wjotner

48 minutes ago, Percytopliss said:

I absolutely love land rovers! But IMO a tipper is a waste of time! Awful to drive and you can hardy get a decent load on the back legally. If running two vehicles and still needing a 4x4 as one of them? A decent tipping trailer is much more useful?

My landy handles well on its heavy duty suspension, tippers and cherry pickers just wallow around and try and kill you!

I have limited space to store. A tipping trailer would take up too much space and would prevent me using a chipper.

11 minutes ago, josharb87 said:

If the transits too big i'd look at a toyota dyna or older nissan cabstar.

 

Most landys are money pits and most are triggers brooms!

 

But you'll probably need to have one to get the idea out of your system, hopefully you're not bankrupt when you come to your senses

 

But i still have a soft spot for defenders 

 

 

I think you're probably right on all points. But i want a 4x4. If it take 1 to 1.5 ton of chip, that would be enough for 90% of my jobs currently. So not worried about that. I'd consider getting a Ford Ranger tipper, or similar. But would they be able to carry as much as a landy 130 or 110 hicap?

50 minutes ago, aspenarb said:

Nothing wrong with a landy if you are reasonably handy with a spanner and prepared to carry out your own maintenance, buy a good one and keep oil in everything that should have it and it will go on for years. Have two here that are past the 300k point that are still running well on  the original  engines,axles and gearboxes. One other that has had a transfer box and gearbox  that is about it , other than service items and keeping the doors from falling apart there have been no issues , not bad considering the clowns that drive them. Certainly no worse on the reliability front than any of the other 4x4`s we run and are a darn site easier/cheaper to source parts for.

 

Bob

Thanks. Finally some positives. To be honest, I've basically already decided i want one. I was just hoping for some positive points so i could justify to my boss (the wife) why i want to ditch a perfectly good, but dull and bulky transit for a battered old landy.

1 hour ago, Mark Bolam said:

Get one.

Then when you get a Transit tipper again you will really appreciate it.

I think you're probably right. But i hate the transit. It's too big, and I won't be able to park it at my new house I'm moving to (won't fit on drive). Plus, cos i live in peak district, when it snows, i don't trust the transit on the roads, as well as most of my tip sites being muddy in winter, I have to be careful about when I can take my transit there. I'd be much happier with a 4x4 which is a bit smaller, so i can get rid of my car too. 

If Defenders are so crap, why do they hold their value so well? What other car/van would sell for £5K to £6K with 180K on clock and 20 years old? They must being doing something right?

10 hours ago, Richard 1234 said:

If you have £6k why not buy/lease a new one? You have a lot of monthly payments there and a new machine that won’t break down much and a very good incentive to make it pay for itself too!
It’s surprising what having payments to make can do for your motivation!

I've been thinking about doing that. It's just a lot of debt, which I'm trying to minimise. I think if i can't find a used chipper for a reasonable price I might go down the route of leasing.

4 hours ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Get a chipper, second hand or new, just get a chipper.

I agree. I've been limping by just brashing up on back of van for smaller jobs and for large jobs hiring in a chipper or man and chipper until now. But it's gets expensive doing that.

3 hours ago, jfc said:

What mick says!

I bought my own chipper this year, best thing I have bought. I got a tw160 new. The greenmech one is good too. People are also recommending TP, which I believe are cheaper. If you can put down a 6k deposit you only need a loan for about 6.5k.

You might be able to reduce your costs a bit if you find places that want or take chip for free. Therefore no tip fees.

Good luck with it.

Jan.

Yep, chip is much easier to get rid of than brash thats for sure. I've been thinking of getting a small petrol chipper like a 160. How do they perform?

So i want to trade in my reliable, but boring and too large, and shit traction, transit tipper for a sexy, battered old defender tipper.

Everyone says they're awful to drive, breakdown all the time and fuel economy is eye-watering.

So am I being a fool for wanting one so badly?

3 hours ago, bigtreedon said:

I sub contract to companies with my truck and chipper and a 2nd climber it doesn't fill my diary I use contract climbing and my own jobs to keep the diary as full as possible my advice would be to find a chipper that u can afford to not have working every day at first then when u have established yourself either with enough contracting or your own work upgrade the chipper to suite your needs either just newer or bigger and newer only advice some one els may think totally different

Yeah I agree. But finding a chipper thats affordable (under 6K for me) means delving into the murky territory of knackered unwanted chippers that will be useless. If I could only find an old Timberwolf 150 for around 5K I'd be a happy man.

