Storm work

[ozarktreeman]

http://www.villageronline.com/story/1570956.html



dont know if this link is hyperd or not but you can paste it and read.just happened where i live this guy has done this for years and finally caught up with him.
so I understand about doorknockers don't condone it but there is a time for it.

 

[ozarktreeman]

well maybe if you put them numbers together and added a few dollars i'd come on down and all sortsa fire up that sleepy little town bro. lol. maybe find me a purdy girl with a sweet southern drawl too.



stay safe.

I,ll hook a brother up,take you the feather,check out the local girls and afterwords maybe go do a little snipe huntin? LOL

 

[treeclimber101]

I haven't knocked a door in decades and never have chased a storm even into the next town if not called but I can certainly understand it.

Today I am working a big takedown and a pickup pulls past us with 3 guys in the cab and tree service logo on the side. They come down 50 miles from the north and are the same company with 3 different company names. Don't know why. They knock doors all over town since the hurricane. Only one big problem in my (I live here) town is that it is illegal.

After I come down I go to my house a few blocks away and they are knocking doors down my street and have a new neighbor out in his yard and all 3 are pointing up at his trees and looking very serious. As I park I am about to narc on them and my wife comes out and says she called them.

There has been many scams run on residents and inferior work done and lately many burglaries and the law was inevitable. If you want to work on stopping door knocking good way to do it is get on your local UFB and lobby for it (ordinance) and go to city council meetings. It works.

Thanks for the advice..

 

[stihlhere]

yea here in the south things are a lot diff. $15.00 is about top pay at any factory job. 22.50 for plc skills. and most tree surgeons pay help 7.00 to 15.00per hr. but thinks to all the snow birds and people from out of state our land is out of site, compared to our pay.

 

[kyguy076]

thanks for the info. I am from ky not many hurricanes here.. lol We did have a bad ice storm last yr. We were busy for months with clean up. We still have 5 or 6 jobs a week with the ice storm clean up. Its just me and my brother in our little company. We only have one truck but it's dependable. Just lookin for more work. I appreciate all the replys.. Densmore Tree Service.

 

[BlackenedTimber]

I have not read all of the posts, but I wanted to get my two cents in before I head off for a nap. It's almost 2 am Central, and Daddy's gotta dismantle a twice-struck by lightning dead, hollow, and infested 60+ ft 48" DBH red oak tomorow morning... oh, and the drop area is about 20'x20' and of course it's over a house, a fence, and drop wires...

The way I got into the Storm Work Biz was through the DCN.

The first step would be to get a DUNS number, which is to register with Dun and Bradstreet, which is a do-nothing semi-govt entity that basically allows you to do work for the govt.

Once you have a DUNS number, google the "Disaster Contractor's Network" and get involved. There will be a place on their site for people to post "needs" and people, such as ourselves, to post "services."

I got into the DCN a few months before Katrina. I got a phone call on a friday from the city of Boca Raton, FL, wanting to know if I could be in town monday morning, geared up, staffed up, and ready to go. My FIL owns a B-I-G trucking and excavation company in NY, and we left out saturday morning with 38 peterbilt tractors with dump trailers, 2 excavators with thumbs, 2 wheel loaders with grapples, 2 humongous bobcats with grapples, my chipper (rented 2 more vermeers from somewhere in NC too...), my GMC Brigadier ten-wheeler, all the saws, ropes, and gear you can shake a stick at, and a small army of drivers, climbers, groundies, operators, and laborers.

We were given our first sector, 10 blocks by 10 blocks, or 100 square city blocks, monday morning. We were finished, and inspected "satisfactory" wednesday morning. Some companies had been in one secotr for 5 weeks or more and were still not complete. Following that, the city laid off essentially all other contractors in Boca Raton, and we took over. We worked directly for the city, while picking up tons of side work from homeowners, developers, etc.

After our work in Boca, which really was not all that bad, we headed to Deerfield Beach, then Pompano Beach, then down to Miami (Awesome) then to Key Isla Morada for a while, then over to Gulfport MS, and into LA and AL... We got all of this work from the DCN and excellent references from the original project in Boca.

I realize that most of us don't have the luxury of a loaded FIL with tons of equipment, and I was fortunate to be able to stumble upon the Katrina work. However, the DCN is activated any time a storm hits any part of the country, and the "needs" posted run the gammit of everything from "I am betsy sue smith, and I have a tree in my front yard that fell over in the storm..." to "We are the city of New Orleans, and we need qualified, professional tree crews to perform services on a contract basis..."

