treequip

I am with Rupe on this one. It certainly sounds like a bad case of milking off. If it is milking it is worrying is that the supplier didn’t recognise it as such and advise accordingly notwithstanding that it’s taken weeks to sort out.

The last saw I had stolen went out of the back of a Discovery while we were a matter of yards away. The scrote grabbed it and ran like an Olympic sprinter. As he vanished into the alleys of the scrote estate I found myself wishing the fuel tank were fitted with a tiny semtex charge and a rc detonator linked to my mobile phone. Perhaps Santa will bring me a set.

It isn’t just other companies that advocate avoiding fly posters and door knockers. Both UK industry bodies have made those noises in the past and in one form or another, to this day. Since there have historically been problems with that area of the industry it is understandable and unfortunate that the industry has taken the stance it has against it

Well I am willing to be convinced, I have done newsletters which worked well, so I am willing to accept that good leaflets can be effective. The outlets you use to get them to your target audience is another matter. The problem is that the first posting asks for “cheap leaflets” and since we all seem to agree that bespoke quality is the way to go……..

You are putting words in my mouth, I didn’t say they don’t work, Martin said that What I said was there are better ways of spending your advertising budget. As an opener for a cold call they are an effective marketing tool but they are traditionally used by people who get work by “any means they can”.

You mentioned door knocking. The guidance says door to door but hey, don’t get all offended, Stay with your flyers if you want. I am simply pointing out that there are ways of getting business that aren’t associated with the tarnished end of the industry I too get plenty of junk mail, I never buy from it but the main problem is the nasty glossy paper doesn’t burn well and is pants for lighting the fire.

I hope not, they eat bacon sarnies and drink beer as well, you have to draw the line somewhere

Chill out chap, don’t type angry you make mistakes. I have been involved in arboriculture at many levels for the last 2 decades and seen many flyers. I have yet to see one that wasn’t either from a pikey or looked professional. You have already said the flyers you did were ineffective, (is that your idea of marketing skild?) Flyers are traditionally the domain of pikeys and you are going to have to go a long way to separate yourself from them. Rather than a flyer why not a newsletter? It works for big players like Bartletts. They can be sent to previous and prospective customer, pdf’d for a website or even stuffed into a letterbox. Garden centres and similar retail outlets will usually give them out free as customer information and often gets you a friend in the outlet. You can fill an A4 single fold newsletter with info gleaned from the web and a few “news” articles about your company activities. Press releases also bring dividends and they are free. Adverts in local papers usually bring 2 or 3 solid leads per issue depending on your area. BTW this from industry guidance Be wary of individuals who go door-to-door offering tree work. Most reputable companies are too occupied to solicit work in this manner.

Are you serious? Flyers are the territory of the pikey There are better ways of spending your advertising budget Andy

Hang on a mo, before we flog the apprentice at dawn lets look at the OP. It says quite clearly I even put a few saws in front of us for added ‘effect’ and a quick look at the picture shows the unfortunate saw nestled quite neatly under the radius of the stem. Now I for one would not expect to find a saw there and while the apprentice may have a little blame to carry, the person doing the set dressing also has a case to answer. Andy

If you quoted the job and the client added to it after that, you are entitled to invoice pro rata for any extra works. If the job was bigger than you quoted for then you are at the mercy of the client’s discretion. The best lessons are the ones that cost you money. This comes down to not having standard terms and conditions or better yet, a written contract. It’s always worth taking the time to put some paperwork in place. Andy

Like I said your model is flawed. Firstly it’s statistically limited, very limited. Then you have drawn your sample from a forum that probably has a large bias towards climbers. It certainly can’t be described as assessed as balanced. Then we have the sampling interval, 2 days is hardly a reasonable opportunity for people to respond. You can draw conclusions if you like but what you have here is a straw poll of this forum. I wouldn’t take it as a guide to the industry as a whole. It’s not legally possible for an employer to set up a system of work that will “lumber you with all the liability for an injury on yourself”. Andy

Have a look on ebay. Lots of suppliers and a wide geographical spread. Andy

I don’t know where you get the 40% from but basing any opinion on the results of a straw poll in an internet forum can’t serve as a statistically accurate model. Similarly your experience of accidents can’t be used to make an accurate model. Accidents and near misses are memorable occurrences. You notice them but the safe jobs are unmemorable. The other flawed area is exposure to risk. Your average arborist is around or operating saws for several hours per day. Your average squadie doesn’t have the same exposure to bullets.

