No noise I could here... I saw it happen from about 10' away. Lawn tech + tree crew = byebye tools. His face was priceless as he watched the feedwheels slowly eat it. I wasnt going to make it in time to stop it and didnt want to be running towards the chipper if it was a 'duck and cover' situation. It was surprisingly peaceful in a relative sense, the chipper didnt even miss a beat.
We broke a rake today too, of which we had 2 for a 3 man crew... By the second job we had 3 men, 1 rake, and 0 shovels. We had just flopped one of three pines we were removing and I was looking for something when Duane (foreman), says 'what you looking for?", 'gloves' I answer, "Matt (the lawn tech) took yours" he says...."Well Matt can chip all the brush then!"...he didnt even ask me to take my gloves off the dashboard and I certainly wasnt going to frack my hands up while he wore my gloves.
The guy Matt replaced did $300 a day in lawn care for years, Matt comes in and starts doing over $1k/day and ran himself out of work in just a few weeks, this is his second season and he did the samething last year. Now he is on the tree crew to prevent laying him off. He is a hell of a lawn guy, but a horrible tree guy. All he had to do was ride it out, do like $4-600 a day and he could have slept in the truck for 2 hours every day or gone and seen a movie ...forever, he would of had the gravy train....but no.