You paid for a cord. The pile in your driveway looks smaller than the one your neighbor got last year. That feeling is worth checking, because unlike most disputes with a contractor, this one has a fixed number on the other side of it. A cord is a defined unit of measure. Either the wood adds up to it or it does not.
Here is how to run the check, what the vocabulary traps are, and what to do if the arithmetic comes up short.
The Only Number That Matters: 128 Cubic Feet
A full cord of firewood is 128 cubic feet of wood stacked tight. The classic shape is 4 feet high by 4 feet deep by 8 feet long, which multiplies out to exactly 128. Any other shape works too as long as the three dimensions multiply to 128.
The word stacked is doing real work in that definition. Stacked means the pieces are touching, laid roughly parallel to one another, and packed with as few gaps as the shape of the wood allows. It does not mean crisscrossed in a loose lattice, and it does not mean dumped. A crisscross stack can look enormous and contain a fraction of the wood a tight stack of the same outer dimensions holds.
The 4 foot depth confuses people because almost nobody burns 4 foot logs. A home fireplace or wood stove takes pieces around 16 or 18 inches. So sellers cut short and build the depth back with multiple rows. Three rows of 16 inch splits set behind one another come to 48 inches, which is your 4 foot depth. Two rows of 24 inch pieces do the same thing. The rows are how a modern cord gets to 128 cubic feet, and the number of rows is exactly what a short seller quietly leaves out.
In most states, bulk firewood is legally required to be sold by the cord or a fraction of a cord, and the cord is a defined unit the same way a gallon or a ton is defined. California's Division of Measurement Standards puts it about as plainly as it can be put. If the math does not reach 128 cubic feet, it is not a cord.
Key takeaway: you are not arguing about taste, quality, or whether the wood looks nice. You are checking arithmetic against a fixed number, and arithmetic is a much easier conversation to have with a seller.
Restack and Multiply: The Driveway Check
The method is the same one a weights and measures inspector would use. Get the wood into a tight row or rows, measure the three dimensions in feet, and multiply. Everything else is detail.
Measuring a neat stack
Best case, the driver stacked the wood for you. Then the check takes five minutes.
Measure the height, the length, and the depth in feet, and convert any leftover inches to decimals rather than rounding. Six inches is 0.5 feet. Four inches is 0.33. Rounding a 3 foot 9 inch stack up to 4 feet sounds harmless and it is not. On an 8 foot by 4 foot deep stack that rounding invents about eight cubic feet of wood that is not there.
Measure the height at the low spot rather than the tall spot. Stacks sag and taper, and the top course is usually uneven. Taking the low measurement, or averaging a few readings along the length, is the fair version. If the depth varies because the back row is ragged or the rows are not flush, measure depth in three places and average those too.
Then multiply height times length times depth. Divide the result by 128 and you have the fraction of a cord sitting in your driveway. A stack that comes to 96 cubic feet is three quarters of a cord. That is a specific claim you can put in a phone call.
Measuring a thrown pile before you restack
Most deliveries arrive dumped. A thrown pile has air between every single piece, and that air is not wood you paid for. The same wood takes up substantially more space loose than it does stacked, so a dumped pile that measures exactly 128 cubic feet is short. Sometimes badly short.
The common working rule among firewood sellers and buyers is that a thrown cord occupies roughly 180 cubic feet loose. That is a rough figure, not a legal standard, and it moves with piece length and how gently the wood was tipped out. Short pieces tumble tighter. Long, crooked, knotty splits pile looser. Use 180 as a screening number, not as proof of anything.
To screen a pile, treat it as a rough cone or mound and estimate length, width, and average height, then multiply. If the answer lands well under 180 cubic feet, you almost certainly do not have a cord and it is worth restacking. If it lands comfortably over, you probably do, and you can stack at your leisure.
The only method that settles it for good is restacking. Build one tight row 4 feet high and 8 feet long, which gives you 32 cubic feet at 16 inch depth, and keep building rows until the wood runs out. Or ignore the classic shape entirely and stack whatever fits along your garage wall, then measure and multiply. The shape does not matter. The product of the three numbers does.
Do this check before the driver pulls away if you possibly can, and at minimum before you burn a single piece. Take photos with a tape measure in the frame, showing the tape against the height and the depth. Dated photos with a visible tape are the difference between a complaint and an opinion.
Face Cord, Rick, Truckload: Where the Price Trap Lives
Almost every short cord complaint traces back to a word, not to dishonest stacking. The buyer heard one unit and the seller meant another.
