John Shutler

don’t stress about transport, having a can do attitude goes a long way. my first tree job i used to ride my bike to the station, get a train, then ride to the yard. don’t stress about having a car or moped, just work towards it. personally if you can manage without a moped then save up for a car and some lessons and you’ll be sorted. turning up on time and getting stuck in goes way further than having motorised transport at 16 imo

i agree josh, there’s definitely some Oak in there. value is a funny old thing, to a bunch of tree men the value paid is over the top, to the homeowner who now has a driveway full of timber maybe it seems more reasonable irrespective of the time and cost to process it.

the n174 is a great tractor. i’ve been running botex roof mounts for 10 years and wouldn’t look anywhere else but everyone has their own preferences yes feed the heizohack with the roof mount

n174 with roof mount for picking up timber, small enough that it’ll sneak in to collect timber or put the heizo or 8.5 tonne winch on the back. does 57k t234 is mostly used for pulling big trailers round or the roto which weighs 18 tonne plus the trailer and really needs the extra power

I must admit I'm not sure how it relates either

I can't comment on either of those particular machines but when I upgraded my belt driven predator to a hydraulically driven one (cutting head) id honestly say I wouldn't go back to belt driven.

succinctly put mick 🤣 (edit, no message included)

its funny because I'm 41 now and after 20+ years climbing I think my experience and abilities can be utilised without being the one up the tree 🤣 That said I do look back on the days when I was a purely a climber and it was far simpler than my work now.

and mine

I move mine with one of my tractors and a low loader trailer. I live and work in the new forest though so might be a bit different round your way

you won't go far wrong with engcon (though all the brands are much of a muchness). The service from Engcon UK is fantastic. Ive had my latest engcon for 3 and a half years without a single problem, got to site today to find an error code and a non responsive engcon. Few phonecalls back and forth with ideas on how to get it sorted to keep me working and replacement parts sent out (pressure sensor and a new cable) today to be with me in the morning. you can't ask for more than that IMO.

it depends whether you can see beyond that. I'm on my second machine with a tilt rotator and wouldn't go back

Exactly that. The reason I bought the GMT was that I would have the ability to pick stuff apart and not swamp the guys on the ground. There's nothing worse IMO when massive bits (particularly when doing crane work) land on the ground and it takes ages to get them cleared. I'm all for slow and steady. I avoided the westtech because I believed that with the reduced manipulation at some point you'd be forced to take a larger section.....and then the inevitable happens also why I generally avoid working for other contractors as they might have underpriced or not really understood the process so get urged to hurry up etc

It really does open up the wider debate about head types and base machines etc. I know that if I'm within 12m out the side of my merlo 40-26 il be hard pushed to cut something big enough with the GMT 035 that would overload the machine. 13-14m away I need to be bit mindful of size (and a number of other factors) and at 15m I've got little to no capacity. There are some very complacent/dangerous operators out there in a variety of different machines who either don't know better or just dont care

its a grapple saw ticket but its not. id love to know more of the finer details before committing to paying for the course. in the 2-1/2 years I've owned my roto and grapple saw I've learnt more than could be passed on in a two day course. Unfortunately this seems like box ticking for box tickings sake but until there is a better solution then this sort of course will have to suffice.

agreed, our little machine just goes to smaller cutting and stacking jobs where a chainsaw operator and digger driver can get through a lot of work. The shear beneath an engcon on our 7.5 tonne machine can get through a huge amount of 4-10 inch material in a day

if it’s timber going back to the yard we cut 2.5m lengths. we can get two bays of 3m on our timber trailer but loading can be awkward. some hauliers that buy our softwood want it in 3m lengths so we oblige if asked

it’s good isn’t it. a job like that you’d usually have a truck load of shit to take away at the end and you always end up with bits left in front of the heizohack so for the sake of less than an hour with the mulcher it’s worth doing we even tipped a truck load of rake up from another job on that site and mulched it with all the shit that was already there

I had a flail mower on my old boxer it was pretty pathetic

southern fried partridge sub

it all depends on what work your doing. when i bought my boxer back in 2011 we were doing a lot of back garden jobs and moving the timber with a 3.5 tonne truck. you could sneak it though a garage or down the side of a house and remove decent sized chogs or rings. it worked particularly well for me as i’d not long bought a grcs so the size of stuff we were rigging had increased. fast forward 12 years and our work (and setup mog, tractors and merlo roto) has changed, we do a lot more clearance, woodland, estate, and local authority works. access is less of an issue and a 2 tonne digger with rotating grab is out most days of the week. i’ve got a 7.5tonne machine for larger jobs as well. the digger is great as imo it’s far better for stacking than a little skid steer and that means we can stack and leave or stack for the heizohack. we’ve a small timber trailer that goes behind it so if we can pull out a fence panel we can sneak into a garden if we need to. if i think about the last 4 or 5 years there’s only one or two jobs when a loader type machine has been better for that job and on those two occasions i’ve borrowed a mates avant.

Portable Winch PCW5000 | Winches & Accessories UK WWW.WGMLTD.CO.UK Superb Value - Check out Portable Winch PCW5000 - Experience Excellent Service from Winchester Garden... owned one of these for the best part of 10 years. never pulled a tree over with it or really skidded much with it either but used it a lot on technical rigging jobs back in the day to drift lowered sections over obstacles or back to a drop zone in conjunction with my grcs. we mainly use it now when we have to winch stuff off islands in lakes to pull the 9 tonne winch cable back over to the island for the next pull

been out with the mulcher a couple of times recently. don’t really like getting into heavy mulching jobs really but i don’t mind a bit of woodland rhody work if there’s space to get in without beating the tractor up. generally get in with a little 360 at the same time and windrow any stuff that i can’t easily get. also it’s really handy to have just for a final tidy round on clearance type jobs as well IMG_9932.MOV FullSizeRender.MOV

a rake would be invaluable on that job. Ive got a brush that goes on either my 1.8 tonne or 8 tonne machine and its been a game changer

my mate bought a very similar house in the new forest, the guy who lived there approached my mate and said he didn't know what to to about the mess. my mate told him knock 20k off the asking price and you can walk away and leave it. we were doing the site clearance and the guy left the house immaculately presented, got into the cleanest Toyota Corolla I've ever seen with a suitcase and left the absolute disaster behind him