spuddog0507

A mate of mine who runs a plant hire buisness had a small 4x4 van back in the 90s, it was either a Rascal or Suzuki ? i cant remember, but we just called it the Sooty bus, it was one of them vans bought as a put me on for 6 months but he ended up running it for about 8 yrs, he had his other half running round delivering diesel oil parts etc to different sites where he had plant working, he all ways did and still does say its one of the best vans he ever bought,

Grant funded it is, and the last time i was with our local FC guy he said he could get us around £4-4,5K for clearing a 3.5 hectare woodland of Rodeys but thats 2 years ago now, it would of been a good job, flat but a bit wet in places and could of all been done with the digger n grab,

Well got to agree with Departed on a few things here, We have cut a fair amount of rodeys for the likes of Tillhil etc in the Northwest, Lancs, Lakes and north Yorks, hand cutting it aint easy work by a long way, 12-15ft rodeys all tangled and intertwinde with each other and you will get a fair bit of work on 60,70,80 degree bankings and rocky crags as rodeys will grow any where, Ok on resonable level ground it would be easy with a 3 tonne digger and flail, but it wont all be like that as you will just get given a area to clear that will incorporate rodeys on all different land types, the last one we did was on flat ground and i just ripped them out with a digger with a rock grab on it, pushed brash in to heaps and burnt, only thing i can say is, its a young mans sport on them bankings,

Hi mine was due at the begining of lockdown but i left it as could not get hold of anyone to renew, so held off a while and had a ring round on one of them wet days, the result was quite rewarding for me, now 95% of our work is in the middle of nowhere in commercial forestry so i would say very low risk but who i was with still wanted £750+ per anum, so renewed mine about 3 wk ago and got better cover than before as added digger use to it and got it for £264 so a nice saving for me, Insurance co will have your arse out if you let em and the thing that gets me is PL insuranc v van/pick up insurance, for the £750 my old PL insurance co wanted i can insure a Nissan Cabstar tipper, L200 pick up, 2 tractors and a 1 tonne high lift dumper and have still have enough change fir a pint or 2 out of original wanted £750, have a shop about it may pay you to do it,

Yes its so easy to insult and slag people off from afar on line, but would they say it if they where stood infront of you ? i very much dought it, I personally am loosing interest in this site all for the above reasons you mentioned, and if you look through the posts there is a few dissapeared of late all for the reasons you mention,

The lad is asking for help,and willing to pay, in a recent post he was asking for weekend work to gain experiance and addmitted he has only been in the game 12 months, he has been honest and by the name he is 21/22 yr old, when i went self employed back in 83, yes i ****************ed up on prices and yes took jobs on far bigger than i could manage but with outside help got them done, one or two people i asked for help gave me grief and took the piss, and to hear what they said made me feel a little insecure about what i was doing, so why do some people have to take the piss ? was you not young and inexpieranced at some point in your life because i was, now i will take time out to pass my knollage on to the younger lads no problem, if this lad was nearer to me i would not think twice about helping him out, life is not all about heaps money, a few very unfair comments on this post which are not good for the site and its not that long since someone rang me and said it was not the same site any more as there has been some very good genuine expieranced old school lads who are a welth of knollage on this site who just dont bother with the site any more, why ??? i could name quite a few who have either left or dont bother anymore who will have forgot more about the tree game than some lads on here claim to know and there is one or two that have dissapeared of late as well, so go easy,

I didnt claim owt of the government, had 3 wk at home sorting a building out at the start which i just so as a holiday ,since then been out felling trees, moving timber, selling timber and fencing, and then this last week when i thought my work was coming to a end the phone went mad, can you do some more walling, local council want some trees sorting out on a playing field, can you come and sort some windblown out, can i get some timber off you and hears me thinking when tides where getting right wed onward,s i was going out to sea in my boat fishing for a day or 2 but thats gone tits up now, so this next wk has gone from nowt to over full in 48hrs 5 sites to go to and look at some walling, another site with about 20 windblown spruce, working with another lad on tues, delivering some timber either thursday or friday, so thats my week filled now and probably the next 4 or 5,

I dont disagree with what you have said above, but one thing i am seeing some companys are having it very good at the moment and not companys that are linked to anything to do with covid 19, a few tree guys i know are bombed out with work and one guy said he has never been booked up 4 months in addvance since he started 8 yrs ago, as you said covid 19 will return and things will go tits up big time, so i think its make the most of it while you can, then interest rate dropped again a few months back which limits the finance Co,s to what they can charge/make out of you, i got a letter from mortgage co saying my new monthly payments would be £7,38p, dont know how i am going to cope in these uncertain times,

The add with the 2 new ones on is the same add as last fridays add i so, add was not there on sat 6pm ish it had gone,

Yes seen that one Stubby, there has been a few of late but been making strong money, there is several 880s i know of that have been bought by lads and hardly ever used, one i know of and tried to purchase several times has been sat on a shelf in a garage for 5 yrs as i know of and its only ever cut 2 discs off a 3ft piece of Oak and that was done the day he bought it, never run since ! but he is one of them who likes to say i have one of them, there awsome !!, i picked up a 2014 660 about 2 wk ago which was bought for clearing some fallen trees in 2014, used for 2/3 days and probably only had 15-20 ltrs fuel through it, he asked £400 for it, so thank you very much yes please, got it home had it running in about 10 mins all ok so cleaned it up and flipped it with in an hour,

Why from the states ? i dont know if you want new or second hand ? there was 2 new 880s from a dealer that appeared on ebay last friday (3rd july), £1850 each with 36" bar n chain, both sold by sat evening, there will be a few sat about in dealers in the Uk, you will just have to ring round and find one, then there is another thing to conssider, if the one you import goes tits up whats your comeback on the guy you bought it from in the states ? buying from overseas just seems a big headache to me, only ever done it once and as others above have said costs add up, hold out and keep looking in the UK and the right saw at the right time will crop up, but its no good looking once a week, every day will help you get what you want,