So, as everyone who's started their own arb firm will know, getting enough of your own work to cover 5 days a week takes a lot of time (several years I'm often told) to get to that stage. 

How sensible is it as a strategy to grow your new business to try to rent out yourself as a bona-fide subby with truck and chipper to larger firms to fill in the gaps in your own work?

Currently, I've a decent tipper van and some saws and basic gear to cover most small to medium jobs. But i really need to buy a chipper to kick on to the next level. But obviously, if I'm gonna fork out several grand for a chipper, I need to be getting enough work in to cover the repayments. How hard have other guys found it to get business going in this way?

Any advice appreciated. Thanks

On 03/12/2017 at 19:10, Mick Dempsey said:

Every job is about speed, time is money. That’s the way it is and always has been.

 

Sad to read about the young man, as Roseyweb says, easy to do that in rows of conifers.

 

Best thing we can do is think about the fella tomorrow morning and think twice.

Being quick isn't necessarily the same as been rushed. 

I've worked with climbers who are very fast. But to look at them, they're not rushing about. They just have a very sound technique, they make good decisions and work efficiently. That results in work being completed in good time. Rushing about usually creates mistakes, either by getting ropes in a tangle, making nests in the tree, breaking stuff on the ground, or in the worst case causing injury or death.

"More haste = less speed" is a very good adage in our line of work.

2 hours ago, sean said:

Having been up to Sheffield on numerous occasions now to see the trees being felled I can tell you now that there are hundreds of perfectly healthy trees being felled for minimal surface damage. I would suggest that anybody with an interest in what is going on up there go and take a look for themselves and then  form their own  opinion.

I must agree that although i think the overall plan of replacing the inferior tree stock and those causing a lot of damage is reasonable, I have seen some decent trees including some nice if slightly too large London Planes come down, and that was a bit of a shame. 

On 14/12/2017 at 19:40, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

"...We believe removing a tree should be a last resort..."

 

https://www.commonwealthtrees.co.uk/our-services.html

 

 

 

Did you really just go to my website to find something to have a go at me because I'm offering a different side of the argument?

Get off your high horse! Or don't we live in a democracy where more than one opinion can be offered?

1 hour ago, Khriss said:

And certainly the right to protest , visually and openly - is part of Democracy , also the right of Taxpayers to point out how their money is being used is another one , K

All true. But when a minority is claiming to speak for everyone, then thats not democracy IMO. The protesters are regularly ignoring and overriding the interests of local residents in certain areas affected by negative effects of poor trees, including older people who are having to deal with risk of trip hazards and those who are experiencing serious property damage caused by root disturbance created by large trees pushing up tarmac and paved areas that need sorting out.

Those tree surgeons being sent out working at silly hours of the day are forced into doing this to get the job done. Protesters have pushed them to this extreme.

In terms of taxpayers money. Just think about how much money is being wasted by the delaying tactics of protesters. This work is taking more men, more time to complete. This will probably end up eating into the budget set aside for maintaining all the new and remaining trees. Probably meaning not enough to manage the trees effectively and in a few years Sheffield will end up right back where they were when this process began.

The protesters represent a small but very vocal minority in Sheffield. Most of whom are liberal house wives and retirees and trust fund kids who have too much time on their hands and need a cause to take up their time standing around on the street yelling abuse and getting in the way of legitimate tree maintenance work.

I've heard of lots of incidents where local residents who want the trees replaced getting into strong and long arguments with protesters who weren't local. On one street, so many of the residents turned out to argue with protesters as they had all petitioned to have their over large and poor conditioned trees removed that the protesters eventually gave up and left the tree surgeons to get on with it.

There's plenty of tree surgeons out there that just hear about this on the grapevine or on media and want to pass judgement - but i know guys who've worked on this contract. They're not taking part in a mindlessly destructive deforestation of Sheffield. The tree felling is just a part of a major and long overdue overhaul of the deteriorating, aging and badly maintained tree stock on Sheffield's highways. Most of the trees are getting replaced. Apparently, most of the trees getting felled are crappy overlarge ash, lime and cherry pulling up pavements and tarmac and that have been lopped/topped in past decades then left to regrow out of control with decay forming in the large old wounds - barely worth saving.

Light branches that need cutting and holding = Use a silky!

Hi

I'm a freelance, self employed climber. My gear needs LOLERing. Can anyone recommend or put themselves forward as LOLER inspectors near Sheffield, Chesterfield or the Peak District PM me with their prices and availability?

