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My Boy could drive a skidsteer at 3 years old, an articulated loader at 4 and 15 tonne excavator at 7. Not entirely convinced I'd want him feeding a chipper, but I'm sure Paul is aware of the risks. Nice to see the whole family working on jobs though. <iframe width="420" height="315"...

Who's operating Paul? (thats damn good balance on that pick)

Thats a very debatable point Butch. Always a big difference in opinion between various operators as to how much stick you place over the lift.

Aluminium is ridiculously expensive for plates. Ply wood laminated, or recycled composite plastic. A 6x4 frame for the dunnage would be better than a trailer.

Go back to that pic I posted of the huntingdon plant crane Paul. That has a small frame for carrying just the mats and about half his dunnage. It wont stop you getting close in.

most of the cranes we hire have a sort of frame welded in the very rear to carry all the cribbing and mats

Not Flat here, we live in the mountains. Gaps in dunnage are ok, but no bridging. Sandwiched ply, covered in sand paint for grip is for the top of the dunnage. For the leg pad to sit on. Most of the cranes now have composite pads made from recycled plastic.

You need some large plywood sandwich cribbing boards too, as well as dunnage. Cribbing is one of those things you can get away with badly a lot of times. But if it goes wrong.... it goes seriously wrong. Carl is absolutely correct about the inertia of slew forces too.

Yeah, watch out for taking those big leads ;)

I was always taught to never bridge cribbing dunnage either. Always have 3 pieces instead of two bridging. I did my crane operators cert about 18 years ago though. I guess its up to you whether you're happy with it. Funny someone brought up the K Boom question. There is no doubt in my mind that...

great looking outfit Paul. Glad everything went well, a nice foretaste of days to come.

I'm not interested in any tree joe beermoney can do.

The fees dont change Jay. The productivity and the the profit margins doo. Cranes are just built with standard components, mostly off the shelf. Tyres for an all terrain are about $1500 a piece, but last forever

Thanks Jim. I also wanted add that an often overlooked benifit of a crane is that the entire crew are far less fatigued at the end of the day, making the workplace much safer. This is hard to quantify financially, but I think is a very significant advantage.

I think the key thing everybody would agree on is that a crane makes a job much easier by reducing labour, cleaner, faster and safer. All of the labour saving adds up to less cost, and more volume can be achieved. I would be wary of becoming a slave to chasing volume though. I would try and...

Felling a tree in sections in a garden and cutting everything up, then carrying it all out (by hand or machine) will ALWAYS have more impact than a few pics with a crane. No matter how good your clean up. And there are plenty of customers who will pay extra for that. Not everybody wants the...

Great advice Sean.

Umm.... stay with standard filters Paul. Esp on the ZF, the operation of the transmission is dependant on hydraulic pressures, and the standard setup is very very good to start with. Also stay with the OEM recomended oil.

I dunno mate, you know the job and its parameters. The problem as I see it is that lifting pieces of cut tree is one of the hardest of crane operators jobs. I would want to get some experience at the controls first just slinging pieces. I'ts very easy to overcompensate on a crane, particularly...

I nearly bought one of them 10 years ago from my crane company, it's either a Mitsubishi design built under licence by Grove or the other way round. Superb piece of kit, the ZF transmissions are bomb proof. Not sure about doing tree work beneath an inexperienced operator though mate. Sounds...