AHPP

.325 or 3/8?

The unloading was really no bother. The loading is what killed me. It probably wouldn't have fitted on a tipper without massive greedy boards, which a luton in effect has. Character building stuff.

I've heard the advice that you shouldn't be selling this job; you should be selling the ten after that. Which does sound good but is quite open ended.

You need to read the last 274 pages of this thread really.

Now watch as this thread goes in a different direction. Yeah, he could buy the tickets. Or he could buy a second hand GRCS, a new 500i with three bars and nine chains, two helmets with comms and some poles with a hook. For an extra £350, he can get a train ticket to Newcastle, a taxi to my house via Oddbins and I'll show him how to use it all. Bosh. Useful groundsman to have around. Do one day a fortnight for six firms. 150 days a year at £150/day. £22,500. Probably better than £25,000 PAYE even after running costs and you have Mondays and Fridays for the lord. You still have to pay to drive to a PAYE job. He'll need NPTC 207 (CS45) of course, like everybody who runs the ropes on the ground has. EDIT: Glossary since the bloke reading this isn't an arb, yet. GRCS - A really gucci rigging device. There are probably only a hundred in the country. They make you better than average on most jobs and a god on the right job. 500i - A really good, fairly big chainsaw. Most tree firms' big saws are shagged and have running problems and nobody can be bothered to sharpen the chains for the long bars. Turn up with one that works with big, sharp cutting gear and you're making their lives easier not having to fix theirs. Comms - Tree firms struggle to use them because their employed blokes forget to charge them. Turn up with yours and you're just that little bit slicker than anyone else. Poles - An underused piece of kit. Climbers use throwlines to get ropes into the top of a tree. Most people are shit with them and spend half an hour untangling them and getting angry before just getting a ladder instead. You can poke a rope over a high branch with your poles and save everyone a lot of embarrassment. Plus they're very handy the rest of the day.

Next day was red hot too. Went to see the eucalyptus collection at Marks Hall. Limped round like I'd had my coccyx removed. Fond memories.

Lutons. One of my first end-client jobs years ago. No recollection how I got it. Dense as darkness thirty-five foot tall conifer. Couldn't get a farmer to leave a trailer so hired a Luton and stacked the whole thing in the back. FULL. To the roof. Horrendously hot day. Spent half of it putting my head under the outside tap. Anyway. Got it done and got it home. It unloaded surprisingly easily and was smoke in the next ten minutes. Blew the van out and had it back at the hire place for 19:00. £350 from the client. £120 for the van. £30 fuel etc. £200 for me. I'd arrived.

That needs to travel in a luton van and come down on the tail lift. If you're not doing tree work with a luton then who the fyuck are you!

Not a clue. I suffer from a severe financial limp. I do tree work for the babes.

That is some strong guff. Are they really that good?

There's cake business and cake business btw. Does she advertise on the local facebook groups or have a contract with Heathrow? One of you is probably going to need a real job. Unless you're otherwise secure for shelter and nutrition. A lot of arb is unreliable and a lot of arbs are self employed and at the mercy of it. There is employment of course. Couldn't tell you a lot about that though. I'm fairly unemployable.

And there wasn't as much call for that in upland Cumbria as in south Oxfordshire. It's all coming together.

I thought that. We've forgotten to ask the most important question though. OP, Is your wife either a nurse or a primary school teacher? It's part of the uniform for tree blokes in the UK.

The difference between the 150 and 230 is the infeed. What's the difference between the 125 and 160?

👆 Checks out.

It really is a street tree 'factory job' vs everything else thing. A day that illustrates the difference perfectly. Domestic development site. Couple of climbers in, me and another. His tree was on the fenceline, very typical. He'd come from a street tree firm and was keen to start putting brash on the ground to show some progress. Probably PTSD from some former gangmaster. He rashers down the leader over our garden in record time. Then had to cut and chuck the other 90% of the tree from over next door's side because he'd cut out the rigging point he needed at 08:15. He was having a nightmare on the wood. My tree was very similar. I didn't start a saw for an hour probably. Set up some lovely rigging and then lowered it all into the same spot a few feet inside the garden, no fighting the fence. I went down and had a coffee. He had his redbulls and cocaine sent up.

Can't tell you mechanical details but I've been a freelance climber for over a decade so have worked for a lot of different people. Those with Forsts always had a story about the chipper being away for something.

Being good looking, funny and conducting myself with a reassuring ease with all strata of society, I've never had to graft very hard at anything. I did have a bad back before I started though.

You can join the masons at any age.

That's bollocks too. I could start climbing at forty and outcompete kids within a year or two because I'm clever and lazy so will find the easiest way to do something.

I actually wasn't thinking of you, Mick but if the structural cummerbund fits...

Timberwolf 125 and 190 are both good too. 125 light to move around. 190 will make you look at the job a different way coming from a gravity feed.

Forsts are shit. 150s are good. 230s are great.

Depends what sort of climbing. Despite my youth and conventional good looks, I climb like an old, fat drunk. I'd be no good scurrying round a whole street of plane repollards. But a removal where I rig the thing down without having to go very far, I'll beat a 20-year-old who can't see the ropework.

I've got a Stihl MSA 120 for sale but it's a backhandle. Two batteries, charger, a few chains. £200.