Mick Dempsey

I have to tell you about another misheard saying that’s had me chuckling all day. Was working with @5thelement on Friday and we were laughing about the ‘no expensive spares’ thing. He said a few years back he was with a few mates having a beer and one of them, whilst discussing something or other that was obvious and could have been assumed to have been the case without saying it, said ‘of course, that’s a gibbon’ So the others turn and say ‘you what?’ And it turns out that all his life he’s thought the phrase ‘that’s a given’ is somehow involving a gibbon. Apparently he did admit (he was in his 40s) he’d always thought it odd, but just carried on with it till someone pulled him up. Sorry for stealing your story Dave, too good not to share.

Dont see how it could be much better, everyone’s happy.

Maybe you need to enlarge a bit. You have been looking for this bloke for more than 2 years without success , it’s getting a bit like that song by Everything But The Girl. What’s the story? Who did he work for? What did he look like? Why do you want to locate him?

Maybe try Arbtalk on Facebook, you’ll get a lot of nonsense replies but you’ll get more reach.

The problem for newbies is they want to get time in the tree to learn to do the bigger stuff, but employers/bosses only want them to do the bigger stuff IF they’re experienced enough to rig big over targets etc. (Their reputation, their insurance) the old catch 22 Its easy to say ‘employers should take the time to teach newbies to do this stuff’ but you can spend a lot of time and effort teaching someone to get to commercial climber standard to have them leave very soon after for Canada, Australia or more money down the road. I can see the attraction for many firms of just getting a good freelance climber in on the bigger jobs. I remember Bob at Aspen arb on here saying it takes three years from a zero position before he will send a lad out in his truck on his insurance to do a real tree job without him or a senior being present.

That’s a miserable situation, when you can’t sleep with pain. Have you got help? Can you cook etc?

Yeah, that’ll do it. Bad news. What’s the prognosis?

Well, naïve perhaps, but it’s a chance to get some hours in the harness or on the saws under you belt for the first year of your tree working life. After that you move on to a better (privately owned) firm on your journey towards self employment.

You know when you’ve been hearing something your whole life, and you misheard it all that time, and you sort of thought you knew what it meant, but it still confused you a bit, then one day…

Went back and finished the clear up on a job we were rained off of couple of weeks back. limited access so rather than the usual 15 tonner I roped in a guy I met on another job. Firewood dealer with aspirations to go into milling, so he took the pines and the sequoia. Getting the biggest lump of sequoia on his little combo was a bit of a palaver, but he did it. Notice my use of a little round piece to get the lump moving on the ground. Egyptian style!

To address your points at the end of the post. 1: The word ‘undercut’ is perjorative, substitute that for ‘offer better value’ or even ‘cheaper’ and you change everything. For a removal for example you can either do it or you can’t, if the tree has gone and the house is still there, mission accomplished. FB tree guy sites are replete with threads and posts with guys whining about how they’re so great and customers don’t appreciate their skill and how they’re losing work because another outfit (always hacks and cowboys) are taking their work and ruining the industry etc. Well boo hoo, tough titty, maybe look in the mirror for why you’re losing work. 2: There’s no lack of understanding from the public about what tree guys do, anymore than there’s a lack of understanding from the public about Electricians, Binmen or satellite engineers, ie. they don’t care, just do your job, put the bill in and go home. If you want more money, do it twice as quick and do double the work. 3: More jobs than people in every sector from what I read, so lower paid work is the first to suffer as people move up the chain to jobs they wouldn’t get in normal economic circumstances. As for regulation, it’ll never happen. Not unless they want to start marching into gypsy camps with their clipboards and forms, anyone think that’s going to happen?

….

Labour are miles ahead in the polls, not least because Starmer has kicked out Corbyn. Thus getting the backing of the popular press.

I thought that as well, but I assume the op wanted to reuse the post.

He who dares Rodney, he who dares…

How do they afford to pay for tree surgeons then?

6” chipper plus tipper 3.5 tonner 20k. Et voilà! You can do most small to medium jobs as efficiently as the biggest firm.

1st of April is the average first sighting for me here.

4 cyl.

Mostly on Instagram doing this from what I’ve seen.. To answer your question though, I dunno, there seems to be more than ever, like has been said before anyone any good will be doing their own thing. Start up costs very low in this biz.

We need pictures.

This is a very important point. Without it a simple rear-ender could end it very serious injury.

@Ty Korrigan had issues, to put it mildly.

Good info.

I suppose a 25 hp petrol grinder will use that running flat out for 5 hours.