It's not my skidsteer but those are turf tracks, designed to do minimal if any damage to grass while driving over it. Seen the videos and they are pretty sweet. Don't know about the traction in wet or incline conditions.
Working hurricanes
- Thread starter Mapleman
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It's not my skidsteer but those are turf tracks, designed to do minimal if any damage to grass while driving over it. Seen the videos and they are pretty sweet. Don't know about the traction in wet or incline conditions.
stihlhere
ArboristSite Member
no the pic in your post is the first. My skid steer has tires would i benifit from a slip over type track and are they (by they i mean slip over type) offered in a turf track?? thanks
John Paul Sanborn
Above average climber
As MD (Larry) points out, your operational modality will be different depending on whether you are in your own area or not. Most of this discussion has been about chasing storms.
As MM implies, there has been a sub industry evolving around storm work, that has depressed the the earning potential of travel. My best trips have always been when I team up with a local operator who treats it as a long term business opportunity. Take care of your clientele first, then go for the big money, use the extant customers as a means to generate more business only in the area that you are working in now. If you have a phone, tell people that new customers will be serviced as practical while, or after, you take care of your loyal clients.
Phone service is critical if you want to use the event to build your company. Before the storm, sign on with a national answering service so you can forward the calls to them. After the storm, if you need to, get a temporary out of area phone that you can relay or pick up messages from. Cells are often out of service for days with big storms.
Once things settle, get more then one person to answer phones (yes plural, an answered phone gets the lead) that have a script and a form to fill out and file to group lead sheets together with neighboring extant clients, telling the potential client that you will not bid, but perform the work as after you take care of a loyal client in the neighbor hood.
As MM implies, there has been a sub industry evolving around storm work, that has depressed the the earning potential of travel. My best trips have always been when I team up with a local operator who treats it as a long term business opportunity. Take care of your clientele first, then go for the big money, use the extant customers as a means to generate more business only in the area that you are working in now. If you have a phone, tell people that new customers will be serviced as practical while, or after, you take care of your loyal clients.
Phone service is critical if you want to use the event to build your company. Before the storm, sign on with a national answering service so you can forward the calls to them. After the storm, if you need to, get a temporary out of area phone that you can relay or pick up messages from. Cells are often out of service for days with big storms.
Once things settle, get more then one person to answer phones (yes plural, an answered phone gets the lead) that have a script and a form to fill out and file to group lead sheets together with neighboring extant clients, telling the potential client that you will not bid, but perform the work as after you take care of a loyal client in the neighbor hood.
treevet
Addicted to ArboristSite
This a very professional, thorough and comprehensive well thought out post.
If I was to pick at nits, my one issue would be the use of the word heal and the confusion of "closure" as opposed to compartmentalization. Leaving the big stubs obviously makes the tree safe and allows one to "move on" to the next task but the leaving of the big stub when you are in another state is doing the client a disservice as even with adventitious sprouts generated at a later date, there will be decay involved and it will enter the parent stem in all likelyhood. It may anyway but I say, give the tree a fighting chance (no matter what the species....not a consideration IMO).
It is the compartmentalization that will tax the energy stores and not the "healing" (hate to use that word in regard to trees, as it is very unprofessional in itself) or closure .....but IMO it is the right thing to do and go ahead and take off the big stub in most circumstances with a good natural target pruning cut and hope the tree will fill the hole in the canopy with lateral growth off the main architecture remaining. You will not be coming back to finish later as I understand it.
Also, I do not feel it is a dying art as mentioned above. I think the state of arboriculture is at an all time high with certification, new knowledge and forums like this, etc. It is the "outlaws" that water down the profession and local legislature is necessary to forbid them from even touching trees until they have reached a documented level of knowledge like we are doing in my town on the local UFB I am a member of thru them obtaining permits to work and needing certification and time OJT to get them.
treevet
Addicted to ArboristSite
I would also like to add for discussion before going off to work, that necessity being the mother of invention (or possession in this case), that if I was going off to chase the seasonal "canes" etc., I would strive to purchase a truck boom or crane (given one already owns a bucket truck). As Mapleman says there is a sense of accomplishment in doing some of this work in rope and saddle, I think you are playing with the odds, and the more you do under these circumstances you will eventually have a catastrophic accident.
A truck boom can get into a lot of places (with the boom) that the elbow of a picker cannot, like maybe in Guy's trees and even go over matted wires. You can climb off them. You can pick damage out of the trees without just detaching broken limbs and damaging others they crush into. But the main thing is the critical first 2 weeks Mapleman describes where we spent every day taking trees embedded IN houses off of them (actually it was 3 weeks here for me). This is BY FAR the most profitable aspect of damage work and the chances of renting a crane with or without an op are slim and none, and slim
left town long ago. From day 1 you could not get one in Cinci.
