Brian, I think you had mentioned 5-6 bucket trucks -- were you meaning you have a fleet of that many, or that you've upgraded and are now on your 6th one? Do you just have 2 trucks -- big & small? If so, could you post some specs & pics; both Altec? We are seriously in the market, hopefully before fall. If we could add one, we would double down our capabilities to be able to split off into 2 crews at times and I would do a lot of the bucket work.
Big local removal yesterday -- two big silver maples over a house, a tall lanky Siberian elm, and another Siberian elm leader that the only greenery on it was poison ivy. I guess that one for sure qualifies as a "Mongolian" elm (no offense intended to any Mongolian members here). At least the neighboring lot was empty and the street was far from busy, so we took command and pieced out the trees, then craned stuff out over the house. For sure we're going forward with the removable grapple idea -- getting quick connect hoses and welding on the crane hook on the end of the boom. This has been working out sweet for us with our slings (look ma, dare we call it a "spider leg"?). I felled the big silver spar with wedges, limbed it, sectioned up the logs. Loaded onto the grapple truck, it was quite the load.
The poison ivy leader was handled with almost no touching on our part. Throw bag over it to pull a junk rope over to make a choker, set the tension with the crane, one cut from a distance with the power pruner. Then winch line lassoed the butt end pulled it right into the chipper. Local community garden took the chips, even knowing there was poison ivy in them. (Dad, why do these tomatoes make me itch?)
Oregon truck, was used previously for setting boulders for a landscaper. Fassi crane unit -- knuckles, telescopes. I think the reach is about 50'+. We want to add a 2nd set of A-outriggers to the rear for even better stability. I don't know what weight of the 7' diameter silver maple trunk from 2 months ago was, but we weren't maxing it then, and we haven't approached tip on it, even at full extension with some pretty big pieces. But we always have some weight (60,000 GVW) on the bed by the time we're picking bigger final pieces. For sure an awesome tool. (Someone called yesterday asking if we could handle really, really big trees. Ma'aam, we're the only ones in town equipped to handle really big trees!)
I used to love the 'big tree' inquiry. The bigger the better I'd say. When they asked why? I'd answer, better for me, not for you. Bad joke, but I could never resist it. Lol.
We typically call today's type of job a "snip snip" -- lighter pruning mostly to satisfy a homeowner's objectives, those being paramount to the actual health & wellbeing of a tree. But it was a complete property touch up, so we definitely did a lot of work and brought a lot of improvement to the [slightly neglected] upscale property. Removed 2 dead Eastern white pines, removed 2 Skyrocket Junipers by the pool (looked like they blew up on the launchpad), removed 6 small cedars out of a stand. Then pruned 2 hackberries, 3 locusts. Raised the crown on 10 Osage oranges, and a couple of elms. Shaped 6 bushes and several shrubs. All in a day's work, whew!
Client texted me this a couple months after the work happened. Those two tress (black Cherry and Norway Maple) looked healthy a week before, crown was full. The wind was strong that day.
Over in Topeka, KS today (state capital) for two jobs. First job was a mulberry removal; not tall, but very branchy, some leaders out 20-30', spanning over 3 yards and the back fenceline and dividing fence behind. After arrival, they asked for the wood for their little outdoor fire pit. Well, sure! I started wrecking it down with the 372 and another crew mate hit the back side with the power pruner. Then cutting everything to firewood length and piling it up for them. Then we climbed it for the 2 remaining leaders that were right over the fences, pieced them out. Pulled it over with a pull line. Flush cut & treated the stump with Tordon to prevent re-growth.
Then we climbed a honey locust and removed an 8" leader going out over the roof.
Then onto another repeat customer's place off a bit outside of town. She had a couple of fallen cottonwoods that came down in the last storm, one over her driveway entry, the other off the embankment dam that retains a large pond on the back of her property. That one was partially in the water, the rest stuck in the shoreline mud. I backed up down the dam and then we winched the main trunk up the embankment to the chipper. Had a few minutes afterward to cast in a few lines. One of the fellows caught a largemouth crappie.
1). Snippety, snippety. Light pruning in a small town south of us, a far outskirt bedroom community for KC. Raising the crown of a Bradford pear over a driveway, Raising the crown of a cherry over a deck and getting it off the roofline. The morning "light rain" turned out to be soaking, but then it passed. Not worth any pictures and not wanting to get the camera wet.
2). Pruning a Norway maple in an upper crusty neighborhood. Raising the crown, a light thinning, and tipping it back from the roofline. Not really picture worthy, but I suppose a before and after pic would have been a good record for our pruning services.
3). Drop-n-chip a perfectly fine 25' pine in a nice manicured community (where you have to be approved/vetted by the neighborhood association in order to work there).
4). Removed 2 poison ivy draped dead pitch pines on the back of a property abutting a rural golf course. Not uptight around there, so we could take the pickup and chip truck back on the golf cart trail and have direct access to the trees. And play a round of *ahem* golf afterward with some golf balls we found by the trees.
5). Ground level deadwooding and crown raising (with the power pruner) of four Osage oranges on a rural country estate.
We are are back from logging camp.
It has been a horrible week.
Highest temperatures known to Denmark, almost, and no wind.
We started at 4 AM every day and even then it was hot.
In an hour the saw pants were sweated completely through.
Logging for 10 hours while sweating like hogs is no fun.
We've been teetering around the edge of heat stroke all week.
I ordered 10 pds of electrolyte powder before setting off, that has been keeping us going.
Yesterday I was filing my saw and noticed that sweat was dripping off of my beard.
We are Danes, genealogically set up for cool weather, this shit is killing us.
Apart from that, it has been a good week.
We work from 4 AM to 2 PM, then go swimming and sit around having a good time with each other.
The owners of the place are really nice, the wife offered to cook dinner for us, since she was cooking for a horse riding camp and the folks helping with the harvest anyway.
She is a great cook, so that sure has given us something to look forwards to every day.
The forest hasn't seen a saw for two generation of owners.
It is full of wonderfully big trees, such a pleasure to see.
Only reason they are clear cutting the ash trees is that they will be worthless in another year.
This is truly the last big ash trees in Denmark, we are logging.
HUGE dinosaurs, some of them.
The two youngsters are filing it away so they can tell their grand kids about how grandpa killed the last giant ash trees back in the days.
I don't have any work pictures, because falling ash trees affected by the Hymenoscyphus fraxineus is dangerous as hell because the fungus weakens them, then they get attacked by Armillaria mellea.
When felling an Ash affected by A. m. one will often find that the hinge wood has become extremely fragile to the point where the hinge doesn't work at all.
Since Ash has a tendency to never grow vertically, that means they will fall in the direction they lean, fallers intentions be damned.
So we work a LONG way apart.
I do have some pictures of life in the logging camp, which is set up in the old castle park under the nicest Sequoia I have yet seen in Denmark ( We'll bring climbing gear next week and do an after work rec climb in it, just to prepare the youngsters for next year when we are going to climb the real ones again)
We'll be working down there for about a month and so far the temperatures seem to only get worse.
Scandinavia is having the worst drought ever.
Trees and bushes are dying and this years grain harvest is going to be a VERY small one.
We usually get about 100+ bales of wrapped hay from our field.
This year we got 39.
Fortunately I was fast in getting on the phone and finding some to buy, now there is none to be had.
Farmers and horse people like us are already starting to use the winter feed, since there is nothing on the pastures for the animals to eat.
I hope the extra hay I managed to buy will be enough to see us through, otherwise we may have to eat the horses.
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