hourly rate for climber

[Craig.]

Sorry for the derail, but he`ll have to have time in the seat to keep the blue card when he gets it, or some one to sign the log book for him.

As others have said all trades have got more people than jobs, best of luck to your son in law what ever he does.

[tilly]

To be honest Hedgesparrow, if he has no tickets at all at the moment, then he would find it very hard to get into any tree firm. As a minimum most firms would expect you to have CS30/31 before they'd give you sniff off a job.

 

Also he would need to have passed these before he even attempts to go for his climbing tickets. Once he has his climbing tickets it could another 2-3 years before he his confident & competent enough to be considered a half decent climber capable of handling most tree jobs in most circumstances. There is no fast track in this game, so he would need to be prepared for the long haul.

 

If he is serious, then his best bet would be to gain his basic CS chainsaw tickets, then try and get into an already established tree outfit, prove his worth, willingness to learn and hope that they pay for him to take his climbing tickets to help him progress forward.

 

Even with his basic tickets, without a proven track record of work experience arb work he probably could'nt expect much more than minimum wage to begin with (maybe £7 per hr) and even as a climber with 2/3yrs experience it may not rise much above £12 per hr.

 

Working as a freelance climber, well there are probably a lot of skilled competent climbers on here, with years of experience, that are only making £120 per day (£15 p/hr). But you may not have work every day of the week, every week of the year, you've got all your kit, PPE, fuel, transport, taxes, other overheads etc. to be paid for from that. A good climber can make a living, just, but he won't be driving a Ferrari!

 

He also needs to bear in mind that the colleges these days are churning out an ever growing number of wannabe tree surgeons, with tickets and qualifications chasing a finite number of positions. It is a very crowded market place these days, giving potential employers a lot more choice, but they in turn have more competition from other tree companies which means that payscales generally across the board are kept depressed.

 

You only have to look at some of the threads on this forum that competetion for jobs in a saturated market can be fierce, even some of the college boys end up touting their services for free as a trial just to get their foot in the door. I'm not suggesting its impossible, but your son in law if he decides to go for arb work needs to be prepared that it can a long hard haul, for less than sensational rewards at the end of it.

 

Wish him all the best for whatever he decides to do. Best bet would be to train to be a banker or senior civil servant, that way he can make life a misery for everyone else, whilst pocketing a massive anual salary and be rewarded for incompetence and failure with a big fat bonus cheque each year. I sometime wish I had.......... but then I hug a tree and feel better.

 

Good speech there Rick:thumbup1: