I have the easy opportunity to say, "no thanks", or "I'll need a crane, as this bigleaf maple has ganoderma and hypoxylon, and already had a trunk fail. That will be $1 million dollars."
Actually, I'm going to look at said tree now. We were working residentially yesterday and the HO had a hanger he wanted out. Upon closer inspection, I found that one half of the tree, the trunk leaning over the drain field, is so rotten on the back that when I was trying to make my point about decay, and pounding on the wood, after peeling off the loose bark, the wood mushed/ splattered under my bare fist.
The call for the right equipment and price is up to me, not someone sitting in the office saying we can't afford to rent "X".
If we had one of those rotten cottonwoods go 'south', its very likely a pencil pusher would/ could have said that we should have demanded that they rent a 120' lift (which they would have said 'no' to, if asked before something went wrong. Luckily, the last 20 years has seen a good Arbor Crew track record. A picnic table, water spigot, or grill here of there is not a big deal, a building is.
We have a big cat face in a big grand fir to fell. They excavated the downhill roots for a water treatment building that the tree is within 12"-18" of. The tree is about 12-18" behind the corner of the roof. Luckily the rams horns around the cat face are situated just as we need them for a tight conventional face to jump it past the building, while squeezing it between the rest of the trees in the forest. Our access is a compact pick-up or gator. Our F350 won't fit down the road at this mountain lake. We are going to run several wraps between this grand fir and a big, uphill Doug-fir with 5/8" stable braid for a keeper on the butt, which we expect will hold the butt provided it doesn't push back off of other crowns if we don't hit our tight lay due to a rotten hinge. Fingers crossed on this one, sometime within the next year.
But, yes, B, the grass often seems greener.