I cut down a huge old dead locust today. None of my competition seemed to be willing to do this tree, except for thousands of dollars. The only requirement was to get it to the ground and cut it up to 2' pieces. Just one problem...Dead! Bark falling off all over, with obvious decay. There was no easy bucket truck access, either.
There is apparently no work available in this town. This is the first tree I have even had a phone call on for several weeks. NOTHING is happening to help me pay the bills. There is absolutely no snow removal, and the economy has forced all the tree work into obscurity. I think this lady must have called everybody in town.
My customer reported that all the other tree services except one seemed to agree that it was unsafe to climb, and with no bucket truck access, that put everybody out of the market on this tree. She had been several months trying to get one guy to honor his bid of $600, but he never seemed to be able to make it out and finish the job. I suspect that he prudently decided that it was out of his league.
I, using techniques and equipment learned here at AS (at least in part), managed to do the whole thing from the ground. There was no real risk nor high adventure. It did, however, take someone with a bit more knowledge and equipment than the average hack takes with them every morning. For this extra edge over my competition, I would like to thank all my peers at ArboristSite for keeping me well tuned with respect to newer techniques. For those of you who have never thought of doing it this way, give it a try on the next dead tree you shouldn't climb.
I used my Big Shot and throw line to set a pulley high in each branch. Then I hooked my capstan rope winch to it, and pulled until it broke off! By controlling the angle of the pull, I missed all the important targets on the ground. We took out 3 out five of the major leads on the tree using this technique. Then we dropped the trunk and the rest of the tree into the woods, miraculously missing all the small trees in the drop zone. Chop up the pieces, then thank the customer for the check.
$740.00, three guys, 5 hours. No expenses but overhead, a little fuel, and some wages. I would have been done in three hours, but there were a number of complications that were caused by bad luck and lack of training by my help. I did the whole job without any of my experienced help, so I spent a lot of time training the new guys. You'd think they could come to work on the only day we have had in the last three weeks, wouldn't you?
[Part of the bad luck was the honey bees that decided to come out and visit us since it was such a nice day and I was good enough to cut their hive in half. The damn tree was infested with black wasps, too. Until I cut the hive in half, the wasps were worse than the bees.]
There is apparently no work available in this town. This is the first tree I have even had a phone call on for several weeks. NOTHING is happening to help me pay the bills. There is absolutely no snow removal, and the economy has forced all the tree work into obscurity. I think this lady must have called everybody in town.
My customer reported that all the other tree services except one seemed to agree that it was unsafe to climb, and with no bucket truck access, that put everybody out of the market on this tree. She had been several months trying to get one guy to honor his bid of $600, but he never seemed to be able to make it out and finish the job. I suspect that he prudently decided that it was out of his league.
I, using techniques and equipment learned here at AS (at least in part), managed to do the whole thing from the ground. There was no real risk nor high adventure. It did, however, take someone with a bit more knowledge and equipment than the average hack takes with them every morning. For this extra edge over my competition, I would like to thank all my peers at ArboristSite for keeping me well tuned with respect to newer techniques. For those of you who have never thought of doing it this way, give it a try on the next dead tree you shouldn't climb.
I used my Big Shot and throw line to set a pulley high in each branch. Then I hooked my capstan rope winch to it, and pulled until it broke off! By controlling the angle of the pull, I missed all the important targets on the ground. We took out 3 out five of the major leads on the tree using this technique. Then we dropped the trunk and the rest of the tree into the woods, miraculously missing all the small trees in the drop zone. Chop up the pieces, then thank the customer for the check.
$740.00, three guys, 5 hours. No expenses but overhead, a little fuel, and some wages. I would have been done in three hours, but there were a number of complications that were caused by bad luck and lack of training by my help. I did the whole job without any of my experienced help, so I spent a lot of time training the new guys. You'd think they could come to work on the only day we have had in the last three weeks, wouldn't you?
[Part of the bad luck was the honey bees that decided to come out and visit us since it was such a nice day and I was good enough to cut their hive in half. The damn tree was infested with black wasps, too. Until I cut the hive in half, the wasps were worse than the bees.]
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