We made a bundle owning a truck crane/boom and they are not that expensive and very mobile on highway. Many out of work roofers sell them all the time they used for setting trusses.
A truck boom can get into a lot of places (with the boom) that the elbow of a picker cannot, like maybe in Guy's trees and even go over matted wires. You can climb off them. You can pick damage out of the trees without just detaching broken limbs and damaging others they crush into. But the main thing is the critical first 2 weeks Mapleman describes where we spent every day taking trees embedded IN houses off of them (actually it was 3 weeks here for me). This is BY FAR the most profitable aspect of damage work and the chances of renting a crane with or without an op are slim and none, and slim
We made a bundle owning a truck crane/boom and they are not that expensive and very mobile on highway. Many out of work roofers sell them all the time they used for setting trusses.
whats the max lifting power on that item?
gr8scott72
Addicted to ArboristSite
It's not my skidsteer but those are turf tracks, designed to do minimal if any damage to grass while driving over it. Seen the videos and they are pretty sweet. Don't know about the traction in wet or incline conditions.
They are fine in wet conditions and on inclines but they stink in the mud.
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
TV,
Totally agree on the compartamentalization (that's a mouthful) issue. I use healing as shorthand. As to leaving stubs, depending on the tree species, I think the jury is still out on that one. When I did an ice storm in NC one year, the willow oaks took a real beating. I asked some local arborists more versed in working willow oaks than I am about "stubbing" off branches. The prevailing consensus was willow oaks can "handle" it and recover. I wouldn't try that with sugar maple, white or red oak however.
I guess when I said that tree reparation is becoming a lost art I was referring to most of the characters I've met while doing storms. Some of these guys never met a polesaw, sleep with their gaffs on, and use their climbing lines as tow ropes. Obviously, there are still professionals out there who see trees as living creatures and understand the science involved in tree surgery.
There is definitely a difference in approach in working storms on your own turf as opposed to being on the road. MD said it well when he talked about taking care of established clientel first and setting up triage. And JPS was spot on with his advice as to setting up a phone system and personal contact with customers. I've met guys who have set up shop for years in a new city after a strom blew through because they did it the right way, and then of course there are the fly-by-nighters who take the money and run.
Like John said, there is a whole subculture out there who pretty much do nothing but chase storms. I worked Hugo in Charlotte, NC. A buddy and I took a Sunday off and drove to Charleston to see how bad it was. We pulled into a campground that was packed with nothing but tree workers and their equipment. It looked like an armed camp of mercenaries, swaggering around and ranting how they just made $1200 for making one cut, blah, blah, blah...
My first 'cane was Kate in Tallahassee, 1985. I wound up staying there four months. I contracted myself, my truck, and my tools to a local tree outfit. Three weeks later, when the crane and insurance work was done, I had established myself and was able to land my own customers and sub out to other outfits for stuff that was, shall we say, a bit over their heads. Working that first storm gave me the opportunity to see the operational end of things, and when Hugo did its thing in '87, I was prepared to do my own thing.
I approach working hurricanes with the mentality of a fireman. I don't want to see anyone get hurt and suffer, but this is what I'm trained to do--I'm really good at removing hazardous trees in tricky situations. When the bell goes off, I get fired up--I love this stuff.
With storms that do damage that require tree reparation, my enthusiasm is just as great, but my mentality has shifted into more of a EMT or ER mode. If it's on my own home turf, it shifts again into long term health care. I like being able to wear more that just one hat...
tree md
Addicted to ArboristSite
I use the term healing with Joe Home Owner. Maybe not the proper term but I feel that it communicates the point I'm trying to get across to them better than compartmentalization. I explain the process to them but refer to the second and third phase of pruning storm damaged trees as making "healing" cuts.
Having your own crane/boom truck gives you a huge advantage in the industry as a whole, even more so in a storm situation. If it is in your own community where you have an established account with a local crane service it is not hard to get a crane on site. When your on the road it can be challenging at best, sometimes nearly impossible to get a crane on site. I hope to have my own boom truck someday.
Having your own crane/boom truck gives you a huge advantage in the industry as a whole, even more so in a storm situation. If it is in your own community where you have an established account with a local crane service it is not hard to get a crane on site. When your on the road it can be challenging at best, sometimes nearly impossible to get a crane on site. I hope to have my own boom truck someday.
