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Labour shortage for windblown clearance


Guest Gimlet
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Guest Gimlet

I've read on a other forum I'm on that there is a labour shortage for clearing windblown timber in Scotland with reports of silly money being earned. Is this true? I'm struggling for work myself. I'd be more than happy to do this work all the time. Is there a market? I live in northest England rather than Scotland but there's no shortage of blown timber here that's still lying on the ground and come autumn there'll no doubt be a load more.

 

Is there a living here, if so, I'd like to get involved. Any advice appreciated.

 

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I know that the local (Highland/Moray) forestry has been shut down on most of its sites as far as selling wood, scavenging for wood and even in some cases cutting wood ... all because of health and safety issues after the storms. Just so many wind blown, hanging, unsafe trees and not enough people to clear this up.

 

I had planned to take around 15-20C/M direct from them and had arranged this pending access. But even in the last few weeks i've been informed they are still at a stand still, with now a huge backlog (no pun intended) waiting. No one is going in, so no wood will be coming out in the near future.

 

 

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Most of the big timber harvesting company's these days won't put hand cutters in to large windblown blocks due to the very high risk involved, they nearly all state machine harvesting of windblown these days ,and there is only so many machines so yes there will be a back log, when I so it on the news back in October I thought by the time they get that all sorted out most of it would be only chip wood, Hand cutting in windblown is graft and it's one of them if something goes wrong, it can go wrong badly with serious results, we used to do a fair bit fir Tilhill but nit that much after storm Arwen and they have 100s if acers to sort out but they just wait fir machines now, Not a lot if lads today with windblown tickets and the experience to do it either so that increases the risk factor dramatically in my book as cutting windblown is not for the faint hearted, 

Edited by spuddog0507
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Oddly enough I have struggled to find suitable wind blown sites for years to conduct training/assessments on, certainly in the SE.

Had loads of people wanting to train but no sites, been sending them over to Wales.

With the scale of the current situation, the only efficient way to clear the backlog is by machines, with hand cutters clearing out poor access sites and oversized butts.

I agree with Spuddog, by the time this timber is cut and extracted the majority will all be chip wood.

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20 hours ago, ScotlandsTrees said:

I’ve heard Northumberland’s got years worth of cutting to do.

We were in Northumberland on holiday a couple of months ago, what I saw is it's patchy. Some blocks are ok, some the trees were blown over with rootplate all in swathes, some blocks looked like the trees snapped off half way up the stem and just trees everywhere - more like a picture from WW1 than anything I've seen.

 

There are also loads of individual trees down in fields and roads, these have just been cut and cleared for access so presumably people will eventually tidy these up.

 

I imagine there's a shortage of labour for all the individual trees too, but also maybe a shortage of money to pay for the huge amount of work.

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I've heard reports from all over scotland that it is pretty patchy but where it has hit it can be pretty bad.

I heard borders/berwickshire hit pretty bad and done a wee bit throu past kelso/coldstream area, some woods flattened some barely touched.

1 we were in was not great timber even standing but atleast all blown the same direction.

 

To be honest now the wind blow will hardly be commercially viable for cutting now, even the stuff still living could start to have a bend in any saw logs.

So really all good for is chip, with the price of diesel now and the slower production just not be worth the hassle for either contractor or owner unless they need access.

God knows wot they will do with all the timber later on as it will only get worse until only good for going under tracks.

I also wouldn't believe too much about big money being offered, possibly right at the time to get access and power on but not now.

I done 4 hours on the way home for a power crew for nowt, only reward was getting my own power on to get 1st shower for 4 days, which was worth it,

 

As has been said most RAMS state no hand cutting of wind blow as normal now on most forestry sites, yet i usually still cut any i see if safe facing directly towards harvester, leave any other stuff.

And also depend son the driver some will ask u to leave a 3+m piece of chip on it so they can rip stump out easily

Unless they ask me to do it, harvesters can usually handle windblow quite well unil they get into real big stuff or big tension/compression esp if coming at it tip 1st

 

We were on a FC site a while back and they didn't know wot to do, the OS trees that were too big for harvester standing had blown down and then we weren't allowed to cut them blocking the whole site up.

Did they think they had shrunk now lying on the deck and the harvesters could manage them??

These were big trees taking 2-4 big logs off, 1 3.7 the harvester couldn't even lift it out the way was that meaty and forwarder barely got it on his bunk.

 

1 operator i was speaking too got sent up to aberdeenshire somewhere reckons he'll be on windblow for next couple of years on the same estate.

He's on a tigercat which is well suited to  windblow althou they have put a big 360 infront of him with shears on says it has helped his production massively ( far less blunt chains, bent bars)

 

Be work out there tidying up big house gardens and fields for farmers fields and it will be going on for years, but very dodgy work doing it on ur own ( even breaking down hardwood crowns) and been lying a while now so no great panic over them so ur not going to be charging fortunes

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Guest Gimlet

I wonder whether the supposedly big money paid in Scotland might have been something to do with renewables installations. A lot of that going on.

 

I will advertised for windblown clearance this winter. But as has been said, will anyone want to pay for it.

 

I know of some very big beech that's blown down in a an inaccessible churchyard and the church committee wants it gone, but you can't get a vehicle in so you'd have to log it or plank it in situ. You'd have though the committee would have said, if you can get it, you can have it. We just want it cleared up. 

But now they've had plankers in there measuring it up they suddenly got it into their heads that it must be worth a fortune and they want a cut. They seem to think that someone's going to go in there expending about a week's worth of labour and diesel (the plank cutter wants £300 a day), then pay for the transportation to get it out of there, store it for two or three years to season it, then try and find a buyer that may never materialise having paid the church up front. It's never going to happen. it'll either be there till it rots or villagers will go in there snipping bits off for firewood with someone possible getting seriously hurt when all the easy stuff's been scavenged and they try to tackle some very big or under tension when they don't know what they're doing.  

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