benedmonds

Sounds like a business opportunity.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-54250282.amp

I love their marketing, a black jacket on a black background in the dark...

I "won" a raid jacket off ebay, paid  £250.

Is it good? Yes.

Is it worth £550? questionable. 

Do I need a £550 jacket for walking the dog? No.

What3words is great for condition surveys but 3m is not accurate enough for a development survey.

The anti reduction brigade should consider the long term consequences of not reducing trees. 

There is a place for reductions in urban areas and they can keep trees looking OK. 

I put in an application today to reduce a TPO'd sycamore that we have done previously in 2006,  2013, 2017 and now again in 2022.  I am pretty sure I recommended its removal in 2006 but the council would not go with that.  I have had another 4 days work since maintaining it.

A client has been asked for a complete tree radar survey.   I am not completely sure what use it will be as evidence of roots near the foundations are not evidence that they will cause damage. But before I reply and say it is pointless I thought I would check views on here. I  know a user Arboraeration invested in the kit. 

The extract from the survey says;

“A number of trees are within proximity of the house, there is evidence of root damage to the hard standing areas (front and rear),next doors garage and potentially damage to the house’s foundations. Therefore, a complete tree radar survey should be carried out by a specialist company

before purchasing the property”

2 hours ago, Mark J said:

3 hours ago, Doug Tait said:

The OP did specifically ask about wages for employees.

The original discussion has moved and the thread has wandered.  But the same applies discussing wages, half the people on here will quote what they pay a climber for an odd day compared to a company paying an employee PAYE. 

Discussing rates in here never ends well, I have tried many times over the years..  There seems to be huge variation depending on area.

Many are unable to tell the difference between a freelancer and employee and we are never comparing like for like.  

Many of the most vocal may not even be actually involved in tree work or do it as a side line where paying a one off climber for a day a large rate is not really comparable to a full time employee. Some of the rates quoted on here sound amazing and I know are unachievable in my area.

It is difficult to know how much your competitors charge but I spent all Friday afternoon calling back quotes we didn't win and asking why. Nearly all were because we we too expensive and for many jobs the winning quote was considerably less that ours. 

What I do know is that costs are rising, freelancers seem to be doing well at the moment and pushing up rates. As an employer this is making life difficult as it in turn is pushing up what employees expect. the risk is that if the busy times stop freelancers will be dropped and employers with high wage bills are going to struggle.

It would be nice if the companies at the bottom pushed up their rates .

23 minutes ago, maybelateron said:

 

For fixed cost quotes, if there is a job I want I may quote at £550 - 600 + VAT per day for three men, or £650 - 800 + VAT for four men.

For jobs I don't want I quote higher.

This is in the north midlands.

 

You should be able to push those day rates.  

Cheers for the feedback.

I am accused of being too negative by some of my employees, (I really do try to be positive when I can....)

I personally feel while not awful, there is plenty of room for improvement.

But wanted to be able to pass on some unbiased opinions that were not mine.

We have not had one of these for a while.  I have a freelancer who needs independent feedback. Comments please.

2 hours ago, difflock said:

But that is precisely the base politics of envy and spite and jealously that drives the leftist socialist Labour  movements.

Drag, or smash everyone down to a baser level, so we can all be equal.

How about we all aspire to be better instead?

And if parents are prepared to pay private school fees, on top of the taxes they are forcedto pay already for a dysfunctional state system, they are already freeing up a "free" place in a state school.

So a win-win.

And if the state system refuses to exclude deeply disruptive pupils, it can hardly be the fault of the private system, can it?

Absolute twaddle.  We need to bring state schools up, not bring public schools down.

You don't free up a place by going to a private school. Schools are funded per pupil so if a school doesn't have pupils it gets less funding.

What does happen, is those parents who care about educating their children (and can afford it) move their children to fee paying schools. Moving these (lets be honest) nice middle class families out of the state school reduces the proportion of nice families and that impacts the school making it a place where  is more difficult to achieve

2 hours ago, difflock said:

If anyone would care to properly count up the actual cost per pupil educated, state run against private run, it might well prove illuminating.

The average private school fee (not including boarding schools) was found to be £13,700 a year, compared with £7,100 in spending on each state school pupil.  According to the Guardian.

They are plain wrong unfair and should be banned. The few proxy bursaries are irrelevant in the larger scheme and removing the smart kids from the state sector doesn't help the state schools if anything it does the opposite.

