Paul Jenks

Start up costs are whatever you want them to be. Some of the figures folk have alluded to here are dream world. Unless mummy and daddy sub you or you have had a very well paid job that enabled you to save £20-30k you'll be lucky to scrape £10k. IMO there is no need to go and spend loads of money. When you're starting out you're unlikely to get big jobs that require loads of machinary and if you do you should have priced the hire into the equation. (Most of my big saws in the early days I bought on the back of big trees. If I got the job I got the saw.) When starting in business a person is usually time rich and cash poor. If they buy an old van that goes slow, won't hold too much and breaks down occasionally they have the time to fix it themselves and this may stimulate them to look forward to the day they can acquire a newer one with a de-mist that works and a wing mirror that was actually designed for that vehicle. Start up costs have to include a bit of working capital to tide you over for the delay in receiving your payments for work. I can recall getting my first ever cheque through the post for £350 from a client, I was so excited. Now when we get a BACS payment for £25,000 I think, "right, that's the wages covered, when is the one for HMRC coming in?". Don't get hung up on getting fancy, shiny kit. Get kit that works and use it to earn you money. Another important start-up cost consideration is where you get rid of your arisings, especially if you don't have a chipper.

If you want to grow your business/company there are certain aspects of any business that can be subcontracted out or be given to an administrative assistant directly employed. (Here I don't mean growing to become a worldwide conglomerate. Just growing it to make it run better for the owner.) If the idea of employing someone is a bit daunting try subbing out your phone answering or your bookkeeping. Pretty soon you realise, assuming you've picked a reasonable company to do this work for you, that if you employed a person they could answer the phone, do the books, type up quotes, book in quotes, fill in the planning apps and make the tea. If you develop a sensible set of systems the employed person can follow and enhance, even if they leave, your systems are not in turmoil and you can employ someone else to take over the role. Doesn't have to be full time to begin with. The key purpose to this is to free up your time to get on with the joys of cutting trees. And, as Mr Blair pointed out, try reading 'The E-Myth Re-visited' written by Michael Gerber. Look for it on Amazon. If your'e serious about business it'll be the best £8 you'll ever spend. (The E stands for Entrepenurial)

I used to use them some years ago when cut and chuck wasn't frowned upon. It can lead to a certain level of complacency. Once the elastic at the upper end starts to go they slide down your arm and they have to be pulled up every 2-3 minutes. The outer material is quite hard, (hence its usefulness in thorny hedges), but this means it doesn't grab the chain if you happen to get contact. When the saw does touch it they either spin round and the saw skitters down to your hand or up to your elbow. Either that or it stays still and the saw still bounces down to your hand or elbow. That said, They do take some of the energy out of the chain so when it gets there you get a few scratches and a chance to self descend and change your underwear.

Our guys have got unit 2 and 4 of us have unit 10(supervisor) for streetworks. By law you have to have someone on site who is deemed competent to put out the signs, cones, lights etc and to maintain them for the duration of operations. We defer to traffic lights over stop/go as more people obey a red light, (though by no means all of them.) Until the road traffic act changed in 1991 if a vehicle ran into a set of road works, even if controlled by lights, the blame was on the contractor in the road. Following the revision of 1991 qualified persons are allowed to manage traffic flow and block the road for up to 2 minutes at a time, as mentioned earlier. Usually the contractor has to get clearance from their local NRSWA, New Roads and Street Works Agency. The road space has to be booked in advance. If space is not booked or there is no-one on site with their streetworks card or if the signage is deemed inadequate a NRSWA officer can and will kick you off the road. There are obvious safety implications with not having the right training, certification and equipment. The reason for booking road space is so NRSWA can manage traffic flow and keep the emergency services informed. Also it may be that someone turns up to carry out some tree work and the road is being dug up by the gas people just around the corner. A set of lights should only cost about £125+vat for a day. With LUX it's the same charge for a week as a day. Hiring the correct signage can be pricey and when you use lights you are supposed to carry a set of stop/go boards incase the lights fail. You can buy a Stopworks lollipop that is similar to the one used for school crossings. This piece of equipment allows you to stop traffic for up to 2 minutes without the need for signage. Say for getting a vehicle on or off site.