Thanks

Will

22 hours ago, Aicchalmers said:

There's always a certain joy in ruthlessly murdering leylandii for sure but I certainly enjoy seeing a good atlas cedar or dawn redwood or granny pine.

For me there's two aspects, one being perfectly healthy big trees that it feels a crying shame to fell where they aren't really causing any problems.

The other being the slow erosion of the tree cover in the landscape, where you aren't removing anything particularly spectacular but the overall effect is still a huge loss of tree cover and biodiversity.

Answer is always going to be education at the end of the day, too many people don't even notice trees until it blocks their sky TV signal..

Totally agree. And i was only referring to "conny bashing" with regard to Leylandii's and their like. I love cedars and Scots pines especially. 

I think it's always a shame to remove trees entirely though unless they're poor specimens or dangerous. I think the erosion of tree cover should be prevented by councils putting proper safeguards in place by perhaps expanding on conservation areas or getting more TPO's on domestic trees and insisting on replanting the majority of trees being felled within reason.

33 minutes ago, Chris Day said:

I had a moral dilemma today, I was working in my home town for an annual hedge trimming job and had a great view of half the town from the top of one holy hedge.

 

I thought well I took a big ash down over there, those conifers are coming down in January, those conifers are too big for the garden me or someone else will be dealing those soon and where did those lovely oaks go I remember as a kid? 

 

Did make me question what I personally have done to diminish that urban landscape! 

Hi mate. Getting rid of conifers is never bad for the urban landscape, they are - with few exceptions - a blight on the british landscape and every felled conny is an improvement in my book. So keep em coming down 

Too many tree surgeons think Lopping and Topping are perfectly acceptable types of pruning operations, which is why much of the info in that article will fall on deaf ears. 

Some good ideas there. I'll get my new Fort Knox up and running soon.

Well I'll make sure I'm insured anyway, so if they really want the stuff, then like you all say, they get in. But I'd at least like to make somthing that only real pros would bother busting into.

On 21/11/2017 at 20:08, wiley said:

I went for the subtler option and basically said that I don't think CIS is applicable and they are going to ask HMRC, so should be good! I try to leave court appearances for unpaid speeding tickets 

Good approach. If you're unsure, why not speak to HMRC yourself and see what advice they give. In my own experience I've never been deducted CIS while subbying as a tree surgeon. I wouldn't have it personally and wouldn't work for a company that insisted on it unless they're a construction company.

I'm looking at what design of garage door is most safe for keeping thieves outta my work stuff. 

What can anyone recommend? e.g Roller doors, swing doors, panel doors etc.

Cheers

Will

On 14/11/2017 at 18:09, Steve Bullman said:

They were just working to a spec and providing for their families at the end of the day mate 

I get that. But it's a proper arborist's job to advise a customer that doing that to a tree is a bad idea and suggest a proper way of doing it to preserve the tree and give client what they want.

Looks good. I would have done exactly the same. Shame on the "tree surgeons" who butchered it previously.

3 minutes ago, Steve Bullman said:

so charge £160 and offer everything   Thats another £200 in your pocket each week and unless you are the biggest gear freak ever, you aren't going to be spending £200 a week on new rigging gear!

I'd love to mate. But I don't know anyone who'd pay me that. I'm a decent climber, but I've only been doing it 3 and half years and haven't built a good enough reputation yet to get paid that much. I live in Derbyshire, not London, noone gets paid £160 that I know of. £150 max, and thats for really, really experienced and quick climbers.

If I'm wrong, please point me in the direction of someone that would pay that much  

On 10/11/2017 at 20:54, Joe Newton said:

Same, I keep everything I need in my truck. Who I'm working for and what I'm doing dictates what I bring. I don't charge extra for my big saws, unless the company doesn't have their own. I just know mine will be sharp and well maintained. Terror saws get used for the last couple of metres though.

I take a full maintenance and sharpening kit everywhere. It's amazing how some places won't even have a combi spanner sometimes.

I Luke my rigging kit as I've got capabilities for stuff like speed lines, controlled zipline, our balancing limbs, which most firms don't have. It makes my life easier.

But why would you provide all that gear for someone else's work when you're only getting paid Labour Only rates? Unless you're charging them £160+ a day, why would you provide them with your own van and rigging gear and saws? Your employer is making a lot of money off you.

I'm on £120 a day, so there's no way I'm providing all that extra stuff (my top handle and a rigging pinto pulley for light stuff is the only extra gear i bring).