A face cord is one row, 4 feet high by 8 feet long, at whatever depth the pieces happen to be. With 16 inch wood that comes to roughly 32 cubic feet, or a quarter of a full cord. With 24 inch wood the same face holds half again as much. The face cord fixes two of the three dimensions and leaves the one that actually varies wide open.
A rick is regional slang that usually means the same thing as a face cord. It is not a fixed unit anywhere, and two sellers in the same county can mean different things by it. If someone quotes you a rick, the only useful follow up is the piece length, because depth is what determines volume.
A half face cord is the same 4 foot by 8 foot face at half the depth. Perfectly legitimate for someone with a small fireplace and no storage. Just know what it is.
The trap works like this. A seller advertises a number that sounds like a bargain for a cord. You assume full cord. The truck delivers a face cord, which is a quarter of the wood, at a price that was never a bargain at all. Nobody technically lied.
The fix is two questions on the phone before you agree to anything. How many cubic feet, and how long are the pieces. Those two answers pin down the volume regardless of what the seller calls it.
Truckload is not a unit. It describes a vehicle, and vehicles vary. A standard half ton pickup bed will not hold a full cord of stacked hardwood, and a cord commonly takes more than one pickup trip. If a price is quoted by the truckload, you have not been quoted anything you can compare to another seller.
Ask for a written receipt, and ask before the wood arrives rather than after. A useful receipt states the quantity by cord or fraction of a cord, the piece length, the species if species was promised, and the seller's name and address. Many states require exactly this for firewood sales. Beyond the legal angle, the receipt is the entire basis of any complaint you might file later. A cash handshake with a phone number leaves you with nothing to point at.
Why the Cheap Green Cord Is the Most Expensive Cord
Volume is only half of what you are buying. The other half is whether the wood will actually burn well this winter.
Green wood is freshly cut and still full of water. You pay for a full cord of volume either way, but a large share of what got trucked to your house is moisture. Burning it spends heat boiling that water off instead of warming the room. The fire runs cooler, it smolders, it smokes, and the unburned material condenses in the flue as creosote. Seasoned wood lights faster, burns hotter, and leaves far less behind in the chimney.
So the cheap green cord is cheap per cubic foot and expensive per unit of usable heat. Add a season of storage space you did not plan to give up and a chimney cleaning you did not budget for, and the bargain evaporates.
Spotting green wood at the curb
You can read most of this from the pile before the truck leaves.
- Split faces on seasoned wood go dull gray or tan. Bright, pale, damp looking faces mean recently split.
- Look at the end grain for cracks radiating out from the center. Those checks open as the wood dries.
- Bark on seasoned splits is often loose and some of it falls off in handling.
- Knock two pieces together. Seasoned wood rings. Green wood thuds.
- Pick a piece up. Seasoned wood is noticeably lighter than it looks.
A moisture meter settles it if you own one. Test a freshly split face, not the weathered outside of a split, because the outside of green wood dries first and reads far lower than the wet core.
The best question to ask a seller is not whether the wood is seasoned. Seasoned is a marketing word with no fixed meaning, and everyone says yes. Ask when it was cut and split. Split and stacked since last spring is an answer you can evaluate. Cut in the woods two years ago and split last week is not the same thing at all, because wood dries mostly through the split face, not through bark.
Seasoning if you already took delivery
If green wood is already in your driveway and the seller will not take it back, you are not stuck, you are just early. Split the big pieces smaller, since more exposed face means faster drying. Stack off the ground on pallets or scrap lumber in single rows with air moving between them rather than in one deep block. Cover only the top and leave the sides open, because a tarp wrapped around the whole stack traps moisture instead of shedding it. Then plan on burning it next season and buy something drier for this one.
Species matters here as well. Dense hardwoods like oak and hickory carry more heat per piece than lighter woods like pine or poplar, so a cord is not a fixed amount of heat any more than it is a fixed weight. The same density that makes oak worth buying also makes it slower to dry, which is why an oak cord split last month is not a cord you can burn in November.
What to Do if the Pile Comes Up Short
Handle it at delivery whenever you can. Most disputes end quietly and politely when the buyer is standing there with a tape measure while the driver is still in the driveway. There is no argument to have. The numbers are the numbers, and an honest seller with a miscounted load will usually offer to bring the balance.