Save your money on the climber and do them Wednesday:thumbup:

The insuring of us, as an industry, is a small part of a very, very large machine. There are few underwriters willing to insure treework and all brokers have to go to these few. Going back to the statistics used for assessing risk. Given the type of person likely to work as an insurance underwriter, (and this is not to demean that humble profession or the good workers in financial services), how much time do you think they are going to devote to really finding out whether a business has a culture of health and safety as opposed to a policy statement. (Your broker may do this, the underwriters cover themselves by using available statistics so that if the poo hits the fan and they have to pay out they have objective data with which to defend themselves.) They look at turnover, number of employees, type of work engaged in, number of incidents over a specified period, any outstanding exposure to litigation etc, etc and, importantly, industry statistics produced by the only body set up to produce them, HSE. This is put into a formula and ta-da, a number falls out and this is your premium. Your point about whether the video stars have insurance is probably moot.

We have a Christmas bash every year. The girls in the office shortlist a couple of restaurants and organize the meal selections. It's all very efficient. Afterwards we all stagger off into the bright lights of Oxford. They all have a prodigious capacity for food and drink and the bar bill is normally double the food bill. I stopped the tab last year when asked if it was ok to order champagne. I think we kept the total bill under a grand and I won the pole dancing competition, so all in all a good night.

The point I endeavoured to convey caused by my linguistic inadequacies and lack of elucidation has led to a mis-interpretation. The insurance policy I have is a meaty tome running to 50+ pages of legalese. I've read it, my broker has read it and my managers have read it and I bet there are still some bits of it that give the insurers some wriggle room, proof of competency notwithstanding. Any broker will tell you insurers spend a lot of time looking for reasons not to pay. I defer to your greater knowledge of the insurance market and contract law and my point still remains.

Blazer. That was my thought too. A bit of wind is good for business, a lot is bad because, as you say, the bottom feeders come out to play. As for the cold air;it is December.

I would have liked to see a couple of them go too. It may have made the remainder a little more socially aware. Isn't that how the market is supposed to work? I've yet to see an indication that the tax payer is willing to bail my company out if I put profit and market share above good business practice. We are where we are however. Now, if Europe got their collective backsides into gear and the media in general stopped talking up a double dip we may avoid one. One of the key issues with the EU and particularly the Euro is that it challenges sovereignty, identity and ultimately national pride. Frankly, (pardon the pun), I'm amazed the French were ever steamrollered into it. In my view we, Europeans, are not ready pyschologically for such an integrated society. Even the UK is looking to go its seperate ways internally.

Collectively, we allowed ourselves to get into this mess. Granted, the banks made it quite easy for us. let's not lose sight of the fact that we didn't have to extend our mortgages to buy holidays, Christmas, cars, widescreen tv etc. It's a much deeper issue than just the banking sector. I'm not a fan of them, high street or commercial. They are, however, integral to modern society. They are in need of some humility and until a better system evolves we use them. As was pointed out, London has something of the order of 40% of stock trading. The tax take on this and the money that is injected back into the economy as income tax and the spending power of the city suits is a big thing.

Insurance is a numbers game. Same as as the stock market. Same as banking. Anyone working in these arena uses statistics to work out probabilities of a return on investment, fiscal or risk. Given the niche market, (albeit growing), we are in, most insurers use the available statistics to calculate their ROI, or yield. Typically the 'proof of competency' card is only played when it's time to pay out and the insurers are looking for a reason not to pay.

