Angry

[old dude]

Makes me angry that the entire industry seems to be turning away from climbing skills for the comfort of heavy equipment bucket trucks,spider-lifts etc...
Whatever happened to the days when a man was known as a 'climber'. A SKILL that must be developed over many years of trial and error and down right hard, (honorable) work. Today it seems that if you don't have the bucket trucks, the chippers and chipper trucks, the stump grinders and sprayers----- your not really an arborist.
believe me, I made a good living for thirty plus years with just me and a sidekick (no, not the rope retrieval tool---although I used one for years and think they are GREAT)----All I am saying is that the industry is being, skill-speaking, 'dummed down, by this fixation fed by heavy equipt. manufactures paying big bucks to the trade rags.
My advice? Gather your truly useful hand tools like the carabiners, slings, sidekicks, spurs hand saws and micro-pulleys and get up there and prove to yourselves that you don't need to be riding a hundred thousand dollar equip. inventory to be a true climbing arboriculturalist.

 

[BlackOakTreeServ]

Im not saying all that equipment is bad or anything, I just prefer to climb, dont want to spend big money on stuff I cant afford, to many going under here.....I owe nothing,
chip truck and chipper serve's me well with small crew....But it's what works for me, others need big equipment and it suits them well, easy on the big jobs....

 

[mattfr12]

I get what your saying, but in our end of the world without heavy equipment it wouldn't be possible for us to serve our client base. We run two crews non stop with the most state of the art #### out there and we still can't do them fast enough. average wait time even in the winter is 3-4 months. En less it is an emergency then it becomes high priority. A boom or log truck is worth about 10 good men, and when you do the math on what you save on comp and labor it pays for itself. 10 guys with saws couldn't dream of loading a truck and moving wood as fast as that thing could even if they all had mini skid loaders.

The buckets for us are mainly so we can do three or four trees without repositioning. a lot of times if we where climbing we would have to come down and ascend the next tree. the amount of time saved again and on fatigue pays for it self.

i would assume the crane saves me 20-30k a year in labor alone. these new stump grinders are even doing better for me on saving people think wow a 60k stump grinder big money right? wrong we can haul it on the back of my 5ton with a flat bed and it weighs around 5-6k. there is no more standing around and watching a stump get ground out, they are lucky if they get to look at it for 10 min anymore the 2900 we ordered from bandit is a 90hp kabota i do believe and the ox is 140hp deere.

lets say i do 50 big stumps a year which it is more like in the 100's, and each one took an hour of grinding. if your employees are waiting for you to grind it out and watching you that costs. 3000$ a year for me? that almost makes the payments for half a year wow. now your turning a profit with it i hope also.

to clean trees up with a knuckle boom only cost me 30$ an hour how do i figure this. well the guy running it is paid 18.00 and the other matinence. try and compete with it out of shear man power it would cost like 300$ an hour or is impossible to move material that fast. and people ##### about us bidding city trees at like 150.00-200.00 a piece.

 

[jefflovstrom]

Whatever happened to the tough corn farmer's picking corn by hand? Anyway, you can't stop progress, but I would not get carried away with the thought climbing is being dumbed down. If anything, it is being advanced and competing with the big expensive equiptment and in a difficult economy. Relax, all is good.
Jeff

 

[TreeAce]

Good climbers are getting more n more scarce all the time. Its def a dying craft. I get some jobs because I am going to climb and not bring equipment on to the yard and I have not gotta jobs because the HO thinks (I am sure someone put the thought there) the job cant be done with out a crane and/or a bucket. The small back yard lifts are the kiss of death to the true art of climbing trees. I assume those lifts will become somewhat more affordable in the coming years. But in the mean time I still crack a grin when some HO looks at me and shakes there head and says...."that was amazing!"

 

[mattfr12]

Whatever happened to the tough corn farmer's picking corn by hand? Anyway, you can't stop progress, but I would not get carried away with the thought climbing is being dumbed down. If anything, it is being advanced and competing with the big expensive equiptment and in a difficult economy. Relax, all is good.
Jeff

well i mean even with all the equipment i don't see how anyone could own a tree service and not be a proficient climber. there are plenty of places the longest of cranes won't reach and buckets just can't travel. if your completely reliant on equipment your cutting yourself short.

climbing trees is definitely not the hardest thing I've had to conquer rope rigging and all of that is cool. but when you get into the crane end of the world death is easier to come by. getting anywhere in the tree is no problem but knowing what to do when you get there now thats where the men are separated from the boys.

 

[treeclimber101]

Safety and production trump all chest beating ,anyday and anyway , I am gonna do it Like that where ever possible , if I could buy a robot to fly the bucket , I would sorry to ruin this mans man thread

 

[jefflovstrom]

If we could get the youth interested, but so many have an entitlement attitude.
Run an ad and see the response's. Ouch!
Still, I would not worry. If anything, 'Old school is a Great back-up'.
Jeff

 

[jefflovstrom]

:msp_tongue:

, I would sorry to ruin this mans man thread

You can still edit your post. LOL!