I have not been involved with the DCN since Katrina, as I got into the Power Infrastructure Biz a few years ago, and am now only a lowly part-timer in regards to trees. I am not sure if they still operate the same way, but it is worth checking out for sure.

I will say that overall, the FEMA work through the DCN was an uphill battle in regards to getting paid, and corruption was rampant, so keep your guard up if you get involved with any of those scumbags.

Now that I realize I have written a novel, instead of a paragraph, I will go to bed. I hope this diahrea of the mouth has been useful in some way.

T

 

[treeseer]

...I will say that overall, the FEMA work through the DCN was an uphill battle in regards to getting paid, and corruption was rampant, so keep your guard up if you get involved with any of those scumbags.

:agree2:

My limited experience with these agencies has led me to the same assessment.

Good luck with the lightning tree--too bad they did not call an arborist for repair sooner!

 

[pdqdl]

From what I have discovered on the Internet, the "DCN" (Disaster Contractors Network) appears to be an organization that only serves disasters within the state of Florida.

Right?

That is a little bit too far for me to drive. I'd need new trucks by the time I got there

 

[stihlhere]

dcn

thanks that's just right for me!!!!!!!!!! way down south where the pay is rotten and old times here are not forgotten look away look away.................

 

[BlackenedTimber]

Got that nasty oak down...

I don't think anyone in this town has ever heard the word "arborist" before... but they will learn now that I'm here. What a pain that tree was... hollow at the base, rotten half way up, hollow up top, nothing solid to rig to... 100-yr old house, drop wires, and a fence in the drop zone, blah blah blah... headaches. Trashed a 32" Full Chisel chain too, the spar was filled with metal.

Only got a few pics of the aftermath, but I will see if I can get them up in a day or two. No one to take the money shots while I was airborne... bummer.

As for the DCN only being in florida, that may wery well be the case. I was contacted through the DCN for the Boca project initially, and then the work kinda just lined up after that from referrals from the City of Boca Raton and networking contacts solidified during the initial stages of the project.

Anywho, best of luck to all you storm chasers. Good money if you get in quick, establish yourself, dont take unecessary risks, and keep your wits about you.

T

 

[treevet]

Probably has been mentioned...but doesn't make much sense to go chasing storms if you are not taking a bucket and have or have access to a crane.

All the best paying jobs will involve trees not suitable to climb and if you choose to climb them on a regular basis....your gonna likely have a short career.

 

[kyguy076]

thanks for the reply blackened timber I will give that a try. We do have a bucket just not a crane.

 

[treeclimber101]

This thread reminds me of this saying "there were two bulls sitting on top of a hill , one old and one young watching a group of cows down in the field , the young bull says lets run down there and :censored: a few of those cows, and the older bull says lets walk down there and :censored: all of them" , so my advice is to plan storm work well don't rush let the idiots rush run out there half :censored: and get tired fast and often not get paid, just wait for the phone to ring and pick the work you really want..

 

[treevet]

thanks for the reply blackened timber I will give that a try. We do have a bucket just not a crane.

The problem often with that is you get out over a roof and can make cuts but where does the stuff go? Sometimes you cannot lower it down to a steep or heavily damaged roof with gm on it. Maybe the best thing if you can only get one truck for it is to get the material handling bucket with a lot of reach and capacity.

 

[BlackenedTimber]

A corner-mount digger truck sticks out in my mind as a good piece of storm work equipment. I have never used one for storm work, but it sounds feasible. My dad owned a line construction business, and there's alot you can do with a good digger truck.

Usually you have atleast a 45-ft work height on an insulated boom, with a 15-ton boom capacity and integral winch and "elephant ears" on the end of the boom, plus auxillary hydraulics, and a pin-on bucket. Oh, and di-electric pads, multiple tool boxes, fuel tanks, cool flashing lights, and pintle hitches. The boom controls aren't as refined as a bucket truck, but the pin-on bucket works just fine once you get used to it.

These trucks can usually be found pretty cheap, and have usually been fleet-maintained by the power companies or line construction companies. The last one my dad bought (maybe 15 years ago) he got for a high bid of $51.51.

Just a thought.