Paul Jenks

Hardtop has hit some of the nails on the head. In addition, all our limited yard space, for which we pay, is used for vehicles. We have about 10 sqm for logs, that's about 12'x12'. If we paid for a site to store wood for processing it would have to be accessible all year round and reasonably secure, especially for the processed log storage, (i.e.a barn), reasonably central,(i.e. close to Oxford) and allows fires to get rid of the bark and awful nail riddled lumps that one comes across from time to time. Of the waste we produce across all sectors, public, commercial and private about 30-35% is left for the client. A recent example of this would be a roadside job in a rural area for highways. We had a team of 4-6 men cutting back vegetation, using traffic lights, for 20 or so days. They were producing approximately 15-20 tonnes of chip and cord a day. The costs associated with bringing that volume of chip away from site makes it non-sensical. Diesel, wear and tear, men away from site, extra vehicles required, hazards of ingress and egress onto a roadside site. Also, spewing woodchip perpendicular to the road is safer than parallel. And as long as the chip is spread thinly to allow aerobic breakdown instead of anaerobic it's ecologically better too. Many private clients like to keep the wood resulting from arb operations and for several reasons. They might want the fire wood for them, a family member or a neighbour. We make it cheaper if they keep it, especially if it's in one lump and it's in a back garden. Why spend time cutting something up and mauling it out when you can leave it where it is? Get on to the next job. Finally, for now, most trees we fell are felled for a good reason. Often that reason is because they are conifers, poplars, willows or knackered. We give all our wood away because the people we give it to know that sometimes they get oak, ash, beech etc and other times they get conifers, poplars, willows or knackered. It's a symbiotic relationship that has served well enough.

I'm glad you think like that Skyhuck. It's the differences that make this forum interesting. The ease of scaleability of any business is a function of how simple it is to describe what is expected from each member of staff. That's one of the reasons why McDonalds is so successful. I've always liked a challenge, and you're right, a log business would be demonstrably easier to scale. However, I have been working on the scale modelling for the last 10 or so years and seriously for the last 2. It's complex and difficult and rewarding. I employ intelligent people, most of whom have a professional qualification of one sort or another, (not necessarily in tree work). It does mean that I can, usually, rely on them to carry out the tasks assigned to them without breaking too much and in a timely manner. It also means that I can access their thinking for ideas to make the company better. They get quite bored doing logs and I don't work well with people who don't understand what polysyllabic means let alone spell it. Company looks after staff. Staff look after clients. Clients look after company. Happy Days Ps. Thanks Steve, (assuming that was directed at me. If not, I'll just finish my herbal tea and go to bed)

Zoo was cool. Cotswold Wildlife Park. Great day out for the family. A stagnant business is one that is not growing or developing. Many people go into business thinking that if they run a business for a number of years they will have something they can sell at the end of their time. Be that 5,10, 20 or so years. This is generally only the case where the person who comes along with a suitable suitcase full of pound notes can see a reasonable ROI. (Return on Investment). Again, generally, for someone to invest a large amount of cash in a business they don't expect to work their nadgers off to get the ROI. This would be because anyone buying a business would expect there to be systems in place to make the revenue streams come in without too much work. I.E. marketing, CRM, SLA, contracts, work processes and a proven track record of delivering profits.(FYI it's why franchises work so well). Someone either self-employed or as a director with a small business or company that is reliant on their being there for the day-to-day running has a job not a legacy. Therefore anyone setting up or running a business they wish to sell should look to designing themselves out of the day to day running of a business such that anyone could step in and run it. A developing, therefore not stagnant, business is always increasing profits either by increasing market share(more customers) or increasing revenue(selling more to existing customers). So instead of trying to spread myself too thin by looking at doing logs, landscaping or fencing I've focussed on tree work and growth. Logs can be a sideline or a full time business or a distraction.

