Cord of wood calculator

The cord is defined, and the face cord is not

Firewood is one of the few things still sold by volume, and the volume has a legal definition. NIST Handbook 130 — the model weights-and-measures law that most states adopt, revised every year by the National Conference on Weights and Measures — defines the cord in its regulation on fireplace and stove wood: "The amount of wood that is contained in a space of 128 ft3 when the wood is ranked and well stowed." It then defines the stacking, so the definition cannot be gamed: "ranked and well stowed" means "pieces of wood are placed in a line or row, with individual pieces touching and parallel to each other, and stacked in a compact manner."

The same regulation says fuel wood "shall be advertised, offered for sale, and sold only by measure, using the term 'cord' and fractional parts of a cord or the cubic meter" — and it names the terms that are not allowed: "face cord," "rack," "pile," "truckload," "or terms of similar import shall not be used." Every one of those words is common in firewood ads, which is the whole reason this calculator works in cords and nothing else. The Washington State Department of Agriculture has adopted the model text word for word; Maine wrote its own statute and defines the "standard cord" identically, at 128 cubic feet "when the wood is ranked and well stowed."

It is model law, so the page says "the regulation most states adopt" rather than "the law where you live". The arithmetic is the same everywhere: multiply length, height and depth in feet, then divide by 128. The cubic yard calculator does the general form of that conversion for any material; this page does the firewood-specific version, with the divisor cited and the loose-pile case handled separately.

Data used, with sources

Tons here means US short tons (2,000 lb).

Stacked or thrown: two different volumes

A cord is a stacked measurement. Wood tipped out of a truck bed into a heap occupies more space than the same wood stacked, because the pieces lie every which way with air between them — and a buyer who measures the heap and divides by 128 will think they got more than they did. The model regulation does not publish a loose volume; it simply requires the sale to be by the stacked cord.

Maine does publish one, and it is the only citable stacked-to-loose relation this page found. Its weights and measures statute says that fuel wood "sold loose and not ranked and well stowed" may be sold "by the cubic foot or loose cord", and defines the loose cord by piece length: for wood averaging 12 or 16 inches, "the amount of wood, bark and air contained in a space of 180 cubic feet"; for 24-inch wood, 195 cubic feet. Those are the two "loose pile" options in the calculator. They are labelled as Maine's rule because that is what they are — one state's statute is not a national factor, and this site does not promote it into one.

A pickup bed is just a stack you can measure

"How much wood fits in a pickup" has a published answer and a better one. The published answer, from the University of Illinois Extension: "A full-sized pickup with an 8-foot bed will hold approximately one-third to one-half cord of wood, depending on how it is loaded." The Washington State Department of Agriculture adds the geometry behind it — "Most long bed pickup trucks have beds that are close to the 4 ft by 8 ft dimension" — so a level load of 16-inch pieces, one row deep, is about a third of a cord, and a heaped one is more.

The better answer is to measure the load: its length and width along the bed, its height above the floor, entered above as a stack. If the wood was thrown in rather than stacked, choose the loose-pile option that matches the piece length. Then the number on the delivery ticket can be checked against the number in the bed before the truck leaves.

Weight and heat by species

A cord is a volume, so its weight depends on the tree. The species picker uses Table 1 of Utah State University Forestry Extension's "Wood Heating", which lists 46 species with weight per cord green and air-dry and heat per cord in million BTU. Air-dry weights run from 1,984 pounds (Basswood (Linden)) to 4,728 (Osage-orange); the source states no moisture percentage for "dry", and this page does not invent one. On green wood it says: "Green firewood may contain 50% or more water by weight. Green wood produces less heat because heat must be used to boil off water before combustion can occur."

The table is transcribed as published, gaps included. Where the source leaves a cell blank the calculator says "not published", and where it prints a word instead of a number — Dogwood's heat is "High", Poplar's "Low" — the word is kept. Tons on this page are US short tons, the same basis as every other weight on the site.

Common mistakes

• Measuring the heap, not the stack. A cord is a stacked volume. Loose wood takes 180–195 cubic feet per cord by Maine's published figures, so a heap that "measures a cord" is well short of one.
• Taking "face cord" as a fraction you already know. It is a fraction only once you know the piece length — a third of a cord at 16 inches, a quarter at 12. The regulation bans the term for exactly this reason; the face cord calculator converts one from the piece length.
• Mixing feet and inches in the depth. The stack's depth is entered in inches here because it is usually one or more piece lengths; the calculator divides by 12 before multiplying.
• Assuming a weight. "A cord weighs two tons" is true of some species at some moisture and wrong by a factor of two at the extremes of the table above. Pick the species, or treat the weight as unknown.
• Trusting a name over a measurement. The same habit that makes a "1×6" board 5½ inches wide (see the fence picket calculator) makes a "truckload" of wood whatever the seller says it is. Measure it.

Frequently asked

Sources

• NIST Handbook 130 (2026 edition), Uniform Regulation for the Method of Sale of Commodities, §2.4 Fireplace and Stove Wood — National Institute of Standards and Technology, accessed Sep 20, 2026.
• Firewood — Weights and Measures — Washington State Department of Agriculture, accessed Sep 20, 2026.
• Maine Revised Statutes, Title 10, §2302: Definitions (standard cord, face cord, loose cord) — Maine State Legislature, accessed Sep 20, 2026.
• How to measure and handle firewood (Richard Hentschel, 2020) — University of Illinois Extension, accessed Sep 20, 2026.
• Wood Heating, Table 1: Firewood facts by species (Kuhns and Schmidt) — Utah State University Forestry Extension, accessed Sep 20, 2026.