Trees, Trees, and More Trees

[CM1995]

One of these gadgets would a handy thing to have in your inventory.

Saw one of those driving down the road last week going home. Interesting machines for sure.

 

[Tones]

When I see equipment like this I wish I was a 1/4 of a century younger. No matter what the economy does I don't think I'd ever be without work.

 

[John Griffin]

No doubt the sennebogens are cool. I have looked at them in detail. The ROI just isnt there for us. Ive run the numbers. They cost over $600k then you have to buy a heavy hauling truck and lowboy to haul them. You also have to pull a routed permit every time to move them here. Our trees are way to big to be taken down with one of these alone. We would still have to have a crane as well. Quite frequently our removals are in the 4 to 5 ft in diameter.

 

[f311fr1]

Have you looked at Ruthford Contractiing out of MS. they have a really neat knuckle boom / saw truck. Also Reon Rounds out of WS. Both are on you tube

 

[skyking1]

That sennebogen is cool!
Always love it when people come out to a clearing job and ask if they can help. I turn around and point behind me, you can hang out over there two tree length away.
" How can I hurt thee? Let me count the ways"

 

[John Griffin]

Ive talked to Carl Rutherford 3 or 4 times. Got to remember even though he's in a neighboring state, a lot of his trees are different from ours. He has tons of pine there. We have them but very little.

We have a local guy that bought a grapple saw. It didnt work out. He bought another one. That one almost bankrupted him as it broke down right out of the gate. His 3rd one had to have a boom rebuild shortly after purchase for $$$. I havent seen it out working so he may have gotten rid of it.

Reon Rounds has a merlo. They seem to be a good option although pricey. Same support truck required unless you can road it everywhere at 25mph. Our area does not lend itself to that. Lots of 2 lane 45 to 55 mph roads.

 

[John Griffin]

Here's some pics from the second job we took the gmk on.

 

[skyking1]

Yeah I can see there's no shortcuts with those big hardwoods. That's why you got the bigger crane. You really needed it. It had to be both bigger and smaller lol. Nice score!

 

[John Griffin]

Another one

 

[John Griffin]

Taking down a couple of large hackberry trees with the gmk3050 at our local ambulance service.

 

[John Griffin]

Everything was going good until we stopped for lunch. While just sitting idle, the lmi starting going nuts. Lost all measurements. Boom wouldn't scope in so we could pack it up even with using the override. Thankfully we were able to grt it packed down with the pendant for in case of a control failure.

We had to go get our TMS300 so we could finish the job. It took a lot more cribbing vs the gmk. So glad we still have it as this would have been very difficult without a crane.

 

[John Griffin]

One of the remaining pieces we picked with the tms.

 

[kshansen]

Could have used some of you guys about a week or so back:

That was a dead ash tree in the hedgerow to the East of my garage. Luckily it was leaning well away from the garage and the only thing in front of it was a corn field the farmer had harvested a week before.

Only problem was that trunk up at waist high for me was a bit over 20 inches. My little 14 inch Homelite had its work cut out for it felling and cutting to fire wood lengths. Still have about half a dozen 3 to four foot chunks to cut and split. And I left the bottom 3 feet on the stump, might trim it off flat and put a flower pot on it!

 

[skyking1]

that sucks about the new crane. At least you were not broke down in a road closure or something.

 

[Mechanicsville804]

This one goes with the pine job above.

2019-01-29_10-51-47 by Griffin93, on Flickr

I like how clean of work yall do, the tarp under the crane is really nice.

 

[John Griffin]

We really try to leave folks place at least as nice as it was before we showed up.

We took down three pines today. One had died from pine beetles. The other two weren't long for this world.

 

[John Griffin]

I just about needed a taller crane for this one. I had it rigged extremely short. I was really missing our gmk with this one. Had to just let it flop over due to all the side weight from the limbs. I would have swung the jib but we couldnt get it and the dead stick out.

 

[John Griffin]

Took down an oak tree over a nice landscape today. This one was small enough we didnt have to use the dead stick on our tms300. 81 ft of boom is what we were working with here. Pictures are kinda deceiving. We only had about 10 ft of cable left before hitting the a2b weight while placing me in from the top of the tree.

 

[John Griffin]

Grove tech got a chance to come work on our gmk today. Bad com cable putting 24v on the can line that should be 2.5v. Going to put a new cable in it as hope nothing is fried.

 

[skyking1]

whew! I was refraining from asking. But it was killin' me smalls.