Gave up on one this week. Transplanting some trees on a golf course. I measured and calculated out the root ball, kind of put my rusty old eye ball scale, on the tree and everything, and I came up with 30-40,000lbs tops. I really thought 30-35,000 would load it.
Bob and I worked back and forth, pulling, lifting, swinging on it, and both ended up with +/-36,000lbs EACH. He was setting a lot closer in the truck crane, and I saw the front start to get light. I was in the rt, and Jim told me he saw a little daylight on the back jacks. So we both were getting all we could. We see-sawed back and forth a little trying to rock/ break it loose, and just couldn't get anywhere. Time for plan b.
Decided the tap root was holding us, so brought out the old winch truck to drag/cut the bottom of the ball loose. We put a cable around the bottom of the ball, attached one end to the winch truck, and attached the other end to a semi tractor trailer (that we were planning on putting the tree on). Just drug the winch truck. Plan c
Dozer, dug a hole on the other side. D6 pushing and lifting on one side of the root ball, with both cranes lifting all we could, and the winch truck pulling. Slid the tree, roots, and ball about 8', inside the hole. Free now but not off the ground.
We stood around, decided we needed to dig a trench, up out of the hole, to push the tree closer to the truck crane , move the rt, and then try to load it. That was when I pulled the plug.
All my talk in another thread about not being afraid to say no. Here we are, with both cranes pushing chart, a winch truck pulling, and a dozer pushing. I decided to quit before we ended up in a disaster.
I could just see the dozer backing off too fast, or the root ball disengrating, or any one of a hundred things, and we'd have a tree laying on its side,with it and the dozer, buried under both cranes.
ointhead
We would have all had to climb in the winch truck to get home.
A larger crane outfit is looking at bringing in their 210ton crane (there are 3 total trees to move), if the course decides that they want to spend that much $, or they'll cut them down. I still can't believe we didn't get it loaded.
It actually makes more sense just to get the bigger crane, because even if we had moved the cranes closer, we wouldn't have had room to unload where they wanted to put the trees, nor could the trailer have handled it. I think it must be between 70-80,000lbs, the dirt just has so much rock in it, is the only way I can be off in my calculations.
Either way, we went, we saw, and were conquered. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.