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
I would also like to add for discussion before going off to work, that necessity being the mother of invention (or possession in this case), that if I was going off to chase the seasonal "canes" etc., I would strive to purchase a truck boom or crane (given one already owns a bucket truck). As Mapleman says there is a sense of accomplishment in doing some of this work in rope and saddle, I think you are playing with the odds, and the more you do under these circumstances you will eventually have a catastrophic accident.
A truck boom can get into a lot of places (with the boom) that the elbow of a picker cannot, like maybe in Guy's trees and even go over matted wires. You can climb off them. You can pick damage out of the trees without just detaching broken limbs and damaging others they crush into. But the main thing is the critical first 2 weeks Mapleman describes where we spent every day taking trees embedded IN houses off of them (actually it was 3 weeks here for me). This is BY FAR the most profitable aspect of damage work and the chances of renting a crane with or without an op are slim and none, and slimleft town long ago. From day 1 you could not get one in Cinci.
We made a bundle owning a truck crane/boom and they are not that expensive and very mobile on highway. Many out of work roofers sell them all the time they used for setting trusses.
Nice aerial of the boom truck in action. Having your own rig is the way to go. With the way the economy is right now, you can probably pick up a used one for a decent price. I really could have used one on Hugo as I was told more than once by a HO: "First guy who shows up with a crane gets the job." It's one thing to lift pine off a roof using blocks, a faux boom, and a 4 WD vehicle. Doing oak is a whole 'nother animal. Also, the pitch and composition of a roof can dictate crane/bucket or manual climbing. Working on Spanish tiles at a 45 degree pitch without a direct overhead tie-in is the stuff of nightmares.
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tree md
Addicted to ArboristSite
I had a crane on site on the first job I did in the ice storm here in 07. The neighbors house had a tree on it and I told the people that I could give them a good price while I had the crane out there. They said they wanted to get multiple estimates (in a disaster situation) and I said no problem, I'd give them an estimate when I had a chance. The had a bucket jockey give them a cut rate price but he would have to access the job through my client's yard. She refused to give him access because she didn't want her property torn up after I had worked to clean it up. He nibbled at what he could from the front and walked away from the job (with their money) and they called me back out there to look at the tree again. I saw where I could set a block in a neighboring tree and remove it like MM just mentioned but it would take me much longer than it would have when I had a crane on site (couldn't access through my original clients yard after I had already cleaned up). I put an aggravation charge into my bid. They finally hired someone else to take the tree off the house. Not sure if they used a crane or not but I know they paid a lot more to remove the tree than they would have had they let me take it off with the crane while I had it on site.
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
John Paul Sanborn
Above average climber
In the stages of storm work I call the first part hazard mitigation; get the hangers and breaks out to clean wood and schedule a return for later if there is any other work to be done.
If not then I will recommend the crown restoration in 3-5 years, i think this is what MP calls "reparation". Thin out the sprout branches, leaving those with the best angle of attachment.
On the stub, or not to stub question: I will stub whenever there is sufficient wood to support sprouting, even if it is larger then the 1/3 rule.
As Guy M. points out on many occasions, Best Practices pruning cuts are to the NODE not just to the branch union. After all a branch union is just a node that bifurcated.
In any significant storm trees often loose half or more of their dynamic mass; that is leaf and bark tissue that contains chlorophyll. If every cut is a collar cut, there is often very little tree left. My thought is to clean the limb off to allow it as much chance to regenerate new tissue as possible.
If i am out of town i will recommend that they have a CA do the restoration work in latter years, though I'm usually working for a local one at the time. My trip to OK, where I met Larry, was the first time that all i did was sell for a carpetbagger (Petersen is actually a very ethical company).
If not then I will recommend the crown restoration in 3-5 years, i think this is what MP calls "reparation". Thin out the sprout branches, leaving those with the best angle of attachment.
On the stub, or not to stub question: I will stub whenever there is sufficient wood to support sprouting, even if it is larger then the 1/3 rule.
As Guy M. points out on many occasions, Best Practices pruning cuts are to the NODE not just to the branch union. After all a branch union is just a node that bifurcated.
In any significant storm trees often loose half or more of their dynamic mass; that is leaf and bark tissue that contains chlorophyll. If every cut is a collar cut, there is often very little tree left. My thought is to clean the limb off to allow it as much chance to regenerate new tissue as possible.