Well we certainly got the old favorites and plenty of ones that despite 20 years in the job I haven’t heard. Many thanks to all who entered Here are the winners First place ScottF I like trees but they block the Sky signal getting onto my hideous dish nailed to the side of my house which in turn stops Rupert Murdoch's beams of stupidity from turning my brains into a foul-smelling pot of slurry. And that, my friends, is why I like trees... First runner up Adansonia I like trees but people are starting to accuse me of being a-bor Second runner up Richard Allinson I like trees but......my family needs food and a roof over thier heads. There is a thin line between ethics and survival If the winners could PM me with an address I will get the prizes in the post

The adverse possession (squatters rights) thing is bunkum Firstly none of us owns any land. Technically it all belongs to the crown and we “land owners” only have “title” to the land. In order to gain adverse possession (squatters rights) you need to have occupied the land to the exclusion of others for a decade or so (it varies for registered and unregistered land). You can’t just say to all and sundry, “that’s my land now”, you have to go to the LR to get title registered. If someone claims adverse possession on registered land the LR contact the registered owner and ask them if they wish to object. You simply object and that’s pretty much an end to the claim. It’s a little different for unregistered land but not to difficult to rebut a claim. So there goes the adverse possession issue. Notwithstanding the adverse possession issue “Johnny Ice cream” still entered land he didn’t have title to and felled the trees. Even if he were successful in a claim for adverse possession now it won’t alter the fact that at the time he didn’t own the land. The easy way to find out who has title to what and where boundaries lie (for registered land) is to download the title deeds from the Land Registry (LR) for a couple of quid a go. If you get the plan with it don’t expect sub meter GPS accuracy on the drawing. The LR won’t have anything to do with boundary disputes and you can’t scale the plan because a pencil line on a 1:2500 plan is about a foot wide on the ground depending how hard the draughtsman pressed on. All the LR will say is that a boundary is a line of “notional thickness”.

This is correct, there is no law requiring proof of training or competence but the HSE do say that anyone operating a saw should be adequately trained and competent which makes some form of training and assessment mandatory. NPTC has its critics but it is the market leader unless anyone fancies re inventing the wheel? Andy

Whether you go to Ireland or not the weather is likely to be a lot cooler than you are used to. I hear that you colonials have developed a gland that secretes factor 30 while those of us left in the cold wet mother land have children with webbed toes. The biggest shock for an antipodean will be the rain, or rather the quantity of it. Here in the northern hemisphere the best way to tell the difference between summer and winter is to measure the temperature of the rain. So bring warm and waterproof clothing and expect to get wet now and again, anything else is a bonus. On the up side Ireland does poses Guinness which if taken in adequate quantities will make you oblivious to all of the above. Andy

Let’s not forget that we are talking about a light entertainment programme and not a documentary. What you saw was the producers version of things. At the PACE interview the tree owner clearly had his story right, “some big kids did it and ran away” The tree owner claimed to have hired a man he didn’t know to remove a branch and the work happened while he was away. If he sticks to his story there is little the planners can do as I don’t think their training extends to beating confessions out of people with a rubber hose.

That’s bad but it’s not as bad as the HSE lumping everyone who has an accident cutting a tree as a tree surgeon. I recon the majority of them ought to be in the landscaper plonker got out of his depth and came unstuck. Ho Hum

Now swithc to 4 and wathch the bloke making wine the "biodynamic" way. Mad as a box of frogs

Did you see the chap cutting with his visor up and no other eye protection?

PM me with an email address and I will send you one Andy

Taken in isolation as a one line statement it definitive and cannot be defined further. Taken in context it is part of a shaggy dog story type of joke that I use on first aid courses, the punch line of which is that a severed head shouldn’t be put in a polly bag in case the casualty suffocates. Looks like it didn’t work in text. Andy

Tree work is a high risk occupation and everyone should have a working knowledge of first aid. Severed appendages are not uncommon. The preferred course of action for dealing with severed body parts with is to pack the item in plastic with something cool. Care should be taken with small parts like fingers as frost damage sets in quickly. The only exception to the above rule is the head. Severed heads should not be put in plastic bags in case the casualty suffocates.