You would need to pay the premium for a select product then. Plus order 20%-30% extra in order to be able to cull short boards.

live_wire_oak, what are the normal lengths in a premium product?

What type material? Oak is generally 1' to 8' pcs (percentage slips my mind). Other hardwoods are different.

Mine (#2 red oak) were up to 10 feet, I paid a bit extra for the longer maximum ... most were in the 4-8 foot range, with a few under two feet. See the link.

You will have places where short boards are good: the ends of rows, the start of rows. It's silly to cut an 8" board because you need an 18-inch piece.

You can make several short boards look like one longer one if you pick boards with similar coloring for the row.

Here is a link that might be useful: Floor project

We installed Brazilian Cherry, 5" wide planks 7', 4', 3', and a few 1' boards in a pack. Lot of 4' boards but not too many.

Had a friend that got a good deal of flooring but it contained a lot of the 1 footers. We worked out a plan of one long board, 2 one footer, then a two footer, followed by 2 one footers. That was repeated and looked good. I'm sure a nice looking pattern can be made to fit most flooring deals you can come up with. Just use a long board to offset the possibly of gaps together.