DN22 Gardening

if the tree officer isn't available get him/her to email stating the TPO status of the garden. get the client to email stating the boundaries of the garden. get the thing cut down !!!!!!!

there's a shortage of self employed groundies round here. all anyone wants is to come on the books if you're a small employer like us, self employed subbies enable us to expand without having to comit to full time employees. then, if or when the extra work becomes more regular, you can take ful time staff on. ideally it'll be the subby who helped you in the first place

sorry winchman, i've got to disagree with you. a few years ago in a former life, i worked driving HGV's for a very large transport Co. each division was run by one of the owners sons, ours would often come out with us for a beer at night. one evening, after a particulaly bad couple of days, i was moaning in his ear about how much i'd been messed about going from here to there with next to bugger all on the back of the truck. his response was that as long as my truck had made just £1 profit, per day, his old man was happy the theory being that if each of his 3000 trucks made a profit, even of only £1, then that equates to £3000 a day, or, as he put it, a F$%*kin good drink for my dad !!!!! as long as wages, fuel, depretiation, and all other costs are met, any profit is a good one. its a fact that our industry is undervalued, i only wish i could charge for hedge cutting what i can charge for tree work, it takes the same, or similar equipment, the same chipper, the same chip truck, fuel, etc but i know if i try to charge the same rates, i'd be laughed off the premises

Chris, give your client the choice. They won't bite your head off if you give them one price for doing the job how you'd want it done, and another budget price for a lower standard job. Tree surgery is seen as an expensive service for very little return. If your boiler is broken, you need a plumber. If you want building work, you need a builder Trees grow all by themselves, they dont need us We went to a large very posh house this winter which had a small orchard in the back which hadn't been touched for years. Now, i dislike pruning apple trees, its BORING !!! and there were about 20 odd, all between 10 and 15' high. We gave the guy 3 different quotes, with vastly different prices. First price was to spend 5 days thinning them all out and reducing. Second price was to 'butcher' the lot And the third price was a mixture of both. When the guy asked why such a big difference in prices, i explained the time that could be taken on each tree, and the implications of this. He gave us the job, although we wern't the cheapest, because of my 'honesty' It wasn't honesty, it was just me explaining my pricing structure !!!

thats a yes sorry

did a fair bit off ebay this year split logs rings soft and hard poles saw logs it all adds value to a job

if worcs wuss is happy to do the job, fair play to him. there's no point everyone whinging about how he's devalueing the industry... he got the price he wanted, the client got the job done. both won we all go about people undercutting each other ( me included ) yet alot of us use Justin for our saws, why, cause he's the cheapest. i was bitching yesterday. i'd priced a friend of a friend 30mts2 of turfing at £250, yet was beaten by a price of £90 (the turf was £50 and a ton and half of topsoil at £30 ) i was telling the story to a mate of mine in the builders merchants where i was buying a load of fencing. i'd spent 10 minutes the day before, arguing with the merchant to lower his price on the said fencing hypocrate, me, never...

if only one then ms341, they've loads of power, light, and there's bags of them on the second hand market

have you got a link to a website ?

just ordered some buddy, or tried to, they don't do 5.2mm tried the oregon ones i'll let you know how we get on with them Dave in rainy Leverton

know what you mean mozza, i once got through a brand new 15" chain in one day. we should start a "railway contractors helpline" to help people get over the trauma no need to appologise mr varty, if by one man band you mean i own the co. then you're right, if you mean just me and a dog, then you're wrong had 4 subbies as well as my own staff at one point, not nice when it comes to payday. lol run two teams of my own plus whatever subbies are required at the time reducing roadside hedgerows today and hit everything from iron bars to an actual iron !!!! but then again, i do need to get my eyes checked

sorry but the current batch of stihl files only last maybe 3/4 sharpens per file, then you may as well rub it with your finger. as for all the comments of "you're using too many files" whats everybody basing their assumptions on ??? do you know how many cutters i have ? cutting conditions ? etc same for asking if my staff have 'sticky fingers'.. i trust my staff 100%, they handle cash, have keys to both my house and premises... this forums getting far to opinionistic......in my opinion :lol:

Hi all, currently getting through maybe 10/12 5.2mm files a week. where does everyone get theres from ?? get my chains from chains direct, but cant find a decent online supplier thanks in advance Dave

just be aware that using a fleet policy will NOT continue your no claims discount. we run two crewcab tippers, a VW caddy, and a Nissan 4x4. its way cheaper for us to have individual policies the transits average £500/£550 each the caddy £300 the nissan £300 the cheapest quote we've had for a fleet policy is just over £2k insurance no claims is a rip off, they ask you about your claims history, as well as your no claims discount. they have it both ways, they should either be insuring you or your history rant over

