receipt list the unit, the dimensions, and the species. A seller willing to put it in writing is usually a seller worth buying from.
That last one does more work than it looks like. Firewood sales rules vary from state to state, and some places restrict how the word cord can be advertised. You do not need to know your local rule to benefit from it. Asking for the unit and dimensions in writing is a reasonable request anywhere, and a seller who gets cagey about writing down what they just said on the phone has told you something useful. When we take an order for firewood delivery, the unit and the cut length belong on the paperwork, not just in the conversation.
None of this requires you to be suspicious of anybody. It requires you to be specific. Specific questions get specific answers, and specific answers are the only kind you can do math on.
How We Started
We started Mulch Mound because we got tired of the hassle that came with buying landscaping materials. The options were either loading bags into your car at a garden center or calling around to local suppliers, trying to figure out pricing, minimums, and delivery schedules. Neither option felt convenient or transparent.
Three of us – Alec, Mo, and Tyler – decided there had to be a better way. Alec and Tyler got their start back in 2013 running a landscaping business during college, moving mulch and mowing lawns to pay tuition. That experience taught them how frustrating it was to source materials, and years later, that frustration turned into Mulch Mound.
We focus on making it simple to get mulch, stone, and soil delivered directly to your home. Order online, pick your delivery date, and we handle the rest. No loading bags. No calling multiple suppliers. No wondering if you bought enough or paid a fair price.
We work with quality local suppliers in the areas we serve and aim to be straightforward about what we offer and what it costs. Landscaping is hard work. Buying the materials for it shouldn't be.
Frequently asked questions
How many face cords are in a full cord?
Three, when the wood is cut at 16 inches. Picture what happens when it is not. A seller cuts at 20 inches, you buy what you think is a third of a cord, and in reality you have 53 cubic feet rather than 42.7. Two and a half of those rows would fill a full cord, not three. The ratio is a product of the cut length, not of the word face cord, so the count changes every time the saw setup does.
Is a rick the same as a cord?
No, and the place it goes wrong is almost always a verbal quote. Someone says rick, the buyer hears a word that sounds like a full load, and nobody circles back. Then the truck arrives with a single row and two people have an honest disagreement with no document to settle it.
If a seller will not name a cut length, treat that as a refusal to quote a quantity and move on. Otherwise, repeat the unit back during the call and ask for it on the invoice along with the piece length. If the quote came by text, text back the unit and the length and let their reply be the record.
How do I tell if I got a full cord without stacking the whole load?
Stack a measured section and extrapolate. Lay out an eight foot run against a fence or between two stakes, stack it to four feet, and keep track of how much of the pile that consumed. If you built a neat 16 inch deep row and used roughly a third of the delivery, the full load is tracking toward a cord. If it swallowed half the pile, you have your answer early.
Does face cord pricing ever make sense?
Often, yes. If you light a fire a handful of times a winter or you run a fire pit on weekends, a full cord is more wood than you will burn in two seasons. Wood that sits that long in a damp spot starts losing quality, and wood stacked badly because you had nowhere good to put it loses more.
Storage is the real constraint. A single row needs a narrow strip along a fence or garage wall, gets good airflow, and is easy to cover. A full cord needs a real footprint and a plan for keeping the bottom row off the ground. Buy the amount you will burn in a season and can store properly, then worry about the per cubic foot math.
Why do two sellers quote wildly different prices for the same unit?
Species, delivery distance, and whether stacking is included account for a lot of it. The factor buyers underweight is seasoning. Wood that has been split and stacked through a summer represents months of a seller's yard space and handling, and it burns clean the night it arrives. Green wood off the splitter costs the seller almost nothing to hold and needs most of a year in your yard before it is good for anything.
Two quotes for a full cord of oak can be far apart and both be fair, if one is ready to burn and the other is a project. Ask when it was split before you decide which one is overpriced.