forestkeepers
Forest Keeper
Therein lies the rub. With our larger chipper, we are reluctant to chop stuff down small enough to make efficient use of an arbor trolley. Unless it's Osage like today, the chipper can usually crush stuff down smaller so we keep the feeding material pretty big. I could see some application for it on a light pruning job with lots of small tip cuts. But generally, we don't take the saw time to cut up stuff any smaller than the ground crew can manage efficiently. And it's usually 3 on the ground, one in the tree; sometimes 2:2 ratio if 2 climbers are needed -- so we're keeping the chipper busy. Or winching in huge limbs from a drop, with minimal handling.
But take yesterday as an example; we had no application for the AT -- Job 1). 4 limbs in the backyard, no fence, level ground. We chopped each limb in half, so it was only 8 pieces, all far too large for an AT. Job 2). The tree was in the front yard, right by the street. Chipper was 20' away. Job 3). Chipper was at the end of their driveway, just past the drop zone -- so only 30' away at most. We hauled over rounds with the hand truck, winched other limbs in directly and part of the trunk that was small enough diameter to directly chip without processing (apart from limbing).
And Raj, we don't typically roll out all our gear at once (to avoid damage, theft, loss), nor put it up all at once. We keep things in the boxes in the truck until needed, or during initial rigging setup. But everything is usually pretty close at hand in the truck and one of the ground crew fetches it as needed. Things get put away when we are done with them, not kept out until rollup time.
Uhh, "lawn" would be putting it kindly. It was a dried mudslide, hardly a blade of grass anywhere. I don't know if it is the kids playing killing the "grass" or if it was the horse/dog (couldn't quite tell which -- given the piles-o-poo). At least we gave them a fighting chance to plant some grass or bring in some topsoil and throw down some sod.
yah. Why didn't you?
