whadja do today?

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How do you like that teleboom wheel loader. Considering a gehl for snow and the occasional tree job.
It’s pretty sweet. Maybe one of those things better owner operated than just tossed out to your average tree crew, though. I put it on its side a couple times myself during the rather painful learning curve. Now it’s almost hard to believe I did that because I’m so used to it and careful, but yeah, learning curve coming from 24 years on a tractor was tough at first.
 
Today, let's see, processed online orders from yesterday, performed some online database updating, plowed snow for a couple hours, kept the fires going in the house and workshop, baked butter tarts, made a pot of chilly, baked biscuits. And in between that, spent time watching a couple different Harlequin tv movies with the wife. It is Feb 14th after all. :)
 
It’s pretty sweet. Maybe one of those things better owner operated than just tossed out to your average tree crew, though. I put it on its side a couple times myself during the rather painful learning curve. Now it’s almost hard to believe I did that because I’m so used to it and careful, but yeah, learning curve coming from 24 years on a tractor was tough at fist

It’s pretty sweet. Maybe one of those things better owner operated than just tossed out to your average tree crew, though. I put it on its side a couple times myself during the rather painful learning curve. Now it’s almost hard to believe I did that because I’m so used to it and careful, but yeah, learning curve coming from 24 years on a tractor was tough at first.
Thanks
 
Had a meeting with the crew leaders this morning laying out expectations and then we inventoried and marked the new equipment. Was boring but we all got paid. Also prepped for tomorrow as most of the crews members are one snow patrol tonight but we have several big jobs that need to be started tomorrow. Almost a mile of ROW to be cleared in five days and 30% is wetlands which means we do it with no machinery. Apparently frozen wetland is still wet so we will “embrace the suck” and get it done
 
Had a meeting with the crew leaders this morning laying out expectations and then we inventoried and marked the new equipment. Was boring but we all got paid. Also prepped for tomorrow as most of the crews members are one snow patrol tonight but we have several big jobs that need to be started tomorrow. Almost a mile of ROW to be cleared in five days and 30% is wetlands which means we do it with no machinery. Apparently frozen wetland is still wet so we will “embrace the suck” and get it done

Get the ladders out!
 
Not sure what you meant by that @gorman
Decent day in the cold snowy swamp. A couple of the big boys sank through the crust but that just gave me more high ground

Meant as a joke man. But in seriousness a ladder helps a ton if you have several trees in a row to ascend. 14’ ladder times 10 trees = 140 less feet you need to pull yourself up.
 
Sorry but no ladder. The swamp is a nature preserve. They prefer we drop them off the ROW and leave as much lay “natural”as possible. Twas another fun filled day. 2*F at start and a balmy 14*F at lunch time. I was down to 3 layers very early. Something about a half mile walk through ice covered snow and then having to hand carry everything out of the ROW kept us toasty warm. Hope it’s right. Two days in and no clearing stakes yet. We’re going off line markers every tenth of a mile or so. Also no spotted turtles have been found. We’re doing good.
 
Sorry but no ladder. The swamp is a nature preserve. They prefer we drop them off the ROW and leave as much lay “natural”as possible. Twas another fun filled day. 2*F at start and a balmy 14*F at lunch time. I was down to 3 layers very early. Something about a half mile walk through ice covered snow and then having to hand carry everything out of the ROW kept us toasty warm. Hope it’s right. Two days in and no clearing stakes yet. We’re going off line markers every tenth of a mile or so. Also no spotted turtles have been found. We’re doing good.

Is that new construction? We've never get any type of clearing stakes. We basically just have the stakes for poles and guy wires and then we just eyeball it from there. But carrying all your gear in and out? Yep....I've done that my fair share of times.

This reminds me of a project I was on years ago. I wasn't even a foreman yet. We were building a transmission line and part of it went through this river bottom with huge trees, many of them were cottonwoods. There had recently been a "100 year flood" down there so the ground was super muddy and saturated with water and the bugs were horrible. We had to cut this huge swath of trees down and move all of the brush and logs to the edge of the right-of-way by hand. So we would drop a 4 or 5 foot diameter cottonwood, it would shoot water several feet in the air from the stump for a couple of minutes until it just flowed over the stump to the ground. There were 3 of us so we would cut the crown up and start moving it while our foreman started cutting up the logs. Then we moved all of the smaller logs by hand while he cut up the trunk. But the mud was deep enough that there were a lot of sections of the trunks that were in 10 or 12 inches of mud. He was a seasoned pro but he's just killing chains and having to sharpen after every few cuts while we where trying to roll huge logs through the mud to the edge of the right-of-way. We did that for weeks. That probably wouldn't ever happen today but this was 30 years ago and things were different back then.

Edit to say...the logs we were rolling were cut to 1.5 to 2 feet length so were weren't trying to roll 8 ft logs by hand but it still sucked in that mud.
 
As far as what I did today.....did the normal tree stuff but we had some problems with our dishwasher and clothes washing machine here at the house. I came home at the end of the day and hit it with some good old tree guy "look at it until we figure it out" ingenuity and I'll be damned but I fixed both of them for about $16.
 
I was out on a few job sites today just supervising/advising, did some other estimates (basically my normal day unless there is a reason for me to be in the air.....which I miss sometimes. I think I will be up on a pretty tough deal tomorrow) But.....I got a quote today from a different insurance company on my work comp. It's substantially cheaper. Our rate would drop by about 5% of our payroll. When I inquired with these guys, I expected that maybe we might find a .5%-1% savings while seeing other policies with them possibly increase (assuming they want all of our policies). I didn't really expect to see the numbers work out to convince me to move from our long-time insurance company. But they are fine with just having our work comp and us keeping our other policies with our other company. Payroll audits are all the same deal....it's hard to ignore that 5% drop. That's a lot of money.
 
I was out on a few job sites today just supervising/advising, did some other estimates (basically my normal day unless there is a reason for me to be in the air.....which I miss sometimes. I think I will be up on a pretty tough deal tomorrow) But.....I got a quote today from a different insurance company on my work comp. It's substantially cheaper. Our rate would drop by about 5% of our payroll. When I inquired with these guys, I expected that maybe we might find a .5%-1% savings while seeing other policies with them possibly increase (assuming they want all of our policies). I didn't really expect to see the numbers work out to convince me to move from our long-time insurance company. But they are fine with just having our work comp and us keeping our other policies with our other company. Payroll audits are all the same deal....it's hard to ignore that 5% drop. That's a lot of money.

What state are you in? What percent are you paying? I'm dying to know where the "magical cow kingdom" is!

I'm paying about 22% in PA.
 
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