Tommygunn1992

Will be a two man team so just a 4X4 with bucket and a tracked chipper, all waste is left on site, truck and chipper hire will work out around £75 a day including insurances, I’m waiting on a quote to up public liability. jobs are meant to be kept fairly close but I’d imagine an Isuzu smack with mewp and towing is very thirsty, I’m just waiting on all my numbers so I can work out the take home on it. With regards to domestic, I do ok with domestic but its a lot of hedge cutting and I quite enjoyed the smash and grab railway style work I used to do, out in the country not draggging brash down pissy alley ways 🙂. plus with an economic crash looming I worry people won’t be looking to have trees pruned and hedges trimmed.

Based in Kent, the work will be across Kent and East Sussex cutting for UKPN and EPN. The work is just cutting back to previous in most cases, most work from a bucket with rods. I believe the team is 100% subcontractors, I was told £3k a week is generally not unusual for a 2 man team.l and more if you really go for it.

Hi all, just weighing up an offer to subcontract from a local utility arb contractor, I met the owner and went to see a few sites which seemed pretty decent for the money, I’m not naive enough to believe they will all be easy money and the contractor seemed pretty honest and said you have to take the rough with the smooth. I can rent a mewp and tracked chipper at a decent price to get started as my truck and road towable will be no use, anybody else working on span rate and how is the earning potential? Cheers, Tom.

Yeah this seems to be the harsh reality of doing tree work in the UK, I've done a number of them but this was the first this sort of size. I worked on the railway for a while, we didn't do blower tickets but did do strimmer, hedger, polesaw and chipper which seemed wild as we had been using them for ages anyway. When I climbed inside the hedge I did take a lanyard but didn't use it and on the ladder it actually didn't cross my mind, I know lighting technicians and other trades are forced to attach a lanyard to the ladder but seems pointless if the ladder is sketchy, but I didn't think to hook onto the hedge off the ladder.

I got on with it but with 2 blokes on job we ended up a day over taking 4 days to top and side up.. Marks logic certainly crossed my mind too!

About a 3 ft gap once sided up but couldn't really set the ladder up in that gap so had it in the courts.

I'm not saying I know more, I am putting this post out there to get other people's thoughts on how we did it and how they might have tackled it for future reference so I can carry similar work out in future in a more safe and productive manner. You're entitled to your opinion but the idea is not to come across as sour milk, HSE do have certain rules on ladder use and it didn't feel like the safest way to carry it out and if anything did go wrong would I be covered if reaching laterally off a ladder 20-25ft off of the ground with both hand on a chainsaw. I appreciate the advice you shared and will look at the plank idea for future reference.

I agree, I'm not massively experienced in tree work. I got my tickets last year and had been working with ground tickets for a year before that, I've certainly taken on some tree jobs where I'm punching above my weight but enjoyed the challenge. This didn't seem like a challenge or a test of skill it just felt sketchy, we finished the job and it was done in 4 days with a little bit of tidy up left to do. I did mention it and put forward the ideas such as scaff tower and taking fence down to get the mewp in but we didn't go for it.

Yeah to be fair I think that is certainly one option, I would of taken on I think but quoted more than three days and put mon-fri on and charged aggro tax on it. One of those if I get it it ls for good money if I don't then good.

At the risk of sounding soft, it didn't feel safe.. the ladder was pushed leant into the hedge with a bloke stood on the bottom, I was stood on the top rung leaning in. It was also a job for my employer so I was earning day rate and would have not been covered had anything gone tits up as you shouldn't be working like that off of a ladder under HSE.

This week I was put on a large hedge reduction (pictures below) and I was wondering how you might have tackled this job. This was not my job, I was asked to top the hedge and at first I could get inside the hedge and stand on the previous cuts to take the height down while the lads on the ground reduced what they could reach with a short and long reach hedger. Once we got to the next section there was nowhere to stand inside the hedge and we did not have a mewp to hand, I ended up having to climb a ladder leant into the hedge and top with a silky which was not particularly safe or productive, we then ended up siding the hedge from the ladder where it couldn't be reached from the ground. We were given three days to complete this job. I saw many better options such as narrow access tracked mewp, take the fence down to access with mewp or worst case scenario work from a scaff tower with a polesaw and long reach. On the final day we were able to top from the field behind using a mewp, but side up our side from ladder. So what would you do and how long would you quote for this job?

Crazy, my in-laws were waiting over 18 months for a new discovery and knocked it on the head, went for a lexus two months ago and "should" receive keys soon.

I think I may have read a forum on here before where you spoke about the Navara. 14 years from a 10k spend is pretty good, although 10k was certainly a lot more money and went a bit further 20 years ago. It seems I have a lot of thinking to do and money to find, thanks for the advice.

So it seems, I can't believe how some of these hold their money. Some have near 90,000 miles and still asking for 18k.

Insurance not included in budget, when I say £3k that is either cash buy or deposit for something I'm just unsure whether to buy something to tide me over until I take my work full time and then sell it and by something new on finance as dropping like £20k on my first vehicle to work part time seems a bit mad to me. Surprisingly tipper is pretty cheap insurance considering I wrote off a motorbike a few years ago it's about £1100 for the year, I can just chuck on a credit card and pay off after a few jobs go my way.