I'm not suggesting anything other than the fact that spikes aren't good for the tree but they WILL NOT kill it, I think I along with many other people who learned that trade via the utility company got very good training, 20 years ago (when I was trained) spikes where the norm and I was trained to use them, later on I had the choice to learn to foot lock and did learn how to but I'm 285# now so there ain't a whole lot of foot locking going on here so if I need a tree trimmed then I call a guy who works for, guess who, yep, the utility company and he does the spike-less trims for me but I think if you read the question that goes with the answer that you quoted then you'd understand what I was talking about in that quote, a majority of the people here think that any person that works for or comes from the utility side of this industry is just a hack, well, that ain't so, what if I made cracks about certified arborist being total class room nerds and that they didn't know crap about what goes on in the field, you'd get tired of hearing it sooner or later just like I get tired of hearing it.