How'd it go today?

Took a smallish Ash off a house this morning. Lifted it off with the mini, and drifted it off to the side. Later we did a Sassafras cleanup. Unfortunately not my jobs, but work none the less. We had crazy winds yesterday.
 
Crazy wind is right. It hit here at about 3pm yesterday. I was out 'til about 9pm last night clearing roads, three bucket crews and a crane crew and a log truck....I ran the whole operation from one of our bucket trucks because four of my guys had other things to do..:what:

I wanted to make a point that I could get their job done faster with private contractors if necessary;)

Spent the majority of today chasing hangers and getting limbs on sidewalks and front lawns and such.

tomorrow we hit the parks....happy friday.
 
Wagnaw said:
Whenever I'm subbing for someone, and a neighbor asks for a card, I give them the co's card who I'm subbing for. I think it's bad juju to self promote on someone else's time.
Click to expand...

I do exactly the same thing, Andrew. And it's a lot more critical for me because I depend on those guys I'm subbing to a whole lot more than the homeowner who comes up and wants one tree cut down. The only jobs I do for myself are the jobs that come from phone calls/previous referrals directly to me. When I'm out on a job working for somebody I don't want to talk to the neighbor who walks up anyway.
 
It was made very clear to me that I do not do side jobs- Period. But it dont matter because side jobs are 99% residential and we don't do residential. I will usually refer them to some of my guys that go to work after working all day with me. Some come in Mondays with a truck load of brush and ask if they can chip it in the yard after work. No problem and thanks for asking I tell them. I got good guys
Jeff
 
I have an interesting scenario for you. I didn't even think about it at the time because the guy I was working for doesn't do any residential work. But, I was working for my buddy the landscaper guy and he had this crew of a half a dozen guys who were pruning these parking lot trees and I was there just to chip the brush. It was at a dept. store parking lot and I got a couple of calls that evening from my signage on the truck. What would you do with those? Or am I just nitpicking?
I messed up my passenger door mirror on my forestry truck a couple of weeks ago and I spent most of today fixing that. Al you would have been proud. I needed some big washers to go on the inside of the door so I ended up using a worn out 200 bar and drilled the holes in it and I have one big washer for all three holes. Just going green here by reusing.
 
Wow. Mr. Lovstrom, you are very liberal as bosses go I think. Thats so good. You need something other than wages to keep good help sometimes. a good relationship with the Co. and some extras can go a long way.
 
Steve, You spent money on the sign on your truck for advertisement. If who you were helping didn't want you to take jobs from that they would have asked you to cover it up. Just my opinion.....
 
That be diffy Steve.
I used to get asked a lot to do side jobs when I was a plumber on job sites. I would not do it. Now people that knew I was a plumber that were not in a contracted area as my employer.. If they asked on my time not a problem. If I was in the company truck (which I got to take home).. They got my employers card. My employer would equip and sell me materials for side jobs all the time as I was honest in where and how I got the jobs, that I was not using a company truck or tools and co. time for the job.
Maybe I am just ethical.. But I won't even steal a tree job client from a guy if he referred me there for some different work. Let alone sub me. However.. If my landscaper friend that does not do tree jobs or does not have a chipper and I get calls from other than the client of that landscaper.. from my sign.. NP
 
It kept spitting slushey snow off and on all day but never shut me down. Finished the big job I've been on all week. Ruined a 34" chain-hit steel about 10 feet off the ground.
 
No one has asked me to cover up my signs, be more trouble than the jobs worth to me anyway. When I sub to someone the homeowner is usually told they will have a sub on site
 
I have given out my business card when I was a sub grinding stumps for another tree guy. I asked the contractor to line up the job, he told me that it was not worth it for him to do the leg work over a few stumps. SO I whipped out a card and handed it to the homeowner. Their daughter had 50 some odd stumps.
 
There ya go.. Give it back to the guy and if he don't want it .. A ok!
Done that with a tree guy that gave us a brushing customer. They wanted a tree removed and I gave it to the guy that referred me.. He said he was too busy and I could have it.. Well ok then... I took it.
 
I don't feel bad about it. Though we did get alot of work in the daughters neighborhood and the parents actually had us back over to their house to do some pruning and small removals.
 
I do sub, but I've never covered signage. and I've gotten plent of other extra work out of my sub jobs at times. I'm only subbing to companies that don't do any large treework themselves so I feel like I'm doing them as much of a favor as they are me. I show up and do a professional job. The guys I sub to are extremely happy with my work and often tell me about all of the compliments received from their customers. I don't ever talk numbers with the customer or attempt to promote myself. But if someone asks for a card they get my card. Because imo if they're asking me for a card it's for treework not for fertilizing or trimming shrubs.

Imo subbing is a dead end road if you're trying to build your own business and I will eventually do none of it.

Today I rigged down to goodsized willows. Lots and lots of rigging.:|:
 
Yeah, if someone sees my truck signs, they see my truck signs. I don't sub out much, but I have a few friends that do tree work on the side or do a lot of pruning and may need a bigger chipper, etc... So, I'll help them and give out their cards if someone asks.

I don't cover the signs though. Too much of a hassle.


Today was rigging up the trees for the WWC-TCC! Beautiful day to be up in some big white oaks, and I got to teach my old crew some fun aerial rescue tricks, and ascending techniques.

....I really like teaching. Low stress, fun.
 
I showed up for a an emergency removal at 6:30am this morning with the plan to climb and rig it down. I arrived at the site to discover a crane, an aerial lift, a grab truck and a whole lot of confusion.

To make a long story short I ended up doing my first crane removal today. Talk about a circus, though. Communication was difficult with the crew due to language barrier, too many chiefs, and no concrete plan for the first 45 minutes or so made for mayhem before we got things setup right. They must have moved the trucks 4 or 5 times before they got it in a way I thought was acceptable.

Despite the stress of the first couple hours things finally fell into a good rhythm and we got the tree down safe and smooth. It was a good sized, old Chinese hackberry. I only flipped one pick, a small one, which was no big deal. I also got the saw pinched once which taught me that it's usually best to just make one cut straight through rather than mess around with snap cuts and the like. Otherwise all the picks came off smooth and balanced without any jolting of the crane. I figure that's not bad for my first crane removal, with an out of control crew, and very poor communication.

We did have one near accident, though. We were taking a break on the ground, me and about ten guys standing around when out of the corner of my eye I saw the crane ball swinging at me like a wrecking ball. Reflex had me drop to the ground instantly, thankfully, and the ball went flying through the group of guys, amazingly hitting no one, and then slammed into the front of the grab truck. I still have no idea how that happened.

Oh and did I mention that this was an EXTREMELY busy pedestrian street? There were easily more than 50,000 people who walked down that street today. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more. A veritable mass of humanity. That's Hong Kong for you.

I only managed to get one picture of the crane with my phone camera. I have no idea what the capacity of the crane was. Nobody seemed to know.

EDIT: I discovered that the ISA has a fashion line. Check out the signs in the picture.
 

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Let's see how well this works. Haiphong Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.

EDIT: Sweet! You can embed Google Maps! Go all the way west on Haiphong Rd. The tree I removed today was near the Imperial Building.

<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=haiphong+rd,+hong+kong&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.911557,86.572266&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Haiphong+Rd,+Hong+Kong&ll=22.29812,114.171038&spn=0.00139,0.002642&t=h&z=19&output=embed"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=haiphong+rd,+hong+kong&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.911557,86.572266&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Haiphong+Rd,+Hong+Kong&ll=22.29812,114.171038&spn=0.00139,0.002642&t=h&z=19" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map</a></small>
 
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