They teach privaliged kids to think they are better than the lower classes. Old boys clubs mean stupid people end up in positions they should not be and make it way harder for smart people to achieve.

Teaching in them is much nicer as the kids can be booted out if they are naughty and their parents expect them to work hard. State schools are underfunded, many of the parents don't give a toss and few support the school.

Would I send my kids to one if I could afford it... Probably.. They are still wrong.

21 hours ago, difflock said:

Funny enough, and despite never attending a Public School, I am in favour of them retaining their charitable status. 

They definitely should NOT be charities imo. My son play as hockey at quite a high level and as Hockey is dominated by public schools, I have visited  a large number of schools over the last few years. The facilities at these schools is amazing, I was a secondary school teacher and worked as a supply teacher so know the state school system pretty well.  The public school system is so wrong and the fact they get a tax break by claiming to be charities is massivly unfair. 

My wife was putting together, a parcel of bedding, sleeping bags etc to send to the Polish social club to ship to the Ukraine. They are also after first aid supplies.

One of the things that really, really annoys me is that we have use by dates on items in the first aid boxes.  Anyway while the Arb association may mind if my bandage is out of date I don't suppose someone who actually needs a bandage will care. 

It could be a good time to update your first aid kits so they are good for another 5 years and send your old stuff off to where it is needed rather than having it end up in landfill.

8 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

What would you go for if you were only allowed one attachment mate?

We have not gone down the multiple attachment route with our Avant. I think about it often but find a simple set of pallet forks is fantastic. I have not used so can not be sure but not sure you need to grab often. 

Maybe an owner operator it would be more productive, but we already find when the  Avant is onsite the operator gets stuck to the seat and will often spend longer fannying about then doing it by man power.

The thought of loading the chipper and the likely damage if they had a grab and it would likely result in with  one man watching the stop bar while another rams it with the grab just frightens me.

17 minutes ago, tree_beard said:

A lighting tower is your friend

A little more detail would be nice

We have a few jobs to be undertaken at night for a Network rail shut down. 

What do people use to light the work site? Just head torches or is it worth hiring in some form of lighting?

One of my "favorites"  is the charity parachute jump.

All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.

He wanted to give his daughter a £150k job running the charity for a start. They sound bent as..

A chipper that looked very like our stolen chipper came up on eBay after being missing for many years. We had been paid so I guess it belonged to the insurance company, but I called the police local to where it was being sold and they weren't interested. I messaged the seller asking for serial numbers and they pulled it from eBay.

7 hours ago, patrickgalloway3 said:

If the trees are a threat to the railway there is a good chance network rail will remove them free of charge. Other contractors who might operate in that area are QTS and taziker.

They are NOT willing to remove FOC... Quite the opposite.. 

I will look up QTS and Taziker..

3 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

Slight derail Ben but did those trackside connies ever get done?

Yes, we did those after jumping through the many hoops including formal tractor training for someone who had been driving tractors for decades... These are same section of track probably less than a km away but definitely need more supervision...  Annoyingly the track was closed due to flooding for a number of weeks last year. 

Does anyone know who works track side in the East midlands (Derby way), I have a client with trees next to the track, including a fairly big dead ash.

I loath working with Railtrack, not sure I want to jump through the hoops including the £20,000,000 insurance, bird and bat surveys.

We have been trying to get an estimate for the supervision since well before Christmas and the chance of getting done before bird nesting is now impossible.  

It would be 3 days work in the day probably more at night depends how often Railtrack stop the work for trains.. 

Line blockages are available between:
Midweek nights 00:05 – 05:30 or Saturday nights 23:30 – 07:30

I am thinking the client might get a better value from someone who already work for Railtrack as they will be used to their way of working.

Railtrack won't tell me who their contractors are..?

[email protected]

Has anyone any experience of courses, training or resources for team leaders.

Excellent operatives do not necessarily make excellent team leaders and would like to give some of the team some tools to help them. 

In the past I have promoted guys to team leader and it has not gone well, some are just ineffective and productivity drops, but  some take the chance to sit back and watch others work, resort to shouting and threats to motivate or simply just leave as they can't cope with the responsibility. 

11 hours ago, treevolution said:

Even taken it through a few houses. 

Can't belive they got up to £12500, I managed to get mine for 8k. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think we paid £7,500 for our hb20. I was very shocked when I looked into buying a new one a year or so ago.