In response to the original thread. Sideline or stand alone business depends on your goal. If someone has the space to store and process wood into logs taking all the costs into consideration, including hauling wood back to the yard, then it may either contribute to the main businesses turnover/profit or turn a profit as a seperate business. From my perspective, (and this is just my perspective), I have worked for guys who see logs as a cash earner, part of their business or a pain in the arse. I see them as a distraction from the core business of tree surgery/arboriculture. We used to do a little landscaping and fencing. People asked us if we did it, so we did. That too was a distraction. It took my attention away from the core speciality of tree surgery. My staff didn't really like doing it either, but the excuse I used for a long while was, 'It keeps us in work'. The reality was that I should have focussed on getting more tree work. I keep a small amount of nice wood at the yard for my log burner and the guys take a bit for friends and family. I do about 6 loads a year for people as a thank-you for giving us leads or direct work. All our wood arisings, between 1000-2000 tonnes per year and chip, between 1500-3000 tonnes per year, we give away or get collected from site. That may sound alot but the costs of transport, man hours, fuel, storage etc, doesn't justify my time in trying to find a market for it. As for offering a professional service. This applies to every aspect of the business. Whether it's answering the phone, turning up on time, complaints proceedure, oh and tree work the experience of the client should be consistent. Woolworths died as a result of poor business leadership. They lost their way through the 70's and 80's and selling off their assets was a last ditched attempt to inject cash into the business with the hope that they could trade out. It failed. My final point, honest, is on business growth. Businesses either grow or die. If a business is to offer a consistent level of service that delivers an up to date professional service it has to grow. As a business matures it gains an increasing customer base. If they are to retain those customers by delivering the same level of service in the same timescale and for a broadly similar cost they have to employ more staff. When a business employs more staff there is a need to find more work and so the cycle continues. If this doesn't occur the business stagnates. (Sorry, I'll have to stop here. We're off to the zoo and I've run out of time. Family first.)

Buy something as cheap as possible a retain as much cash as you can. Most of us started with a ratty old vehicle. I used to borrow a panal van from my brother and had to sweep it out after use. He was finding woodchip behind the seats for years. LDV's are pretty reliable and cheap. Low performance=low premium. Business insurance shouldn't be too much for a start-up. Try the NFU. They should be able to wrap up your third party, employers and vehicle in one policy. Explain that tree work is a part of what you do not the only thing. My first insurance quote,(not the NFU), when there was just me + one was for more than we pay now for 15 employees.

Reality check here. If quoting for a tree that either has a TPO or is within a conservation area, as professionals, we should be more or less aware of what is going to be permitted by the TO. There will, obviously, be discrepencies between views. This applies to the views and approach to situations of different TO's and the views or quoting arborists. As the professional who has been asked by the client to quote or make recommendations we should be able to educate the, potential, client as to what is likely to be allowed. This will be based on what is best for the tree, primarily, in a given situation. TO intransigence aside, this is the stand point of the TO. This will not always enamour us with the client. So be it. Give them options for different levels of work stating which one is most likely to fall within the BS3998:2010 and will be favourably viewed by the TO. State that there will be a charge if they wish for you to apply for more aggressive works and that in the unlikely event that the TO allows the works you'll take the fee off the cost of works. People come to tree surgeons for advice as well as just cutting trees. Regardless of our petty feuds with TO's, I think most of us are attempting to pull the industry into a professional realm that commands respect. Dealing with LA bureacracy in conjunction with our own, sometimes, slightly, outdated working practice is one of the small day-to-day challenges we all face.

I spotted this, (phytophthora), on a beech alongside a private road. I first saw it about 5 years ago and the tree seems fine. However, we now do work at the site and on closer inspection it has ustulina to boot. We may end up taking it down though the client is keen to keep it.

We have a set of the Wilkinson Sword loppers. Very good tool until the guys started to beat out deadwood with them. I christened them 'The Inadequacy Stick'

That nice big STEEL body won't help either

Ours packed up earlier this year. It hadn't done a huge amount of work but had certainly earn't it's money. Had to get the engine rebuilt or something like that. Cost about £300 or so. Worth it on a big saw. The air filters are not great on most stihls, IMO, as there is always crap around the carb inlet caused by gaps in the seating. I can understand the fine stuff getting through. To stop it you'd need a paper filter that wouldn't last five minutes in the field and would require so much energy to pull the air through the small saws wouldn't run.

I think you're right Skyhuck beech don't usually respond well to coppicing. This is a fairly young beech so it may come back. Eco plugs are glyphosate. Or you could quote for the grind as David suggested.

Give this guy an email Darren Clark [[email protected]] and check out eco plugs, just google. Minimum order is 100, 49p each, need the special drill bit. Sooooooo easy and no protective gear needed. A very sweet solution. For a 40cm beech stump you'll need about 10. Therefore £5 for materials £10 to apply.

