Utility or Domestic

[hiluxstihl]

I'm struggling to understand the meaning of "tasty" in this post

 

more professional.

utility is very much clearance before appearance

[Mr Oz]

Im just about to make a move on to utility after doing domestic or 4+ years some of the coments here worrying me little.company im planing to move is a big utility firm with lots of opportunities so seems a better option to what i have now for me to progress but worried might be doing more bush work then trees

[Couldyajust]

Im just about to make a move on to utility after doing domestic or 4+ years some of the coments here worrying me little.company im planing to move is a big utility firm with lots of opportunities so seems a better option to what i have now for me to progress but worried might be doing more bush work then trees

 

Utility is more scrubby stuff and overgrown hedges rather than trees. Depending on the company you work for you may be put under pressure to butcher as much as you can as fast as you can to get clearance rather than doing a tidy job on anything. You should gain experience of difficult trees & rigging though.

 

I had zero job satisfaction doing line clearance and railway work but did gain experience doing it then switched to alternating between hand cutting in the woods and domestic both of which I prefer and that is primarily what I still do now although I also do a bit of strimming, hedgecutting, agricultural & digger work too as you have to be flexible to guarantee all year round work in this area if you are self employed.

[CJM]

It's what you make of it, plenty of trees need climbing.

For someone that's leaving collage and wanting to become a decent arborist I would recommend that you stick to private work.

If you fancy the money and opportunities go for the utilities

[Djvicke1]

In my experience Utility arb is good to learn and gain experience but it is very different to Domestic in both the nature of work you're doing and the mentality you're surrounded by as there is a greater emphasis on speed and production.

 

However, the biggest difference I found is that on utilities you're rarely doing big removals or any kind of rigging, instead you're usually climbing a tree to take off the regrowth and a couple of small limbs and the rest of the time, (about 70% of the time) you're cutting thorn hedge and overgrown scrubbage. As a beginner though at least you're using a saw every day and not having to do bits of grounds maintenance to keep busy.

 

We used to envy Domestic companies seeing them do large removals using rigging on nice open trees in a nice clean garden with nice equioment because when you do occasionally get a big removal to do it's an ivy covered monster with no central stem and no good anchor point in a boggy woodland amidst thorn and brambles, so it was almost a treat for the whole team if we came across a nicely formed oak in a field or even in a thorn hedge

 

Bottom line, I'd say utility arb is a good place to gain experience on the saw and confidence climbing but most of the good utility climbers I know end up going over to domestic.