Greg Thompson

It's not really true that people think any less of people in Arb or in gardening jobs. It is a combination of lots of people in the industry who are unable or unwilling to charge enough. Perceived value of what is basically removing green waste from the property however complex the skills/logistics are. The paying public don't care how new your chipper is, if you are Arb approved or really well qualified. They want what everybody wants.....the 3 magic ingredients- cheap-fast- quality. Any business doing this will fail so you choose two of the three. As long as our industry is fragmented and under represented, employers can't charge enough to pay people well as machinery suppliers and insurance companies or yard rents for example are charging more and more especially since covid. They are riding a wave of high prices set by supply chain issues but hoping nobody notices. Maybe we should follow their lead. The only thing to do is to do the thing and stop talking about it because low wages in Agriculture/Horticulture/ Arb is as old as the hills.

Hi, The Arb Association will give you all the detail you need as they are not trying to trip you up. They will work with you. It is worth making sure you have everything in place to save the hassle of re- assessment.

Anybody else had problems with Vanguard engines? We had Forst and swapped to a new petrol Timberwolf as Forst at the time had no idea why we had starting issues. Now we have the Timberwolf we have different issues with starting and stalling. Mainly fuel pump related. I went for the same engine on a different chipper as we concerned about diesel emissions compliance coming in but that seems to be less discussed now. Either way it's been a long time since I had a chipper I can rely on! Never, ever used to have starting issues with Jenson and earlier Forst. Perhaps these petrol engines are just not designed for chippers? Be a shame to swap a six month old chipper just to go back to diesel. Cheers