Why (quite correctly) ????? there's too much 'wheres theres blame theres a claim' IMO what happened to common sense ? i'd personally hang 90% of claimants if the logs too big, cut the thing, if you happen to cut your leg off while cutting it, tuff, you should be more careful. someone tried to break into our sheds last wednesday, i managed to scare them off before they got too much, but in the process was threatened with a knife. when the police came and took my statement she stated that if i had injured one of the scroats while defending myself they would have a good case against me !!!!!!! WTF is the world coming to... rant over

been out n reduced a cherry, then crown lifted a S/Birch, only a small climb. the other tem have finished yesterdays job (rained off) and done a bit of a garden tidy. all wet through so sacked it at one o'clock. showered and changed now so all good

lol he was ace near birmingham one saturday night, he says to us, if you can make that mile marker by the end of the shift theres a £50 bonus in it. worked like billyo all saturday night, ramming stuff through the tractor mounted jensen. ended up 10' from the marker with 20 mins till the end of the shift when he pulls us all off !!!!!! he was a prize p***k but if he worked for you you'd love him. did you ever work the Newton Abbot site ? he used to ring me direct everytime it was on. every time i said no. there was no way i was driving 8hrs doing a shift on track, then driving 8hrs home. and all for £175 he used to threaten me with the sack, crap jobs, everything. lol he used to get so wound up, i've spent more Friday evenings waiting outside his office like an errant schoolboy waiting for the headmaster. lol happy days

we've just been informed by a member of a nearby LA that to tender for his local schools contracts we have to be VAT registered ????????? good job we are dunno if theres a list though Skyhuck, i'll ask and let you know

ahhhhhh...........the joys of working saturday nights..... i'd almost forgotten one of my fondest memories was working at Stourbridge. i was up a mahoosive ivy covered oak, at the top of a cliff. middle of winter it had been raining / sleeting all night. then the skys cleared and the frost set in......... when i had eventually trimmed the three branches that wanted doing and came down i found my bottle of orage juice had frozen solid !!!!! And there was me in my soaking wet t shirt steaming away........ ahhhhhh.......such sweet memories :lol:

we use a dremmel for ours alot easier than a file, or grinder. the only problem is that we haven't found good ends for the dremmel the ones we're using ATM only last one sharpen, and at nearly £7-00 each.......

hi chris, a farmer local to us takes all of our woodchip, has for years, as you say, it improves heavy clay soils no end. in return, we do the odd tree job for nowt, and he gets as many split logs as he needs during the winter (about 6 cube this year) if you keep posting on here you may get the odd nationwide contractor needing somewhere close to drop logs off, also keep your eyes out for any of the lads on the powerlines, they're always looking to drop logs. we save ALL our logs for splitting, but just before christmas we did a large site clearance in Hull and gave about 60% of the wood away (about 30 ton), ok it was mainly pop, but it was ringed up to 10" bits.

hi brookie, we're based just the other side of retford from you. if you want any help or advise just give me a PM good luck, welcome to the nutters club

i worked for a company called HW Martins. Theyre not into it much any more, but at their peak, probably the biggest in the country. i think there was about 100 qualified men at one point. it was very rewarding financially, we were paid price work, i.e. you had so many days to clear a section, so if you were with a decent team you earn good money. if you were with a bad team, and there were some, you'd earn nowt. at its worst i've done 5 bloody hard shifts and earned £100. at its best i've brought home £1,400 for the same five shifts we used to work it out that if we earned £125 a shift on top, it was about right. most co's want you to work saturday nights on possesion, which really screws your body clock. basically its horrible hard work, but i did enjoy it. learned loads and made some good friends go for it.

on the same vane quoted a very large, local muslim school to sort out the 80 odd trees in their grounds. loads of dead, leaners, etc never heard anything till yesterday. our local "i'll do it for the firewood" fella rang me. "can i borrow one of your 880's ? i'm at ***** hall college and i've got a 3' dia horse chesnut half way over but my saw won't touch it" (he's got an 18" ryobi ) "errrrrrr no, soz " thing is, on every school we do, i provide my insurance certs, m/s, r/a's, we even have CRB checks printed out for the lads that'll be going. i know for a fact this joker has no insurance or nothing !!!!!!!

when i first went on my own i had a landy and a 12' flat trailer. as said earlier i went to about 20 farmers before i'd find one who'd let me burn brash on his land. if the jobs big enough, price the chipper hire in, if not, smash and bash it, put it in barrow bags, and take it to your local tip.