Great customer, Bad customer and RR spike

[Spotted Owl]

Tree removal for home owners, he is an armchair quarterback engenier(sp) guy, she is great friendly and good looking and willing to knowingly keep her husband quiet and back, the kind of customer you dream of.

What happens when you have 36" of an 084 burried in a 46"dbh fir. Nothin but a good time with chips fly'in. Face goes in good. So you ask what's next? Start in the back cut. Everything is smooth so you go ahead on'er. Then abt 3/4 of the way thru the back cut SNAP at WOT and the chain snaps in 2 places when you hang up on a RR spike just out of sight, 2"s of bark covering it and you didn't notice.

You tip your hat just enough, just fast enough to deflect the chain from forehead/eye level. Can't explain how you are that fast other than sometimes your gut just tells ya to duck and cover. The hat brim get a heck of a gouge and rip and you just catch that chunck of chain flying, just off to the side and between the corner of your mouth and nose.

What are the results. A nice HOLE in your face that you can split the blood thru from the inside. Also a pretty good split in the gum line on the inside.
The home owner freaks out and the owners wife passes out right there when you get off the ground and she see's the blood gushing from your face and mouth.

Then what do you hear? The wife says to the husband, "I thought that you pulled all those spikes out of the tree so they wouldn't kill it. Didn't you tell him that there may have been something in the tree that could have been a problem?" Then you hear the owner quietly tell her to "shut up so he doesn't hear you."

What does the owner here from you? After you have chewed your own tounge off from hearing what you heard so you don't kill him he hears this. You knew there was spikes in this tree and didn't say anything? Mister that just cost you a $1000 extra and the price just went up to $5500 as per the contract agreement for finding material in the tree, and for the job now becoming a hazard removal. Cash by the time the job is done. When he started to argue I just stared at him and then spit blood through my lip onto his brand new shinney drive way. He said nothing. Then my son pulled me to the truck to look at my lip and gaze pack it best we could. She left just as we were getteing back to work.

Job done total cost $6500 cash for one tree. Easy drop, no clean up, nothing to worry about to start with. Turned into a nightmare that I don't wish to run into again. I had my boy(13) with me today and I am very glad that he was there. He kept me from loosing it, and kept my focus were it needed to be. To finish it had to be face bored to abt where the spike and turned into a semi block/snipe face, and bored from either side to miss the spike. 9 wedges burried in that thing cause of the way it wound up needing to be cut. Lots O fiber pull

She got back just in time to see and film the tree falling. We cleaned up our gear and got everything loaded. She said she would like to pay the bill, so I wrote it up as stated above. She then handed me $7500. When I counted it and looked at her she said to be quiet cause it came from his personal slush fund she wasn't supposed to know about and smiled. She then handed my son $1000 and said the same thing again with a big smile. She appologized again and said that she should have said something but he told he had already told us so she didn't.

Damn what a day. My boy thinks he should go with me everytime now. When we got in the truck he said he "thought that I was gonna do sumthin stupid to that guy."

Bottom line take care in what you are doing cause you never know what may happen and when.

BE DAMN CAREFULL OUT THERE


Owl

 

[Davey Dog]

He sounds like a Jack @$$... At least she tried to make good on the deal. I have found all sorts of things buried in trees... Never a rr spike though... Glad you didnt get hurt worse then you did.

 

[BC_Logger]

sounds like that was a fun day:censored: . did the chain hit your lip ?

 

[Spotted Owl]

sounds like that was a fun day:censored: . did the chain hit your lip ?

The chunk of chain that flew off hit just above the corner of the mouth, about where the crease is from your nose to the corner of your mouth. Went thru and cut into the gum line right at the teeth. It was 7 drivers long and now is taped to the saw with clear packing tape as a riminder thanks to my son. He did that while I was at the hospital with my wife getting cleaned up and looked at. They said it had been to long to stitch and that it would heal on it's own in a few weeks faster with out Copenhaugen. Could have been much worse. As much as I hate them I sure do love those gut feeling and I really like it when I head them. If I had not listened to this one it would have hit damn close to my left eyeball.

I don't understnad one thing though. How did the chain break twice and let a flyer go? I guess you chaulk it up to stranger things happen.

I have done work for them in the past dealing with just her. Knowng that her husband would be there and wanted to watch is why I had my son with me. When I think things may get off an even keel I bring him to help keep me focus on the task at hand. I will work for them again BUT ONLY if I deal with her and her alone. Like I said she is the type of customer that we all dream about. He is just as my boy said a "total dumb azz"

If it had been just the husband and me I don't know what would have happened and I am very glad that wasn't the situation.

Owl

 

[John464]

Wow. Sounds like you got lucky and unlucky too. Good to hear you are OK.

How the heck do you get $7500 to notch and drop one tree with no cleanup and in one day? What the heck. You just left the tree and must of been a big one for them to clean up? And I thought I was high priced. Wow! I need guys like you in my area driving up the prices!

For us to do half of that in a day usually involves big hairy removals and crane all the wood gets hauled and brush chipped and 6 trucks and 7 men to transport the debris.

 

[Spotted Owl]

Wow. Sounds like you got lucky and unlucky too. Good to hear you are OK.

How the heck do you get $7500 to notch and drop one tree with no cleanup and in one day? What the heck. You just left the tree and must of been a big one for them to clean up? And I thought I was high priced. Wow! I need guys like you in my area driving up the prices!