Jeff :wink2:

 

[treeclimber101]

I have no shame at all Jeff period I don't even hesitate one bit to get er done with my 60ft strap on

 

[KenJax Tree]

My opinion is if you don't have a bucket truck you're just as limited as if you can't climb. In time all that big equipment pays for itself and makes you more productive.

 

[KenJax Tree]

It's hard to imagine being an arborist and not having a chipper.


It would be like being a truck driver and not having a drivers license.

Yeah and i couldn't imagine digging stumps out with a shovel everyday.

 

[pdqdl]

Sometimes that big equipment lets you do the impossible...like safely removing hideously dead & rotten trees with a bucket truck. If you climbed it...you would either die or hit everything beneath the tree.

Sometimes you MUST move quickly. I took out a large elm over 4 lanes of public street once. It was done on Sunday, we had a street closure permit, and we couldn't dawdle. That wasn't the time to be monkeying around on a rope, we had to put it down quickly and get the traffic moving. Maybe a really fast climber could have done as well, but then it would have been someone else's job then, wouldn't it?

 

[treeclimber101]

It's hard to imagine being an arborist and not having a chipper.


It would be like being a truck driver and not having a drivers license.

Real men still burn there brush

 

[mattfr12]

Real men still burn there brush

we do sometimes, when we do land clearing the cheapest option is for us to burn the stumps. man do like 400 stumps make one hell of a bon fire. and i mean like 400 20+inch stumps with all the root balls still attached. we usually put a few hundred gallons of diesel on it and let it burn for about a month. usually does the trick. 60 truck loads down to 1 of ashes.

 

[treeclimber101]

we do sometimes, when we do land clearing the cheapest option is for us to burn the stumps. man do like 400 stumps make one hell of a bon fire. and i mean like 400 20+inch stumps with all the root balls still attached. we usually put a few hundred gallons of diesel on it and let it burn for about a month. usually does the trick. 60 truck loads down to 1 of ashes.

A few hundred gallons ? That sounds like a Valdez spill

 

[mattfr12]

A few hundred gallons ? That sounds like a Valdez spill

300- or 400 yes sir. around 1500.00 worth but not all at once. try getting a pile of stumps the size of a football field burning. we have to get a permit to do it. that 1500.00 in fuel is way way way cheaper than hauling them out. hauling them out would be 10k or more in cost. the land owner usually gets us a permit and the go ahead to lite them up. usually burns for like 30 days.

 

[beastmaster]

I feel your pain, but not to take advantage of any tool that makes a job easier and safer doesn't make since. I often times feel cheated when we use a crane to do a removal. That is from a climbers point of view. I love a challenge, and taking down a big hazard tree over a structure, impervising rigging technics, pitting my skills against a tree no one else wants to do is very satisfy. But you can't argue that fact when they bring in the crane, and the job is done in three hours, not three days.
I work for various companys when they need some thing their people can't do. It's just a days work for me to climb up 90 ft and tip back a monster euc. using hand loppers, or drop and catch big pieces of wood, or some thing else that any good climber 25 years ago could do, but not so many today. This is good for an old dude like my self, but not so for the future of the industry. Good job security for those that are up to the challenge and are willing to push the boundaries.
But when I watch a good bucket operator do what would take me hours , do it in 20 min. or when a crane or loader moves tons of wood that otherwise would of had to be carried out, were all thankful.
I use to use trailers when I was in business. climbing up in that trailer cutting down the load, time after time, was a lot of work. That same load would only be a little pile if ran throu a chipper, taking a few min.
There will always be a need for expert climber to do the impossible or seemly insane, when the machines can't, and those that can, though maybe not as many as their use to be, will have job security, and be well paid.

 

[TreeAce]

As much as I enjoy old school climbing/rigging I also enjoy and I mean REALLY enjoy doing big removals with a crane. It takes me to my happy place. Maybe I just dont do enough of them for the fun to wear off...IDK. I havnt done many this year cuz i quit dikn around with the bid and by the time I pay the reasonable rate I get charged I am still to high. There are to many guys running around my area with half ass cranes fighting over those jobs. So be it. I am getting my piece of the pie, I figure the slice is big enough ....for now.

 

[mattfr12]

As much as I enjoy old school climbing/rigging I also enjoy and I mean REALLY enjoy doing big removals with a crane. It takes me to my happy place. Maybe I just dont do enough of them for the fun to wear off...IDK. I havnt done many this year cuz i quit dikn around with the bid and by the time I pay the reasonable rate I get charged I am still to high. There are to many guys running around my area with half ass cranes fighting over those jobs. So be it. I am getting my piece of the pie, I figure the slice is big enough ....for now.

save your pennies and buy a real crane one day then you'll blow those guys out of the water. around here we just smack the average stick crane guys around on price. on removals we have at least an 80-90% awarded rate usually 30% less than competitors and the word got out over the years. we haven't pruned but 2 trees this year and taken out over 1k.