Bin Wagons and Trees. They don't mix.

[Matthew Arnold]

Bit of a random thread. But i spotted this damage on a Broad Leaved Lime on one of the sites i manage. Its been smacked once before by a local bin wagon. Needless to say the bin wagon came off worse as it knocked the holder off its mounts and put a big split in the corner. The limb is a big co-dominant stem that we left as its acting as a balancing beam too. I have attached images of the most recent damage. The second image is of the chunk of wood that was ripped off.

[combined tree services]

looks nasty !! sadly Bin lorrys do go with trees - well tree work , i have used one to chip into and found it to be amazing , as for this situation the bin lorry clearly won

[Matthew Arnold]

Most bin lorries go with trees. It just seems that around my neck of the woods they use em for impromtue crown lifting too. We take to take a big limb off further down as it had split after being thwacked very hard by a crane. It did take half of the bend with it though. Our first thought was why was the muppet trying to drive up there. Apparently he was following his Sat-Nav and it was saying to go up the access road to the site as it was a suitable route. You can just about get a fixed axle DHL lorry up there without taking the wing mirrors clean off. But generally bin wagons are very useful especially with massive quantities of wood chip as they can compact it into a block.

Edited October 19, 2010 by Matthew Arnold

[combined tree services]

lol , i would loved to have seen a picture of that . so how long before a letter comes from highways informing that the trees are not complying with the highways statitory minimum height regs ?

[Matthew Arnold]

We had a letter through the same week the crane smacked the limb. Almost to the day infact. When we got the letter we asked the highways authority to close the road so we could do the work safely. Or as a bare minimum have temp traffic lights set up. They closed the road for 3 days for us to carry out the work. I know it is goin to sound silly but we felled the trees that were causing a nuisance as they were all pretty much nackered anyway (growing on loose banks, cankered up top to bottom, severely ivy clad, some with I. hispidus,etc,etc). We dropped the ones that were dodgy and within falling and blocking distance of the road and tidied/pollarded the ones further back. We just had the Limes done last year too. So it looks like more is too be done.

[Matthew Arnold]

The limb has sadly been condemned due to unforseen rot caused by the last impact 2 years ago. No sign of fungi but there is brown rot in that section of the stem. And with it being over a fairly busy access road and on the edge of a car park the limb has to go.