For us to do half of that in a day usually involves big hairy removals and crane all the wood gets hauled and brush chipped and 6 trucks and 7 men to transport the debris.

The original price was $500 for a straight drop 30 min to 1 hour tops. Perfect setup. Wide open nothing to worry about. They wanted to do clean up. He wants to process the wood and she was gonna do the, rent-a-kid thing the local school does for class fundraiser to haul branches. The $1000 I just snapped out when I was pizzed and hurt, the $5500 came from the hazard clause in my agreements signed by all customer before work starts. Price for hazard to be determined by me at the time, most times the customer never is the wiser about anything and I don't use it unless thing get real bad and I need to call in more help. I thought that I would get nothing more than the 500 original quote. I hoped I would get the total 6500 after spitting blood on the driveway. I think the extra 1000 for my son and my self came from her to pizz him off. When she called it his slush fund that she isn't supposed to know about and a big smile, thats all I can think of. She was sorry for the situation and did what she could to make it right. I will hold her in high regard for that, not much else she could have done in this instance and more than I would have ever expected.

So all total this 500 dollar tree has cost him $8500. $1000 blood toll from the spike he knew about and said nothing about. $5500 max increase in the hazard clause, because of how and why it happened and how it had to be delt with after the fact. $1000 extra from the customers wife, I can only speculate to help make thing right and pizz the hubby off. $1000 for my son same, I think to help make things right and to upset hubby.

Like I said I expected to only get the original $500


Owl

 

[Mitchell]

rr spike

Glad your OK owl. Why would anybody drive a rail road spike into a tree? Must have been difficult to drive that blunt sucker sideways. Im guessing what I call a rail road spike is different. 7g for catching a chain sounds like a lot but if you lost your eye or needed some dental it would not have gone far.

I have only had a chain snap once in one place. Can't imagine why it would let loose in two places. Were you cutting above the flare and thus at head level? What brand of chain were you using? I'm guessing your wound will take a little longer to heal as you'll be sneaking a pinch between the cheek and gum!

 

[Kogafortwo]

You earned every cent.

 

[Spotted Owl]

Glad your OK owl. Why would anybody drive a rail road spike into a tree? Must have been difficult to drive that blunt sucker sideways. Im guessing what I call a rail road spike is different. 7g for catching a chain sounds like a lot but if you lost your eye or needed some dental it would not have gone far.

I have only had a chain snap once in one place. Can't imagine why it would let loose in two places. Were you cutting above the flare and thus at head level? What brand of chain were you using? I'm guessing your wound will take a little longer to heal as you'll be sneaking a pinch between the cheek and gum!

It's the spike they use to hold the tie plates to the track.

The spike was just steeper than horizontal. He had driven them quite awhile back as steps so he could climb up in the tree and trim a few lower branches. If I had started the cut 6" up or down from where I did it would have been missed totally. Looking back on it, being covered over by a couple inches of bark it had been there a long time and I would have never seen it.

Snapping in 2 places is new for everyone I have talked to also. It is a Stihl chain 3/8 x 63ga. File sharpen one time since out of the box by me. I looked the chain over good and one end has a cutter busted off and the strap is broken right down the middle. The other end is missing a rivet and a bottom quarter of the rivet hole is broken out. Put the missing chunk in between and things match up perfect.

I guess this break you would chaulk up to crap happens. Not the circumstances of how or why it broke, just the way that it had come apart.

There was a strange burl affair on this one down low not really flair just wierd. So I was stuck having to cut about chin high. I suppose spring boarding would have been better, but then that chain would have been fling at nut level. I'll take a cut face anyday over the other possibiltiy. Also I wanted to getin and get out. My boy was with me and I didn't want to spend alot of extra time there.

Ya to the pinch, no Copenhaugen for the rest of that day after the hospital cleaned it up. Boy howdy the next morning I tossed one inthere with out thinking, holy schnikes, do this and you will from then on understand the saying "feel the burn".



Owl

 

[booboo]

Dude,

That is seriously close to disaster, glad you're OK.

As for RR spikes, I was on a job where we found 1 grinding the stump of a street tree. I had cut just over the top of it taking the butt off, never saw it. The grinder operator ticked it, saw it and shut the grinder down not knowing what it was. We were shocked and I was really happy the guy on the grinder was paying attention, that could have really sucked.

 

[Nate Surveyor]

Thanks for sharing your story!

Good for all of us to think about this kind of thing.

Nate

 

[Wolverine69]

What if you'd of been wearing something like this???

What do you think the outcome would have been if you'd of been wearing something like this?

 

[arbor pro]

What do you think the outcome would have been if you'd of been wearing something like this?

Good point, Woverine. Safety glasses and earplugs won't do a whole lot to protect a face against a broken or kicked-back chain. I'd guess that a number of us are guilty of not wearing full face and head protection when cutting on the ground - especially on hot days. The same goes for gloves, chaps, steel toe boots, etc, etc.

When I was full-time in this biz, I used to get after my dozen or so employees all the time when they wouldn't wear their safety gear because it was too hot out but, now I find myself as a solo owner/operator just as guilty of sacrificing safety for comfort on those sweltering hot days.

I'll remember this incident and try to wear my at least my helmet with face shield more often when cutting on the ground!