green heart

Exactly this ! Hardly an expensive manufacturing consideration, for the road safety benefit. If this regularly happened to a make of car or truck -we'd all know about it and the manufacturers would soon sort it out ! I guess maybe I'm just too used to wearing seat belts and that 'safety' mindset.. 🤔

Try a pair of Oregon Chainsaw chaps, with the rucksack type clip fasteners, on the back of your legs. Great ventilation obviously, CE marked, and can be worn over shorts or trousers . Only cost £60-00 ish, online or from any Machine Mart shop. Winner!

Thanks all of you, for some thoughtful responses I will consider. I confess I was surprised how bad the corrosion was, on the failed nearside stub housing. There was also a very thin mud-crust, nicely concealing the same. A prior hammering and inspection would probably have picked it up... But on the previous stub axle failures, the steel shaft had catastrophically wriggled out of the rubbers and box hosing.. um, as er, some male drivers are possibly familiar with?? 🥴 Sorry, thinking of a friend.. On a serious note tho, the design does seem to lack a safety consideration, to avoid such wholesale failure .

Is it just me, or have others struggled with this? I have a little old Ifor Williams P6e trailer (6'x4' size, 2 wheels only, unbraked, 500kg payload), which seems to snap a rubber-torsion stub axle, every 5 years or so -3 times now ! This is the smallest of my 5 trailers, used monthly, and I therefore never overload it, honestly! It's previously happened on the M6, and once again last Friday, going round a local cross roads with a small chipper tied down, and an oncoming car was good enough to catch my errant trailer wheel..... 🥴 I was sufficiently 'disappointed' that I had Indespension units fitted after the last failure, but they seem just as bad/rubbish (and confirmed by the trailer fitter, IIRC!). This morning Ifor's customer service boss says she's never heard of this, in her 20 years tenure -but Indespension suggested a 5-10 years lifespan today. So, with thousands of such trailers in occasional use on UK roads, by my reckoning, that must add up to quite a lot of catastrophic trailer failures ? It seems both daft -and frankly dangerous- that there is no safety restraint, to prevent the seemingly inevitable release of the internal stub/shaft, causing catastrophic failures? Is it just me?? I'll try and get a photo attached, tomorrow.

Is it just me, or have others struggled with this? I have a little old Ifor Williams P6e trailer (6'x4' size, 2 wheels only, unbraked, 500kg payload), which seems to snap a rubber-torsion stub axle, every 5 years or so -3 times now ! This is the smallest of my 5 trailers, used monthly, and I therefore never overload it, honestly! It's previously happened on the M6, and once again last Friday, going round a local cross roads with a small chipper tied down, and an oncoming car was good enough to catch my errant trailer wheel..... 🥴 I was sufficiently 'disappointed' that I had Indespension units fitted after the last failure, but they seem just as bad/rubbish (and confirmed by the trailer fitter, IIRC!). This morning Ifor's customer service boss says she's never heard of this, in her 20 years tenure -but Indespension suggested a 5-10 years lifespan today. So, with thousands of such trailers in occasional use on UK roads, by my reckoning, that must add up to quite a lot of catastrophic trailer failures ? It seems both daft -and frankly dangerous- that there is no safety restraint, to prevent the seemingly inevitable release of the internal stub/shaft, causing catastrophic failures? Is it just me?? I'll try and get a photo attached, tomorrow.

This surely has to be a prime contender for Arbtalk's most rewarding read (and wildly free-reigning thread, ever)? Um, and on the slightest of (topical) derails: When working on an autumn roadside tree removal job, two decades ago, I knocked up a hand painted 'Cheap logs -today only' sign, and placed it on the verge. It duly produced a steady trickle of Goblins, in cars, happy to PAY BEER MONEY (!) for the timber or logs, that we didn't really want to clear away.. Some even became log customers, for a while! An absolute winner ! Has anyone else successfully tried a similar idea?

Whilst the 18v makita mini pruning saw is lovely and compact for tree pruning -it's also slow and gutless, compared with a Sthil GTA40 or the superior Milwaukee M18 fuel . Tho I gather Makita do have a 40v version, but it's currently only for sale in Japan, for now... I do also have both versions of the 2511 saw -and now very rarely use either of them (for pruning works), since buying the M18 Fuel and Makita.

How about something like this, from the Forest Master stand at the last APF show ? Seemed like they were made from a more durable nylon-type weave, but perhaps check with the agents ? At £2/100 No. bags, up to £5- per net bag, not as cheap a solution as the old carrot bags.. Also, have you experimented to see if there's some easy and simple way to bag/collect just the 'woody' part of the output, leaving most of the twigs for er, 'habitat piles ' ?

Hmm... Our local veg market has loads of recycled black plastic 18''-24'' size crates which would be good for drying and stacking up (fairly convenient but lightweight, tho ). They get chucked in the bin wagon, unless I need some.. In the wholesale plant nursery, they used a much more robust version to shift potted stock in -must be able to order a stack cheaply, off the Internet, surely? What about fixing some 1'' square 3' high netting around the edges of a pallet?? We've also had very 'mixed' experiences with the lifespan of net sacks -I think speaking with other bag suppliers, and users on here, will yield some insights ? Do you plan to burn the wood chunks in your burning stove -I'm very interested to hear how it goes ? I try not to think how much branch wood gets wasted/thrown in our chippers, just for 'convenience' each year..

I wouldn't use checkatrade for anything, even if you paid me to, based on what I've heard about them over the last year or so -and as for paying them to advertise my work... er, no thanks!

I wish that was my NFU experience! After a decade or so of no claims (ever!), they suddenly bumped up our business insurance by 70%, so I moved to another insurer.. A couple of years later, almost the same with my household insurance, so I moved that too.. Then three years ago, declined to insure the remaining tractors, and Mog -all with no claims, again ! Couldn't get any sense out of their head office or anything... 🤬

I think it's been a 'thing' in the UK for 2 decades now, honestly ? I distinctly remember my groundsman promptly rugby-tackling a middle aged canal runner, in Sale, a split second before a felled Sycamore tree hit the towpath. Maybe he thought the warning signs and tape was his finishing line ?!? -it nearly was his finish, tho! Several similar experiences, with car drivers ignoring road operators/signs, as plenty others on here will doubtless testify! In fairness, I'd also have to confess to a couple of er, 'blank/blonde moments ' on my own sites, whilst walking round, talking on the phone... 🥴

Hi, We do a seasonal mixture of habitat management works: hedgelaying, woodland management, felling and tree safety, access work, fencing, planting up, big wildflower schemes, wetlands, grazing projects, invasive weed control, weed wiping, etc. The variety of work keeps it interesting -even after all this time!

Nah, just get yourself a Maasden rope puller -way lighter to carry !

With due deference to Peasgood and others, here : It all looks very interesting, but I don't understand why not use a light throw line and weight (small, portable, safe and very cheap), thrown over an appropriate branch in the tree to be felled, to pull through a heavier pull-rope/cable ? Cost say, £30- ? Obviously, a bit less convenient if it's needed several times a day, but I've found this works pretty well, for the last few decades. -This also avoids the very slight possibility of a set of timber tongs falling 20' onto an unfortunate operator -which might just save hundreds or thousands of pounds... 🧐 I'll get my coat... Sorry 5thelement, you beat me to it!