I think it's great the way the new interpretations are shown in the updated BS3998. It's much better for the long term health of trees. However, trees can and do survive for a significant time with medium or heavy reductions. Sometimes repeated reductions. I understand some of the oldest trees in the country are pollards. It is expedient to reduce a tree more than the recommended maximum, 30% foliar, on occasion when the only other alternative is felling. This assumes that the tree is out of scale with its surroundings, often as a result of some do-gooding TO not allowing it to be removed when the house was built. One part of planning policy pushes toward higher density of dwellings whilst the other strives for tree retention. Many indiginous tree species are not suitable for urban gardens. The challenge is that the more draconian the LA's become with their interpretation of policy guidlines, the more inventive tree owners and, dare I say it, tree surgeons will become in circumventing them. (and the more unloved the TO's become) There is an ombudsman for council maladministration whose office will adjudicate on issues that have not been satisfactorily resolved. Of course it all depends on how much energy you want to put into getting approval.

Beat me to it ad15

Hi Maverick Give John Binnings a call. He's based in Besselsleigh near Cumnor. 07860818190. They have all the gear kiln dryer, sawmill, thickner sizers etc. Spoke to him today and he'll expect your call.

Moving your main business premesis away from home and into rented accomodation is a decision akin to employing admin staff. There is a very clear cost to the business, (rent or wages), but are unsure of the added value it's going to give. It's a good idea, IMO, to seperate the business from home. After a year or so of operating I moved the office to the yard in conjunction with a move to a new yard. Security will always be an issue and that's about thinking smart and make your place look a bit tougher to get into than the next guy. We currently have a unit, (converted cowshed), of 1400sqft and outside storage for the offices, parking etc. costs about £3persqft. Rates, power, broadband, phone, buildings insurance, lease etc on top. You may be eligible for small business rate relief that can halve you rates bill. Once our lawyers have sorted themselves out, we should be moving to much bigger and more modern premesis that'll cost around £5persqft,plus £8k rates, and all the other stuff too. As with the first time we moved we expect to grow to fill the new place. There were 4 of us when we moved to our current yard, now there are 14.

The AA are approved to administer CHAS accreditation. I don't know about easy peasy. It's significantly more onerous than the equivalent section in the AAAC scheme. We've just re-done ours. It should be seen as more than a box ticking exercise. The criteria for less than 5 employees must be less demanding than for us. My Health and Safety Manager has to be IOSH and the 2-week course he is going on in November costs more than £1500+Vat. That's just for the course. I have to pay his wages, travel and cover the lost earnings. Still, if it saves an injury incident it'll be worth it. Unsure as to whether it'll win us work yet.

We were carrying out some routine works for a client where we were cutting back overhanging branches. One of the trees, a sumach, was smothered in clematis and leaning on the owners fence, pushing it over. Once all the overhang had been cut back, one of the team target pruned the offending stub back to the main stem. This relieved the pressure on the fence, made for a neater job, was better for the tree and resulted in a claim for criminal damage. This was because the 10-12" of stub was cut back beyond the line of the boundary. We took the matter in hand as our client and our reputation are valued. Regardless of the benefits to all of correct pruning she was aggrieved. We built a new and better fence to replace the one she alleged we damaged and took out the tree, at her request, as a gesture of goodwill, even though it was fine. We also fabricated a new gate, which she paid for. The point here is that whilst what we did was well intentioned, the initial tree pruning that is, we did do something wrong. In the end it cost us a lot of money and our reputation was intact as we took the problem away from our client. So we still have the client, who give us loads of work. That piece of legislation posted on here is very powerful. Offer a reasonable sum towards rebuilding the section of wall you broke and tell him that the wall has to be re-built to modern regulations as it is inherently unstable and therefore dangerous, for which you are not prepared to pay. Give him a cheque with a letter stating that the payment is for 'full and final settlement'. Copy your client and keep a copy for yourself. If he cashes the cheque situation over. It means he's accepted your gesture. Good luck. Some people are just gits. Pay up, move on.

We have a 3.5 and a 6.2. Both 59 plate so haven't had the rotted sump yet. Agree with all the comments so far about the 3.5. The 6.2 is a very sweet truck. Obviously you need an O-licence for it but it'll take 2.8t payload plus kit and men. The 3.5 we had to completely reconfigure the tipper to get the load right over the rear axle as when we had the original body on it the front axle was overloaded with no-one and no kit in it. Most of the 3.5t trucks around, especially the ones you see at shows, are fit to be grossly overloaded. I.e. the chip box is far too big. Our next purchase will be a tipper 4wd.

Top Gun was always the default video tape, yes video tape, in our house when I was at uni. Everyone knew the script we played it so much. Things were so much simpler then. The choices were limited to pub, coursework, lectures, sex, watching videos, sport. My tutor told me I should only focus just on 2 things if I wanted to succeed. Alas I believe he was referring to coursework and lectures.

