The liability insurance game: Shuck and jive and get the other guy to cover the gig!

[Sunrise Guy]

Job is done. I just got in and I'm filthy. After a shower and a restaurant meal with my better half, I'll post some pics. Not a ding in anything, anywhere. Watching the 165T crane take the final twenty foot spar straight up in the air was like a sci-fi flick. The only drag was the rain water left in the swimming pool. My ropes got wet and that's never fun. No close calls on the cuts. The crane team worked well with me and my directions. I did get my saw stuck once, but a little lift from the crane got it out. The giant slings and shackles were new to me, but I got used to them after the first lift. The smaller crane put everything neatly into our trailers. I pulled the whole thing off with just my right-hand man, Dan. Total billed price to the manager, from me: 10 hours for $2250. The crane company billed her seperately. I may try to find out what they charged, but I know it was a pretty big bill, with the overnight crane support on the tree. Stay tuned---

 

[fireman]

Nice job .Most important everyone went home safe.

 

[Slvrmple72]

Now they just have to change the name from Sheltered Oak Apartments to something new! Great job glad to hear it was uneventful!

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Sounds great!

Best of all, you now know a good crane company to work with.

 

[kennertree]

Glad it went well, looking forward to seeing those pics.

 

[Sunrise Guy]

Here are the pics---

Check 'em out. The big spar sailing up into the sky is my favorite. Thanks for everyone's comments. They're appreciated.

 

[Dadatwins]

Nice work, thanks for posting

 

[pdqdl]

That crane looks big enough to pick that whole tree out in one lift. Cut 'er off at the truck and fly it away?

Seriously, though, I'd like to know how close to the lift limit the truck section was.

Did you ever measure the lift distance from the crane?

 

[Sunrise Guy]

That crane looks big enough to pick that whole tree out in one lift. Cut 'er off at the truck and fly it away?

Seriously, though, I'd like to know how close to the lift limit the truck section was.

Did you ever measure the lift distance from the crane?

The safe load limit on the 165 ton crane was twelve tons at the extension he was at. From the street parking lot to the tree was about forty-five feet, straight-line. The last twenty foot section of the trunk was showing a weight of around 2.5 tons on the crane computer's load read-out. Oak, in general, is about 60 lbs./cu ft. The trunk was about 30" DBH and not too tapered below where I cut down to. Doing the math: 1.25' (the radius) X 3.14 (pi) = ~ 4 sq. ft. X 20' (the length of the trunk section) = 80 cu. ft. X 60 lbs./cu. ft.= 4800 lbs. or 2.4 tons. I was real happy to find out that my calculations, which I had based a safe up and over lift on, agreed with the crane's computer. It would have been a very "uncomfortable" situation if, after cutting the trunk free at its base, the computer told the crane operator that the lift was a no-go. Actually, I would have stayed cool and handled it the same way I did once the spar was at my trailer: The crane held it aloft and I sliced it off, one section at a time, as he lowered it. It all went very smooth. The gods of arboriculture were with me. Next time?????

The total removal, from the time I climbed up into the canopy until the time we had loaded both trailers, took four hours. The clean-up took another five hours: There were limbs on the roof, in the pool, around the grounds, etc. It took me an hour to set up. If I had taken on this job without the cranes, assuming I could have avoided having the tree smash down the apartment complex and/or the trunk bomb into the swimming pool at the end of the gig, the removal would have easily taken twice as long. I'm very strong on cranes, right now. I really liked the crane guys. They were very professional and good communicators. I have heard that it only takes one :censored: in a given crew to sour a crane-removal gig. Luckily my crew was :censored: -free!

I had thoughts of maybe buying one of those neat "little" 165T cranes. Yeah, make that dreams. The price on that baby is in the $1.3M area, and I'm still debating whether or not I want to pop $100G's for a darn Spider Lift!

Rest assured, I know that a crane that big is mega-overkill for our biz, but it still would be fun to have one to play with

 

[pdqdl]

Glad to see the numbers, thanks.

So my guess was about right about the whole tree in one pic, eh? Some years back I stopped to talk to some crane operators about their machine. As I recall, it was a 250ton crane. He said he could spot loads 250' to the side of his rig. I don't remember how high, but it was a lot. It was a monster with 6 axles (3 front, 3 rear) under the crane-tractor and a mobil dolly under the boom that had 2? axles under that. The crane was allowed to rotate freely, and it pivoted around behind the crane-tractor like a trailer when they drove it somewhere.

Funny thing was, it was being used to hold two men in a metal basket about 90' up the side of a building. Talk about overkill. That's like using your 088 to cut kindling.

 

[Sunrise Guy]

Glad to see the numbers, thanks.

So my guess was about right about the whole tree in one pic, eh? Some years back I stopped to talk to some crane operators about their machine. As I recall, it was a 250ton crane. He said he could spot loads 250' to the side of his rig. I don't remember how high, but it was a lot. It was a monster with 6 axles (3 front, 3 rear) under the crane-tractor and a mobil dolly under the boom that had 2? axles under that. The crane was allowed to rotate freely, and it pivoted around behind the crane-tractor like a trailer when they drove it somewhere.

Funny thing was, it was being used to hold two men in a metal basket about 90' up the side of a building. Talk about overkill. That's like using your 088 to cut kindling.

I originally estimated the complete tree to be 15-20 tons, so lifting it out with one cut was not going to happen. It's tough to tell in my pics, but there were a large number of pretty substantial branches on that oak. If memory serves me well, I believe I cut out eight major leaders that subsequently went sailing over my head. Each leader weighed in at around 1.5 tons, when all subs on each of them were added in.

Speaking of the wheels on the monster crane: Each rear axle could turn side-to-side. That big boy could drive up to a space only a little longer than it, and move sideways right into it. That was very cool to watch.