The end of a 7 day Cotton Wood

[treevet]

How long you been doing crane takedowns, man? You get to call your own shots?

 

[CraneOp1]

lawson's tree s & treevet

lawson's tree s-
Stump took 2 whole days 1st day was spent just using our large Rayco and 2nd day was spent with both Rayco's lg. & sm. took out 4 small dump truck loads.

treevet-
Been doing this for about 4 years now, have done over 2,000 trees +/-, in this time frame as an operator, this doesn't even include the ones ive been the climber on. On this tree we used 6 different climbers but not all on the same day. And yes, I pretty much get to call the shots on most of the crane jobs assigned to me and my crew. Oh yea the reason for such a high tree count we have done a lot city trees the last 3 years as well as a lot of pvt. work too.

 

[lawson's tree s]

thats alot of mulch .wish i could have seen the tree in person . good luck with your next big tree job.

 

[diltree]

Crane op1.....do your cranes have a computer system....what did those butt pieces weigh in at?

 

[046]

thanks for sharing... this is where owning your own equipment changes the economics...

 

[CraneOp1]

diltree

Wish I could tell ya, my trucks a 95, pre-load computer. Not sure if there are any after market units. But I can tell you the old back end was riding low. Weight wise probably the two heaviest were on my truck. Two of the biggest pieces of wood ever on that truck too.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Wish I could tell ya,

So if you dont have the scale, load-line or whatever it's called, how do you estimate loads as you come down the trunk?

I can see guestimating picks you do all the time...

 

[CraneOp1]

J.p.s. & Gicon

Sorry for taking so long for replies have not been on since my last post.

John we pretty much know what the machine can handle without going into overload. If and when this happens the system built into the crane will lock you out of certain functions and only let you do certain functions i.e. boom up, cable down, scope in. We try not to get to greedy and stay within load limits. I would say over all we do a pretty good job of not overloading our machines.

GICON trying not to sound rude here, however the owner could by me a new or newer crane and I would rather keep the one I use all the time. We can get this unit in where we can't even get the the pride of the fleet into, so bigger is not always better. We have 2 full time mechanics who do one heck of a job maintaining our fleet. What we have for some of our fleet may be older but I'm pretty sure it's all paid for and maintained. Any repairs are way cheaper than payments on new. Also on the 7 days I really do not think any other out fit could have done it any faster given the space we had to work with and anyone with a larger crane would never had made it into the yard, let alone get their out riggers out. Probably one of the tightest spots I have ever had to work with in a long time. Oh, I almost forgot 1 crane would never work for us, we have 3 because we usually have enough work for 3.

 

[diltree]

Crane Op....there is a crane for every situation....but with a big crane with counter weight and more boom; you could pick the tree apart from the road and never have to enter the yard with any equipment.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Crane Op....there is a crane for every situation....but with a big crane with counter weight and more boom; you could pick the tree apart from the road and never have to enter the yard with any equipment.

Sometimes this is true, but quite often there are other obsitcles that make a small crane more practical. I've done work where a crane on the street, or even in the front yard would need to jib out at full extention, making the max load around 2000# on a 70 ton crane.

Another problem is other trees in the front yard.

If you can get a 15 ton rig right under the tree you can do the work in a respectable manner.

There will always be jobs were big equipment is not practical, some will require 10 non-white hard working men on minimum wage to hand carry firewood sized peices out to the road.

John we pretty much know what the machine can handle without going into overload. If and when this happens the system built into the crane will lock you out of certain functions and only let you do certain functions i.e. boom up, cable down, scope in. We try not to get to greedy and stay within load limits. I would say over all we do a pretty good job of not overloading our machines.

So basicly it is guess by experiance?

 

[CraneOp1]

JPS & diltree

John, your right on the money.

Tim, your right on to, however even if we could have sat in the street,. by the time we rented and probably had to use their operator the home owner would be better off selling the place and let the new owner figure out what to do with the tree.