Just curious what y'all do for mechanical work on your tree trucks and equipment.
A truly good mechanic, meaning highly competent, experienced, skilled, clean and neat, responsive, not located hours away, is, essentially, non existent in my area. Makes life difficult. I generally don't want to do the work myself cuz I should be cutting trees instead of working on equipment, and therefore I definitely don't have a lot of experience As they say, you either make payments or repairs. The good thing about making payments is you are working instead of wasting time. I've only known one truly good mechanic, and he is the number 1 mechanic, out of approx 100 mechanics at HO Penn Cat dealership. He's only been at it 20 years but he is a monster at diagnosing and fixing tricky problems. Cat manufacturer has called on him before to sort things out with new machines. When he shows up to work on your chipper, you can breathe a sigh of relief, cuz he will find out exactly what is wrong, whether it requires a lap top or a creeper.
Of course he is the gold standard. A good mechanic doestnt need to measure all the way up to him to fix the common problems, but he's gotta be a lot better than what I work with. And I am happy to pay what it's worth. there were some good mechanics at the JD dealership that I used to go to when I had JD stuff. They were always rather expensive but they fixed it right the first time, no BS.
Mechanics are probably like tree guys and most other things, they follow the 80/20 rule.
A truly good mechanic, meaning highly competent, experienced, skilled, clean and neat, responsive, not located hours away, is, essentially, non existent in my area. Makes life difficult. I generally don't want to do the work myself cuz I should be cutting trees instead of working on equipment, and therefore I definitely don't have a lot of experience As they say, you either make payments or repairs. The good thing about making payments is you are working instead of wasting time. I've only known one truly good mechanic, and he is the number 1 mechanic, out of approx 100 mechanics at HO Penn Cat dealership. He's only been at it 20 years but he is a monster at diagnosing and fixing tricky problems. Cat manufacturer has called on him before to sort things out with new machines. When he shows up to work on your chipper, you can breathe a sigh of relief, cuz he will find out exactly what is wrong, whether it requires a lap top or a creeper.
Of course he is the gold standard. A good mechanic doestnt need to measure all the way up to him to fix the common problems, but he's gotta be a lot better than what I work with. And I am happy to pay what it's worth. there were some good mechanics at the JD dealership that I used to go to when I had JD stuff. They were always rather expensive but they fixed it right the first time, no BS.
Mechanics are probably like tree guys and most other things, they follow the 80/20 rule.
Few have really ever really admitted thet though. Chances are that when something is old enough to need being repaired, something else is close to it too. A good mechanic can evaluate that aspect, maybe give a heads up. At least a warning helps to know that you will also be spending money down the line.