We invest in proper first aid training. The latest course was through a group that do battle first aid. We also do regular aerial rescue to help the guys react in an emergency. Cellox doesn't mean alot if you're not trained to use it. The ability to improvise and a good understanding of what you can do to preserve life will get you through most situations. I can do first aid with knowledge and the flat of my hand. First aid is just that, first aid. Our guys held a woman together, involved in a car accident, until the ambulance arrived. The police and fire service left them to it. Blood everywhere. She called us 3 days later to say thanks and did we want all the t-shirts and sweatshirts back that had been used to stem the bloodflow.

So, Mr James. Congratulations on still climbing at 48. I'm guessing you have been climbing for a few years more than me and could probably show me a thing or 2 around the canopy. (I'm not patronising you here). The industry has moved on significantly since I started and as a result a lot of the methodology I used in the past is outdated and, now, considered, unsafe. This includes overloading vehicles. The 'golden era' when tree surgeons only wore suspenders and a bra just at the weekend instead of Monday to Friday has passed. Jobs were always tight and competitive. In the past there were less tree surgeons and less awareness of the need to use a tree surgeon. Now there are many more operators and much more awareness. I'd suggest that if anyone is working for an employer who expects them to drive around in overloaded vehicles then this is not the only area of operations they're expected to risk themselves in. I'm not averse to risk, as anyone who works for me will testify. I'm not averse to my staff taking risks, as long as they have the training, coaching, skill and experience to assess the hazards associated with doing so. After all, how do we learn in life if not by experiencing things outside our current knowledge. (FYI I have the same ethos with my children, though at 6,4 and 2 they've yet to carry, let alone start a chainsaw.) I aspire to provide a fulfilling and progressive environment for my staff and I still have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure they are safe and return each day in one piece, albeit tired and a little scratched.

I agree with all of the above Tommer. The challenge is defending ones position if something does go wrong. I rarely go on site, (some of the guys are quite happy with that), and when I do I don't tend to drive the trucks. As a director I have to implement a culture of safe operating. Not overloading forms a small part of this. If the culture is in place and the guys have bought into it, metaphorically, and we have an auditable checking system, if something does wrong the company, the driver and I may have a chance of getting off lightly. The larger the organisation the more the expectation that they will have the auditable systems in place to ensure the safety of employees and public. As I said earlier some aspects of H&S are tosh where experience and training allow us to measure risks. Unfortunately, those of us of a certain age developed our inate abilities to thrive and survive a little while before the nanny state and the 'certification for certification sake' culture castrated free thought. Pretty well all the guys I know in this industry do it because they love it, risks, hazards, drudge and all. If we over regulate we'll stifle the industry. However, I feel I have a responsibility to protect my staff through training and good practice. All businesses need to develop and we are no different, Jenks that is. When there was just me and another guy we did things considerably differently to how we do now. We spend annually more on training and H&S than most small business turnover so we are not competetive on price with alot of tree teams. We do educate our clients, (commercial, public and private), as to the advantages to using us. They then choose.

We started with the NFU. Very good cover and not expensive.

This thread seems to have drifted somewhat into a rant about larger companies and health and safety. The original question related to the running of 3.5t vehicles for tree work. The primary concern for VOSA is that a vehicle that is overloaded will not brake and handle in the same way as on that is loaded correctly. This boils down to stopping distances and cornering. Most of us who have 'loaded' a vehicle and who have some experience and a modicum of common sense take it steady when returning from site with a good load on. We all know that many of the trucks we use seem to be quite capable of carrying a bit over their MAM.(Our old LDV, long since departed, has weighed out over 5t). The main reason for health and safety is just that. Health and Safety. The health and safety of employees and the public. I know some of it is overly bureacratic and some is absolute tosh. The running of any vehicle that has the capacity to be relatively easily overloaded shouldn't be prohibited. There should be systems and checks in place to ensure that it isn't overloaded. This can be done by using onboard weighing systems,(very expensive), a smaller chip box, (pain in the ass), or a system of documented regular checks going to weigh bridges with different types of chip at different levels and an awareness of all staff of the fill levels. Running a 3.5t for tree work within the law can put a company at a competetive disadvantage if their direct competition flout the law. The same can be said when a company complies with all other aspects of H&S regulation, LOLER, PUWER, COSHH, WAH etc, etc. Educate your clients, educate your staff. If your in this industry for the long run we all need to raise our operating standards to show the wider public that this is a profession worthy of respect.