The tree that I took out yesterday had a pretty good looking trunk and I was planning on getting it milled. However, after cutting it I could see that it had a pretty good sized check right in the middle, so I made an executive decision to cut it up for firewood because it would be a lot easier to load. My tractor will lift about 2000 lbs and so I would have to get something else in to load a good sized trunk. I think that these checks are quite common and so my question is did I make the right decision? Do you just have some waste in the center of these logs or do these cracks detract substantially from the value of the log?