Steve Bullman

For Kent-based arb contractors The Living Forest, the quality of the customer service they receive from suppliers is just as important as the quality of the machinery itself. And that’s why, when it comes to their choice of wood chipper, it’s GreenMech that wins the day. With three tracked and trailed machines currently on the fleet, their reliability - coupled with the back-up support received - sees further investment on the horizon. Operations Director Michael Lott purchased his first GreenMech chipper, a 16-23 trailed, 12 years ago. “From the very first contact we had with GreenMech, the approach was different – they let the machine do the talking and were invested in finding what was a perfect fit for us, not just what they wanted to sell.” With the 16-23 still out every day, tackling a mixture of domestic and commercial jobs, Michael added a sub-750kg Arborist 150 to the fleet three years ago, followed by a 16-23 SAFE-Trak model last year, supplied by David Guy at local dealer Burden Bros Agri Ltd. “These machines just don’t miss a beat. The nature of the work puts terrific amounts of stress on the inner mechanics but the GreenMech chippers are built to handle whatever is thrown at them. The Disc-Blade chipping technology for example means that if we’re on-site and debris or stones get fed through accidently, you can simply turn the blades to the next sharp edge and you’re up and running again.” Michael also purchased the dedicated sharpening unit, reducing the cost and downtime associated with getting blades re-sharpened. As with any large investment, chippers need to be running at full capacity to maximise their return, and not spend costly time side-lined waiting for spares or repairs. “With other chipper manufacturers we’ve sometimes had a three week wait for an engineer visit. On one occasion where we needed a replacement bolt for our 16-23 unit, one call to GreenMech and it arrived the very next day – we couldn’t believe it! Having them on the end of the phone and knowing that any queries can be answered so quickly makes it feel like we’ve got an extra man on our team – and that’s invaluable.”