If you only work it out afterward, call the seller first. Lead with your measurements and offer to send the photos. Ask for either the balance of the wood or a refund of the difference. Plenty of small firewood sellers are one person with a splitter and a trailer, and plenty of them will make it right without a fuss.
If they will not, remember what firewood is legally. It is a measured commodity, the same category as fuel at the pump and produce on a scale. Short measure complaints go to your state department of agriculture or whichever office there runs weights and measures. Your local consumer affairs office is the other route. Both exist for exactly this.
What makes a complaint stick:
- The written receipt showing quantity, piece length, and the seller's name and address.
- Dated photos of the pile with a tape measure visible in the frame.
- Your written measurements, including the low height reading and any averaged depth.
- The advertisement, text message, or listing where the seller quoted a cord price.
One practical habit. When a seller is new to you, pay by a method that leaves a paper trail. Cash is fine with the neighbor who has delivered to you for six years. It is a poor choice with a phone number off a roadside sign.
Key takeaway: a short cord is a measurement problem with an official remedy, not just a bad deal you have to swallow.
Buying Your Next Cord Without the Guesswork
Nearly all of this is preventable on one phone call. Four questions.
- How many cubic feet, or what fraction of a full cord.
- How long are the pieces.
- What species, or what the mix is.
- When was it cut and split.
Then settle the logistics. Agree in advance on whether the wood arrives stacked or dumped, and exactly where it goes. Stacking is often an extra charge and it is usually worth paying, partly for your back and partly because a stacked delivery settles the measurement question on the spot instead of leaving you to reconstruct it on a Saturday.
Clear a flat spot before the truck arrives and have the tape measure in your pocket, not in the garage. Sloped, uneven ground makes both stacking and measuring harder than they need to be.
Order early. Wood bought in late summer for the following winter is generally cheaper and drier than wood bought during the first hard cold snap, when everyone in the county is calling the same three sellers and anything dry is already spoken for. The same logic applies when you arrange firewood delivery alongside other yard materials. Booking ahead gets you a real conversation about quantity instead of whatever is left on the truck.
When you compare sellers, compare price per full cord of seasoned wood of a known species. Do not compare headline prices for an undefined truckload, because those numbers are not measuring the same thing and the cheapest one is usually cheapest for a reason.
This is the same discipline that applies to every bulk yard material. Mulch, soil, stone, and firewood are all sold by measured volume or weight, and the unit is the part of the deal worth nailing down before you agree to a price. Know the unit, then talk about money.
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 cubic feet is a cord of firewood supposed to be?
128 cubic feet of tightly stacked wood. The number does not change with piece length, species, or how the seller arranges it. What changes is the shape. A stack 4 feet high by 8 feet long needs 4 feet of depth, while a stack 2 feet high by 16 feet long needs the same 4 feet of depth to reach the same total. Multiply your three dimensions and compare to 128.
Is a pickup truck load of firewood a full cord?
Generally no. A standard half ton pickup bed does not have the capacity for a full cord of stacked hardwood, and a full cord commonly takes more than one trip in that size truck. Even a heaped load rides loose rather than stacked, so the wood occupies far more space than its stacked volume. If someone quotes you by the truckload, ask what the load measures in cubic feet, because truckload is a description of a vehicle rather than a unit of measure.
What is the difference between a face cord and a rick?
In most of the country they mean the same thing, which is a single row 4 feet high and 8 feet long at whatever the piece length happens to be. The difference is that rick is informal regional slang with no consistent definition, so the risk of a misunderstanding is higher. Neither term tells you the depth, which is the dimension that decides how much wood you actually get. A face cord of 12 inch pieces holds meaningfully less wood than a face cord of 20 inch pieces at the identical price.
Can I tell if wood is seasoned without a moisture meter?
You can get close. Weight is the most underrated signal, because dry wood feels surprisingly light for its size once you have handled both kinds. Sound is next. Two dry splits clacked together ring, while green ones give a dull thud. Then look for radiating cracks in the end grain and bark that has started to loosen. None of these is conclusive on its own, but three or four pointing the same direction usually tell the truth.
Does a cord of oak give more heat than a cord of pine?
Yes, and it is not a small difference. Dense hardwoods such as oak and hickory pack more wood substance into the same cubic foot than lighter species like pine and poplar, so the same measured volume carries more heat. That is why comparing prices between sellers only works when you know the species mix. A cheap cord of soft wood and an expensive cord of oak are not the same purchase, and the oak will also need longer to dry before it is ready to burn.