I got my hands on some Green heart several years ago, and all i can say is never again 2 runs with 660 n alaskan sharpen up 2 runs again and sharpen up, i spent more time sharpening up than i did cutting, timber is old very dense and if its been in salt water like mine had there was a lot of grit on the timber that was hard to get rid of, value as a finished product ? serch your market first and see if any one wants to buy it, and if there is any other timber for sale as well then you should get an idea,

Been sat back reading all the comments on this thread since post came on yesterday, sounds like Jack p is a little bit lacking in expieriance in life and buisenes sense as well, if any one did this with me i would be doing what a lot of others have said above, no more work off me and yes other firms in the area would get to know what he is like as well, when i take some one on on a subbie bassis they are told before they come to site No sign written trucks or vans and no clothing addvertising there buisness, if they do roll up in any of the above they get told either to remove it or go home, Reason for this is going back to early 2000s when a subbie was trying to get a customer of mine to have all the stumps removed on a small woodland we had cleared, customer was not happy about this and nor was i, so the subbie in question was asked to leave site by me but at the customers request, this nearly cost me the job and the next 2 jobs i did for the guy, so a lesson lern,t from both sides, the subbie in question never worked for me again and i think he lasted about 18 monthes after that as no one would employ him, he is now a delivey driver for a builders merchants, This Jack p sounds like he is a decorater by trade may be he should stick to hanging wallpaper and painting skirtings, and to say i work to a high standared on the trees and only having cs31 ie well ? i will believe it when i see it, as who has told him its high standared ? and as for the guy making £150 out of him that is nothing what so ever to do with anyone but the main contractor and the client, its called buissnes !!!, what a prick this guy sounds and he feels he is hard done to, good luck mate as your going to need it in this game and if you did,nt know its a tight knit game the tree world !!!,

Not me as i usually fall asleep before computer comes on !!!

Told you, you need to keep off them porn channels !!!

Just buy the right tool for the job you do, Me i would not even consider the 1.9, the 3.0 ltr will be on top of the job easaly, if you got the 1.9 and then found it was not up to it you will be asking yourself why didnt i buy the 3ltr, i have a 3.0 ltr cabstar and tow a 10ft ifor tipper about with it day in day out, when pick up and trailer is fully loaded it does not struggle at all, so to save yourself some dissapointment 3.0ltr all the way,

Had a pair of stihl boots for dare i say it 7 years, been mainly used in forestry work, they wernt owt special when i bought them, just leather, no gortex but very impressed with how they have lasted, they are now for summer use only as the soles have cracked across but still a very good tread on them, the new boots i got are Meindl wood walkers, good calf support, light to walk in, gortex lined but they are not the warmest boots i have had and seem to be a small fit as well so if you go down this line and say you are a size 10 get a 10 1/2 and will be about right,

Access is an issue with things like this, like can you get a 6 wheel wagon or a decent tractor and timber trailer in to it to load ?, or it there a alternative means of loading ? if there is a bit of a mess made who is cleaning that up ? is the ground fit for a large wagon to get along side it ? as it is its a decent lump of timber but finding and getting some one to come with some thing big enough to load and takeaway and then pay you for it could be a big ask, if it was felled like yesterday it will have split on the end with tension so devalueing the timber, its wrong time of year to fell and sell beech as a saw logs, if some one says they will move it for nowt take it otherwise your cutting it up and hand balling it and then cleaning all the saw dust up as well and there will be a bit of that, and is it in someones garden ? if so metal content has to be considered as well, as what has been said above if it was in a parcel and a 25 tonne load could be made up and was felled december january it would be worth £70 a tonne, but not as is or some one might mill it in situe,

I think every one else will be the same as yourself, the major forestry co,s like tilhill and euroforest are doing very little harvesting at present as the main of the sawmills are either shut down or just on tick over, i should of been involved with some work on 5 harvesting sites this year but non of them have been started, those 5 sites would of yeilded some 85-90,000 cube but its still standing, there is some smaller outfits out there that are still doing a bit, there is timber about but not a lot at the moment and if you find it just buy it even if its a bit more money than the last load you bought,

You got finished then, it looks better than the last photo you sent me, and cant remember if i told you i have 2 8ft lengths of o/s wrc or douglas that i have to move of a site the one with the but flare on it will be 5ft plus in diameter and the other is the next length of the same tree, will let you know about it when i can move it,

I agree with Vedhoggar, Frost damage, where we are extracting timber at the moment there is a Beech hedge that looks like it should in november all brown leaves on it and no green to be seen, its all so done some lower branches on some chestnut and young beech along with some tips on some Larch,

Bailing string it has 1000s of uses

well said that man,,,

Well just sat and read all replies so far, and i cant understand why people are so arguementive over some one elses problem, ok the guy asked for a idea on price, but its like any other on line question asking every one who replys has a different idea, work practice, time scale and most of all different equipment, all the later add up to a different cost thus making for different Quotes the poor guy,s head will now be trashed and he wont know what to think, i wont say who i think is right and who is taking the piss,but one team i know would have it done in a day and another team it would be three if not four days for them, different work ethics, drive levels to succeed and machinery all makes a big difference, the second team there main climber is so slow and i am not joking on this either your grandmother would be just as quick, this climber did one job for me and i pulled him out the tree at lunch time and went home,

Pole saw i would think its either 3/8 picco or 1/4 picco ? is there nothing written or stamped on the bar that gives you bar length, rail width etc.