The Official Work Pictures Thread

:D

I only break my old 064 on the rare occasion these days, but when you need heavy grunt and a lot of bar, it sure is nice to have some in the bag.
 
I rented a mini skid with a grapple bucket, and a dump trailer. The mini skid is a brand new vermeer 925, and it is freaking sweet. The dump trailer on the other hand is a pos, but I'm getting it. Was hoping to have it all cleaned up in one day, with the dump trailer it's gonna take 2. The neighbor has an old topkick 7000 that i might buy down the road. The trucking is the bottleneck at this point on this job, usually it's not this bad. The neighborhood is one of the ones where the cops are weird, otherwise i would just have a dumpster dropped and be done with it.

Edit: the ideal way of course is with a big ass grapple truck, like Mick demonstrated. Lol every time i look here i realize how much material handling and trucking is the name if the game. And yes Cory, that was a fitter hat :D
 
Some guys post the wood for sale delivered or free pick up just before doing a job. It saves or pays for what would be a dump fee. Then they can write down a list of guys willing to buy unsplit logs.

Around here, boss knows a guy 5 min from base where we can dump all for free, then he burns in in a giant pile and keeps a little firewood for himself.
 
We have a big Deodar in town, similar. What amount of precipitation do you average annually, Mick?


Kyle, I dumped a monster maple spar on time a long time ago. I learned it's not better to put a log into a crater in the lawn, as my crash pad was waaaay too little. Intact trees are less likely to make a crater SOMETIMES climbing and dismantling make a lot less work, unless you have enough iron to manage.


Was the mini-grapple bucket better than a mini-x? Was it an availability thing, or specific choice. I've never used a mini-x for whole tree work, just logging a bit.
Seems like you might be able to sub-in a mini-x pretty easily from a construction contractor, as well, boosting your production.

I've been speculating whether a mini-x would be good in my future, as a complimentary piece of iron. We are going to have sooooo many dead trees up here, soon...drought and heat.





Mick, any more pics? Whole tree, 'before'?
FWIW, I'll never make it to France, so more pic of "French" stuff is cool in my book...architecture, seeing your house is cool. Way different than T-111 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Plytani...ual-0-563-in-x-48-in-x-96-in-113699/100000016

or hardi-board https://www.homedepot.com/p/James-H...-Primed-Cedarmill-Lap-Siding-615572/202035444
 
Funny you should mention the pictures of that cedar.

The wife (of the client) spent the whole time taking stills and video (including a good fell)

So I asked her for some of the best ones, and decided not to waste any time/concentration taking my own.

She tells me she’s going to make up a memory stick etc. This hasn’t happened despite my gentle persuasion.
So I tell her, just email the best 5 shots, never mind the videos, in fact while I was sitting in the kitchen getting paid I said, let’s do it now, it’ll take 5 minutes.
Anyone who has a smartphone knows how easy this is, but she says she’s going to do it tomorrow, definitely.

It’s starting to get on my tits.
 
Then give someone who doesn’t revel in their ignorance the goddam phone so they can do it.

Go to the photo, press on it, a box with an arrow appears, press on it.
It’ll give you an option saying ‘Mail’

Err, that’s it.
 
Ha ha, sorry if that came over a bit narky Stig.

I said the wrong thing earlier to the wife, now I have an evening of grim silence ahead of me.

No way out of it.
 
Sean, i agree wholeheartedly that piecing a tree out is often the easier and quicker way, rather than doing a massive repair job on the yard. This customer had a bid that reflected no damage, and that's why i got the job. He's an operator, so all he does every day is run heavy equipment (crane guy matter of fact), so lawn repair was his expectation. Come to find out he's going to be building a 40 x 60 right where i put it, so he said not to even worry about it. He just bought the house, is gonna tear the garage off to get concrete trucks to his new building, then demo the house and build new. So the damage I'm doing is absolutely nothing compared to what's coming :lol:

I originally asked for a mini skid, but they were out. I then just asked about a mini x, and it was not even 50 bucks more for a machine that weighs over twice what the mini skid would have been. Since i had the large trunk sections to deal with, i figured i could roll them on the trailer using the blade and the arm to lift. I would also be able to sort debris easier (no chipper on this one) and do less damage, so that was my thinking. My buddy uses a mini x exclusively, rarely chips just slices stuff in his dumpsters which he also transports the equipment with. He's got grapple saws mounted on them, so watching him work almost makes you want to cry at how easy he can blow through stuff that would take me forever.

The original equipment rental fell thru (they shipped the wrong trailer), so this time i ended up with the mini skid and grapple. If i was chipping it would be useless for the brush, but I'm doing the diced lettuce approach that everyone starts off doing (chipper needs an injector). Worked out pretty good really, this pic is half of the entire trees brush in one load, with logs on top to hold everything in place. Shove it in a pile, dice it up, shove more dice more, load in trailer and dice again. Using a big saw it really doesn't take too long.

20190515_115251.jpg

New guys starting out and people who lurk and don't post yet, this is a completely ok way to operate. Yes you will make more of you own everything, but renting lifts and equipment is completely ok too. Every construction company on earth rents equipment all the time, some multi billion dollar companies only rent. You still need to know what you are doing, and actually need to be even better at estimating time, but you can do this too. I can handle small to medium trees with stuff i own, but on jobs like this, renting is better than killing yourself. If you can line up multiple jobs and talk them into cutting it down one day then removing material the next, you can often make more per hour with less effort renting than grunting stuff into a pickup bed and climbing.
 
Equipment's great. The trailer was a huge improvement and opened many opportunities. The small chipper opened another world of opportunities as long as I do not forget the key home, 40 miles away.
spiral.jpg trailer.jpg
 
Yeah that's no good, forgetting stuff at the house sucks. Very nice trailer, it's just a bit small only being single axle. I'm renting a 12 foot 10k dump trailer for 100 a day, 1k a month. Since i got a brand new truck for a welding rig, I'm not really keen in just shoving branches in it, so renting a dump trailer will be a requirement on any job i do. In reality, i can haul about 7k material legally, and it unloads in about a min. This mini skid and grapple was 300 a day. Since it replaces about 3 to 6 guys, I'm saving money there. The point I was trying to make was if you are playing the removal game, sometimes renting equipment is the way to go so you are attacking it with comparable iron to the bigger guys.
 
Was the mini-grapple bucket better than a mini-x? Was it an availability thing, or specific choice. I've never used a mini-x for whole tree work, just logging a bit.
Seems like you might be able to sub-in a mini-x pretty easily from a construction contractor, as well, boosting your production.

I've been speculating whether a mini-x would be good in my future, as a complimentary piece of iron.

I've seen a mini-x used for landscaping, and they fed the chipper with it when we helped the landscaping guys get rid of a lot of bushes and small trees on our way to the dump. Hard to say if it would be better than a little mini skid as is common to tree work. It's bigger, but has much longer reach and range of motion, heavier, likely much more expensive.
 
Nice LZ today;)
A37E4A7C-BE18-414D-9DD6-66D618D8E9CA.jpg
Quick glimpse of the spar from yesterday. Need to finish getting that down tomorrow
13E6AA10-BB88-4774-A99A-C7AA415E97ED.jpg
I’m not the quickest on spar work when I’m on spurs. I’m a bit slow at setting the rigging.

Saw something I found pretty cool while I was waiting on ground control
E68CB42D-61F0-49A8-8116-999A803C1EC5.jpg
 
Back
Top