But still, when 'everyone' has a huge crane, does the metric change?
No, i think it's safe to say that in some markets at least that's now considered "the way." It's been moving that way for awhile, and it won't be overnight, but they've proven that if you really wanna make bank cutting trees then that's how it's done, nothing else even comes close.
@lumberjack had a tree mek, same tool basically although i think what mayer is running is a bunch bigger. It's a tale as old as time, new machine and methodology replaces labor, and the owners of said machinery make a ton more money if they can feed it. When excavators and large earth moving equipment first came on the scene it was the same thing for companies that hand dug everything with a ton of guys, how could they afford all that just to dig a hole? But a few decades after their introduction there were no companies left that didn't have them, and gone were the huge crews of guys with shovels. Today no one could even imagine doing even a moderate sized earth moving job without machinery, labor would simply cost too much, even landscaping companies eventually go the way of machinery and as they do they become more and more profitable. Of course you still have guys digging by hand, but it's nothing compared to what it used to be. The large expensive machinery is cheaper than paying labor costs.
You have chainsaws, a chipper, large trucks, a huge loader, a lift, and even rent cranes for the exact same reason; because simply owning or using these things makes you wayyyyyyy more profitable. Is it possible to cut trees by climbing on 3 strand with handsaws and axes only? Of course it is, trees bigger than I've ever seen were logged on an industrial scale using just that, but today you would never be able to compete against the modern tools we all take for granted now. I was a lurker when everyone was debating if they should get a mini skid, and the obvious consensus became "you can't afford not to." Now it's all about the mini articulated loaders for most markets, because they're even more productive than a mini. The overwhelming theme is that iron makes more money than labor, the bigger it is the less it can get to everything, but you don't need to cut every tree. Just as earthmoving equipment didn't eliminate hand digging, there's always a place for the old school ways, but it's going to get smaller and smaller over time as the iron gets big enough to simply overpower the limitations, or small enough to fit in places nothing else can get to. Just as the lifts have gotten bigger and bigger over the years the cranes and other lifting machines will become quicker to deploy with greater capacity with grapple saws, and will slowly edge out the lifts because it eliminates a guy. Climbing will be minimized even more as the spider lifts and then spider cranes can sneak in the hard to access places with ever increasing reach and capacity, driven by and designed for the construction industry and then becoming common enough to be used for other applications like trees. Little did i know that the story of John Henry was probably the most important and prophetic story i would learn in school
I would have thought construction crane work involving known weights, picking off the ground/truck with precise distancing would be infinitely preferable (and more lucrative) to tree work for crane operators.
Around here the only crane hire guys that will do trees are owner operators, but they're a very small minority of the cranes being used (some tree companies do have their own here). Most cranes are either owned by construction companies or crane hire companies that only do construction jobs, because that's where the money's at (industrial and large commercial work). A tree guy could conceivably get to a point where they could hire out to do construction, but the reality is that operators on construction jobs have gone to school to do that, and are familiar with the tasks at hand. I'm union, so we only work with union operators who have all the required certifications and up to date training, so that's another big hurdle too for the tree guy aspiring to do construction, as the big jobs in the country are usually union. There's plenty of non union work too, but the market is hard to break into, changing trades/ what you're good at and know on the fly is hard enough but even harder when dealing with a highly regulated industry with huge price tags and usually enough competition to make the profit margins surprisingly small at times. The osha fines alone for not having all the required stuff is enough to bankrupt a company, so it's a very tough and unforgiving industry to work in, even worse than trees, because tree care was exempted from the majority of it. The cranes are often different too, what makes a great crane for trees is limited in construction because of design tradeoffs, and there's bonding so if you can't do the job on the dates agreed to you literally could have to pay for a competitor to do it for you.
Construction is an entirely different world, where the companies involved and the guys doing it have been around large cranes their whole careers, and if you think picking trees apart is hard try flying tanks and stuff into running chemical plants by radio contact only, use 2 cranes to invert it, fly it through the roof, lower it a bit, wait while it's turned to fit, boom up to drift a couple inches, lower another foot or so, swing a couple inches, spin again... The weights aren't known perfectly either, and we've done ones where the lifting trunnions were deemed insufficient so we had to weld new stuff on, and then torch it free so if they did the math wrong everyone there dies as the tank and crane crash into the live plant, which has a bunch of hydrogen and toxic chemical tanks and lines running everywhere. I've been on a job that used the largest crawler on the continent at the time, so to construction guys a 100 ton is just the same as a broderson, a crane, each with their own place, strengths, and limitations. The old school lattice booms are still really popular because they do certain jobs so much better, such as pick and carry, duty cycle work like setting iron, and heavy lifts, so the usual telescopic boom that would be used for trees could likely be deemed insufficient despite being capable on paper.
I drug up (quit) to go to a different job before they had the big crane assembled, but here's a quick video of it on the local news there (7 hour drive from where i live). It did only 4 picks, the final pick was over a million pounds at just under 500 feet up. I'll admit i was blown away watching them set up for that, it's still the same as any other crane but the scale of it was really hard to understand because it was coming in on trucks in pieces randomly and was insanely huge. I spent all morning one day trying to figure out what a piece was until someone said it was a winch drum, holy crap it was so big i couldn't even visualize it.
The giant lift helped to erect the new Cleveland Cliffs Iron Briquette plant on Front Street near Millard.
www.wtol.com
) vs 2 hours with a crane and the pines would be 10 minutes vs 45 minutes with a crane. I never heard back from the kid but nevertheless, those descriptions give you an idea of the capabilities.
There are senebogans in the UK and are used mainly on roadside works. Grapple saws are becoming more common and are put on various bases - excavators and merlo rotos being the most popular as they are so adaptable. We hired this impressive machine and operator in from a local company - it has a GMB 500 head on it - 50cm cut and is insanely productive compared to a climber or conventional crane on the right job - it is the future for much of our work.
