Sean, i agree wholeheartedly that piecing a tree out is often the easier and quicker way, rather than doing a massive repair job on the yard. This customer had a bid that reflected no damage, and that's why i got the job. He's an operator, so all he does every day is run heavy equipment (crane guy matter of fact), so lawn repair was his expectation. Come to find out he's going to be building a 40 x 60 right where i put it, so he said not to even worry about it. He just bought the house, is gonna tear the garage off to get concrete trucks to his new building, then demo the house and build new. So the damage I'm doing is absolutely nothing compared to what's coming
I originally asked for a mini skid, but they were out. I then just asked about a mini x, and it was not even 50 bucks more for a machine that weighs over twice what the mini skid would have been. Since i had the large trunk sections to deal with, i figured i could roll them on the trailer using the blade and the arm to lift. I would also be able to sort debris easier (no chipper on this one) and do less damage, so that was my thinking. My buddy uses a mini x exclusively, rarely chips just slices stuff in his dumpsters which he also transports the equipment with. He's got grapple saws mounted on them, so watching him work almost makes you want to cry at how easy he can blow through stuff that would take me forever.
The original equipment rental fell thru (they shipped the wrong trailer), so this time i ended up with the mini skid and grapple. If i was chipping it would be useless for the brush, but I'm doing the diced lettuce approach that everyone starts off doing (chipper needs an injector). Worked out pretty good really, this pic is half of the entire trees brush in one load, with logs on top to hold everything in place. Shove it in a pile, dice it up, shove more dice more, load in trailer and dice again. Using a big saw it really doesn't take too long.
New guys starting out and people who lurk and don't post yet, this is a completely ok way to operate. Yes you will make more of you own everything, but renting lifts and equipment is completely ok too. Every construction company on earth rents equipment all the time, some multi billion dollar companies only rent. You still need to know what you are doing, and actually need to be even better at estimating time, but you can do this too. I can handle small to medium trees with stuff i own, but on jobs like this, renting is better than killing yourself. If you can line up multiple jobs and talk them into cutting it down one day then removing material the next, you can often make more per hour with less effort renting than grunting stuff into a pickup bed and climbing.