Farmer's Firewood Side Hustle Hits $1M Across 4 States

Forty years ago, Peter Chauncy stood in the ashes of his drought-stricken cattle farm with a growing family to feed and watched his life savings disappear. His solution? An axe, fallen tree branches, and sheer determination.

Today, if you've bought firewood at a gas station anywhere in eastern Australia, you've probably seen Chauncy's distinctive yellow bags. His family business now serves 3,000 locations across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia.

The 70-year-old farmer never planned to become a firewood king. He was studying law in Sydney when his father's cancer diagnosis called him back to the family's 670-hectare sheep and cattle farm at Canyonleigh in the NSW Southern Highlands.

Then disaster struck twice. A bushfire tore through the property, and a brutal four-year drought in the 1980s pushed Chauncy to the brink of bankruptcy.

"I was going broke but I wasn't going to give in," Chauncy said. With a wife and newborn baby depending on him, he loaded wood into his truck and started doorknocking wealthy Sydney suburbs every weekend.

Within three weeks, he had enough regular customers that the doors knocked themselves. The small side hustle snowballed into his main income, then exploded into an operation loading 300 tonnes of wood daily onto 25 trucks.

The business now sources timber through sustainable forestry practices, employing everyone from 25-year veterans to European backpackers. Purpose-built machinery chops logs into 10 and 15-kilogram bags that have become servo staples across half the country.

The Ripple Effect

Chauncy's success story goes beyond one family's financial turnaround. His business proves that rural entrepreneurs can build massive distribution networks from regional Australia, creating dozens of full-time jobs in areas often overlooked by industry.

The pandemic actually boosted sales as families stayed home and bought fire pits. Even fuel price increases and cost-of-living pressures haven't slowed demand, with April 2026 marking the business's best month ever.

"Family is everything for me, and that's what I work for and what I live for," Chauncy said, reflecting on trading his law career for life on the land. Four decades later, his yellow bags warm homes across four states while proving that the toughest times can spark the biggest breakthroughs.