Delivery check
I Ordered the Board Feet — Why Did I Get Fewer Boards?
A board foot is a unit of volume, not a count of pieces. So 100 board feet can show up as 9 wide planks or 20 narrow ones — both are 100 BF. Getting fewer sticks than you pictured usually means you got bigger boards, not less wood. If you know how to calculate board feet, you can prove it in five minutes.
Why does the piece count change?
Each board's footage depends on thickness × width × length. A 4/4 board that's 10″ wide and 12 ft long is 10 BF on its own; an 8″ × 8 ft board is only about 5.3 BF. Order 100 BF in wide, long stock and you'll get roughly half as many pieces as the same footage in narrow shorts. The footage is the contract — the count isn't.
Is this normal for random-width hardwood?
Hardwood is usually sold in random widths and lengths (RW&L). The mill grades and tallies whatever the log yielded, so you can't order "twenty 6-inch boards" — you order footage and take the mix. I once shipped a 100 BF white oak order as just 11 wide planks; the buyer counted pieces, assumed a shortage, then measured and found every foot was there. Background in what is a board foot.
How do you verify your footage?
Lay the boards out and measure each: thickness and width in inches, length in feet. Run each through our cut list calculator — one row per board — and read the total. If it lands within a board foot or two of your invoice, allowing for surface-measure rounding, you got what you paid for.
When is something actually wrong?
If your measured total comes up clearly short — say 100 BF billed, 84 BF measured — that's worth a call. Bring your board-by-board tally; a specific list of pieces and footage gets a far better response than "it looks like less." See the counter routine in how to buy lumber by the board foot.