The BBC had an interesting and biased slant on their reporting throughout the day yesterday. The UK is becoming more isolated as a result of the Prime Minister, according to the beeb. Of course, if being isolated results in being able to manage the monumental fiscal balls up of the last government on our own terms and manage to get the lowest rates for sovereign borrowing enabling us to ride what is inevitably going to be some tougher times, then I'm for isolation. Germany started this with their insistance on the creation of the Euro and closer integration. Their challenge is they and their partners didn't stick to the rules and then didn't sanction countries that broke the rules. Ultimately the world markets will decide by downgrading credit ratings on sovereign debt and making current borrowings unsustainable. The markets require clarity and planning. They are getting none of this from Europe currently. The political manouevering is for each country to get the best deal for itself and to also get the culture of the voting public on their side so when they finally give away the family jewels there is an outside chance they'll be re-elected. In the UK we have a plan, and we're sticking to it. It may not be to everyones taste. If our credit rating slips our borrowing costs go up, (don't forget we are still spending approximately £150billion pounds a year more than we earn in this country as a result of Labours profligate spending to keep them in power, this is the structural deficit), if our borrowing costs go up the money available to this government to spend in this country goes down.

Just found it. Yikes, that is a deep depression. Hopefully it'll track North. There is a high ridge pushing up from the Azores.

956 is about as low as the storm in '87. I was looking at the BBC weather site last night and they've ruined it by poncing it up. Never located the isobar map. Had to go onto the Met Office site, which wasn't so good.

You beat me to it with the rouge traders. I guess they apply a little make-up before being filmed. As for insurance. A person or company should be paying somewhere in the region of 1-2% of turnover. If you're paying less, I'd suggest you aren't completely covered. If you're paying more it's time to assess your broker.(This is for PL,EP and PI not vehicle or fleet.) As for muppets influencing the market, you only have to look at the HSE statistics to see the majority of reported incidents apply to untrained and unaware individuals. The shame of it is that often it is written that they were engaged in tree surgery. Usually for no other reason than they were using a chainsaw and a tree was involved. Insurers look at these statistics to assess risk. It's not ideal.

All of these

No reason at all. Just watch for wear on the sprocket. If you use one more than the other it may affect the wear on the newer chain if the sprocket is worn.

We've used posts banged into the hole beyond the extent of the rootball and ratchet straps. Seems to work quite well.

In case I missed it, are these documents going to be down-load too?

Is the implication that most of them wear trainers, steel toecap boots or 'normal chainsaw boots'? Normal chainsaw boots have always done for me and my guys.

Up to a point. The main purpose of NRSWA regs is to protect the users of the road and the workers. It's all pretty straight forward and most of it makes good sense. Alas, some of the users of roads and some of the workers on roads seem to think that everyone else has ESP and knows exactly what is going on at a work site without there being either signage or signals. We still get drivers coming through red lights and driving over cones. To legally stop the traffic for 2 minutes you should have either lights or 'Stop Works' boards. These look similar to the lollipops that are used for school crossings. Of course, to introduce any sort of traffic management on the highway you need to be qualified and typically you are to notify your local NRSWA office. They can be quite protective of road space and have the power to kick you off the road.

We use Lux for our lights. Most of my guys have their chapter 8, we put them through it last year, units 2 and 10. Lights should cost about £125 for a day or week. Signs are extra. Allow about £200+Vat if you want them to set up, deliver and collect.

Also, since when has a sign ever stopped someone from doing something they really wanted to do. 30mph Wear ear protection Always use gloves Click here before removing device. Back to the thread. I pushed a womans car out of the way on the ring road a couple of months ago,(it was stationary in the inside lane, and yes I got out to push it). The queues were horrendous. I got a nice smile, effusive thanks and a warm socially responsible feeling. None of the other drivers so much as raised a hand.

Generally this type of incident only occurs on certain trees and in certain situations. I.e. leaning trees of a species with a tendancy to propogate a split rapidly. Inexperienced climbers should never be asked to carry out this type of operation without very close supervision. If there is the potential for this to happen other systems for work should be employed to mitigate the stresses on the felling cut, (to make it behave properly), and/or mewp access. I have come close to this in the past felling out over-large willow stems on pollard heads and whilst I like to expose my guys to some hazards in the work place, this is not one of them. One of the 'safety' systems taught is to connect to the central ring, therefore negating the risk of getteing squished. This is fine up to a point. If a tree has the potential to split during felling, I want to be able to get away as quickly as possible. Rope into the main stem but not the sub-stem. When you're on the final section take it out in little bits. Regardless of WAH and their evangelising about the climber making fewer cuts in the tree to minimize cut injuries, larger pieces means significantly larger forces.