Rupe

I think its getting that way now!!

Any help appreciated. Should I change to yellw jackets? Or are there other version of green teeth that will fit my machine and be better than waht I have already?

My tree boat is the comfiest nights sleep you wil get outside!! Better than a tent anyday.

I have a vermeer 252, and need new teeth, so am thinkign about going along and getting the yellow teeth set up. What is the advantage of these teeth? Are they the same as green teeth and can any tooth of this type be used once you have the new pockets fitted? I get the idea that they are reversable, but vermeer told my they are the same price per tooth as the conventional superteeth, i.e. about £6 each. So I don't really see what the advanteges are. Can anyone help me out with soem advice, or a link if its already been discussed before.

What's a derail?

Its beaten hands down by the Cinch!

If you bought a spiderjack, you would then immediatly need the ropeguide in order to get the most out of the spiderjack. So, get the ropeguide first, its great with any hitch set up( although soem are better than others and prussik is probably the worst) then spiderjack later if you wanted. A spiderjack on its own would be a waste of money IMO.

I'v egot an iPod hard wired into the car, its accessable through the glove box, but it stays there and stays fully charged and available whenever, and controlled from the stereo, with track lists etc on the stereo little screen. Findign tracks is not that easy but possible, random play is safer!!

ANd the chocolate is at the checkout!! (most have stopped that now).

Ropeguide is the most worthwhile kit they make IMO. The rest is ok, but fancy.

I know !!

Thats not corruption, it may be stupidity. Buying work is very common in many businesses, but it has to be very managed, i.e. you have to be able to qualify the returns you get from it (if any). The only really bad thing about it seems to be when folk do it just to stay busy, that makes no sense and is not the same thing necessarily. Supermarkets call it loss leaders, so they pay some of your pint of milk but they know you'll buy enough other stuff that the overall profit they make from you justifies the loss on the milk. Of course supermakets excell at this kind of thing and I doubt many tree companies truely have the ability to manage loss leaders in the same way.

Hama, I've not met you but I from what I know of you on here I would certainly say that you seem a bit wasted as a tree cutter. But at the end you say this industry is about trees and nothing more, but I think its less about tree than that even. Its about people and trees, but people are payign the bills so its about people really, and what they want (or don't want) from their trees. The only difference IMO between an Arborist and a tree surgeon is that an ARB will take the tree into account when working for a person, the tree surgoen will tend to just take the person into account i.e. the money! But most Arbs spend some if not all of there time working for people who really just need a tree surgeon. When dismantling stuff, I am not an arb, I'm just a cutter, with skills (oh, no semi skilled) that the client requires to perform a task. Its very rare, (I mentioned only 2 customers earlier) that my customers say "you do what you think is best Rupe" In those cases I feel like an Arb, but mostly I'm just a simple tree cutter. I don't like the term tree surgeon anyway as its non sensical.

Very true. The first bit that I deleted was a bit complicated for me, even though I started it!! Bu the last comment is spot on, they are nice to look at and our industry revolves around that, good tree surgeons/arbs make trees nice to look AND live with.

Maybe he turned them both down and that sent them over the edge!

Yes, sad story!

do what i do and never answer the phone and only call back folk who leave a message. THats why I don't advertise my mobile, I never answer it anyway. Well except today when it was vodafone, except it wasn't but anyway...........

Had a call today from vodafone askign if i had recieved my new handset recently. I knew it was a scam so I asked them to identify themselves as vodafone, the indian accent on its own was not enough for me!! Anyway, they put the phone down straight away. If anyone else gets cold calls from vodafone, ask them to prove themselves to you, they should be able to give you and account number and postcode, but they can't because that is the infomation they are trying to get from you!

true or not, that has nothing to do with tree surgery in the urban environment. What we do to trees in back gardens is not managing vegatation worldwide on massive scales and has no effect positive or otherwise on the global environment, bad tree work is no worse (environmentally) than good tree work, so it does not matter what we do. And any pretense that we have some kind of global importance to trees as whole is, well, pretentious. I'm not saying that we wouldn't suffer in this country without trees, we would. but the vast majority of trees here are not touched by us arbs, the ones we touch are a minor fraction of the countries trees, so our work does not effect the environment as whole. We just do tree work to keep people happy, its no more important than that, and as an industry we are veiwed as not that impotant tradesmen doing the work that people want us to do for their benefit. We shoudl get over ourselves and get on with it rather than tryign to convince people otherwise.

We work for people not trees. That sums it up really. I have very few customers, well 2 that I can think of straight away, who have tree work done to make the trees look nice, i.e. the removal of deadwood and some thinning, just for appearance sake, no h&s and no light issues just for visual amenity. They are both very rare individuals, they possibly have too much money, but the work is great. After thats it just satisfyign waht people want and doign it easier than everyoen else so that the cheapest price can also be the highest hourly/day rate.

Maybe he was being abused by his employer??

Me niether! But I bet if we take into account traveling to the jobs etc. our carbon footprint is far worse than the trees (we are working on) are good, if that makes sense.

Skyhuck, I wonder how long you can use a chainsaw up a tree in pruning operations, to offset the amount of oxygen created by that tree in a year with carbon dioxide from the saws exhaust??

I think we all like our shiny toys and stuff, and some of it is useful at work, but I think the time for impressing is at the quoting stage, and using long words to make someoen look dumb is not a good idea. If you get the job then you have already achieved what you need to and there is no further need to impress other than to carry out what you have said you would do. The chances are you were the cheapest quote, so you need to get the job as quick as possible to ensure that you are earning more per hour for that job than the pikeys would have done, otherwise you might as well leace it to them. What i was gettign at is that it doesn't matter to the customer the technical details of the work, if they think it just climbing trees then let them think that, if they want the top of their pointless tree cut off then let them have that, and if they want to remove perfectly good trees than thats fine too. Just give them what they want and you will get good referals. As said above it all boils down to raking up anyway. The 70% of the public that you mention aren't worth working for anyway, its the other 30% that already know a bit about what makes a good tree company that you need to be aiming at. But chances are, if you are being asked to quote then you must be in that 30% bracket already, the pikeys see to all the other work and those customers are welcome to them.

I was being complimentary, honest. If that the original lightboard then maybe its fine as it is, just looked like some effort had gone inot replacing it (another complimnet there perhaps) Gaurds over the light would probably do. I made some brackets and put mine under the tipper body so don't need to worry about them at all now. I also just cut off the old bent light board.