If i am out of town i will recommend that they have a CA do the restoration work in latter years, though I'm usually working for a local one at the time. My trip to OK, where I met Larry, was the first time that all i did was sell for a carpetbagger (Petersen is actually a very ethical company).
treevet
Addicted to ArboristSite
It is 12 ton 67 foot w a 25 foot jib. I sub if I need bigger but use this for a lot of stuff. We pin down the a$$ end with a big honker on the bed for stability sometimes.
treevet
Addicted to ArboristSite
Wondering what you fella s do with your home clientele while on the road trip? Can't help but think some are miffed that they have needs while you are chasing the big bucks and ignoring them save a phone call or email.
One of my biggest assets IMO is my availability. Someone calls that has being paying my bills for decades, hey, I am over there in minutes no matter how trivial or involved the request is.
Plus there are so many variables with trying to collect from the ins co. Having the HO take picts and getting the go ahead does not tell you how much $ they will cover and what they will cover, when you will be paid etc etc. You have no leverage with their ins co.
PS....I was referring to leaving a 3 to 6 foot stub that is 12 " plus dia or there abouts. Bad practice IMO.
One of my biggest assets IMO is my availability. Someone calls that has being paying my bills for decades, hey, I am over there in minutes no matter how trivial or involved the request is.
Plus there are so many variables with trying to collect from the ins co. Having the HO take picts and getting the go ahead does not tell you how much $ they will cover and what they will cover, when you will be paid etc etc. You have no leverage with their ins co.
PS....I was referring to leaving a 3 to 6 foot stub that is 12 " plus dia or there abouts. Bad practice IMO.
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
In all my time doing insurance work, only once did I bill the insurance company directly. I'll come back to that in a minute. The way it's always worked for me (this is in North Carolina and Florida) is you get paid by the homeowner. He/she gets reimbursed by the insurance co. Never have I had an insurance co. quibble with my invoice except for the one aforementioned time.
On a really bad storm the agents are straight out, and it's pretty much carte blanche as far as what you want to charge. If there is a large tree on a house, the longer it remains, the more potential for structural damage there is. Also, if there is a hole in the roof, rain will definitely factor into the equation as the insurance co. wants the tree off as quickly as possible so the roof can be patched, mitigating internal damage and additional $$$ they will have to spend. They're savy enuf to know that removing the tree quickly will save them money in the long run, so the agent will tell the HO to have the first credible tree man remove the tree.
Sometimes HOs will say they want three bids. But that's usually when there are lots of tree guys in the neighborhod and/or the tree situation is not threatening.
As to the one instance that I dealt with the insurance co. directly: The agent had to travel some distance to check out the damage--white pine laying on a glassed in sun room. The HO wanted it done immediately. I took a lot of photos before removing the tree, which turned out to be fairly simple and fast by using a few "tree tricks." Desk jockey at the insurance company thought I made too much on the job, so I mailed him the photos, closeups showing big diameter wood resting on metal framework supporting glass roof panels. He mailed me a check for the full amount. Moral of the story: a picture can be worth $1500.
My regular clientele are fully aware that when late summer, early autumn rolls around, I'm on call. I leave them with the numbers of a couple of competent climbers in the area in case of emergency.
Lastly, TV, do you really think I'm the kinda guy who is gonna leave 6 foot long, one foot diameter stubs? Regardless of the health factor to the tree, a stub that size is likely going to be a dead wood hazard in a few years. I always err on the side of safety.
Maple, I'm agreein gwith most of what you are saying, but reducing branches rather than removing is better in most cases, in all species. white oak red oak red maple pecan sycamore etc. etc.
I've had 10' long stubs 12" dia come back fine--well, okay, anyway. I've had others not come back well, but formed a collar to cut back to, where there was none before. You gotta think in tree time, not how it looks after you first cut it...and the story about leaving a hazard makes sense only if the branch does not sprout. It does not hold up when you think about how long it takes a limb to rot; and the more it sprouts the better it will seal.
Back to the first good node, always!
JPS sorry but lost a bunch of pics in computer crash incl those with your smiling face.
The April 2003 TCI piece was the best article on heading back storm damage. Too big to attach here, but you cna find it in their archives. attached is the ISA version, and gilman's recent work in the same vein..and also a recent one looking at nodal vs. internodal pruning.
John Paul Sanborn
Above average climber
We'll have to do it again some time
We'll have to do it again some time
Well bad weather is nothing to hope for but still it will happen.
I'll keep doing storm repair work, but accommodations are key so if there is a storm i hope it's where i have a wealthy relative...I stayed for weeks with Jean and Isabel and Andrew cuz of that.
Much lower overhead and lower risk and lower strain in storm repair than removals. But tv I hear ya on the bucket--very useful for a lot of work. But a bucket can seldom get 360 of a tree so climbing is needed too.
