I own a tree service in North Alabama. We have a lot of removals in our area that involve a crane. We have a TMS300 that we use for removals. We also rent larger and smaller cranes occasionally to assist in tree removals where our crane won't fit or reach. Here's today's tree removal. This River Birch was way to close to the house. People plant these when they are small 5 feet off a house. Over time, they grow much larger and become a problem. 2020-11-06_09-47-52 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2020-11-06_09-47-27 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2020-11-06_09-47-11 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2020-11-06_09-46-56 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2020-11-06_09-46-39 by Griffin93 , on Flickr
Here's a recent picture of me on a storm damage job. I'm 6'2" and 220 lbs for a size reference. 2020-08-10_11-17-56 by Griffin93 , on Flickr Helping it down with the crane. 2020-08-10_11-22-41 by Griffin93 , on Flickr This is what we started with. 2020-08-10_11-18-14 by Griffin93 , on Flickr
looks like a nice size for most tree jobs.
John did ya'll get any damage from the last hurricane that came through? We had high winds and lot's of trees down in Central AL.
We really didn't get anything from the last hurricane that came through. For a while it seemed like every time the wind blew we would have a tree on a house. Where in central Alabama?
The 'ham. There was a lot of damage in Columbiana towards Sylacauga. Alexander City and south didn't seem to have any damage. We were without power for almost a full day. Power crews from New Brunswick Canada were all the way down in Columbiana, AL stringing lines back up.
This tree had a slight problem. 2018-04-06_07-50-28 by Griffin93 , on Flickr Got it all picked apart with the crane before it fell on this man's house. 2018-04-06_07-50-01 by Griffin93 , on Flickr
I'm posting a bunch of previous jobs but I figured you guys might like seeing some of them. Here's one where we took out a bunch of pine trees, whole. 2018-05-01_07-29-21 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2018-05-01_07-29-47 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 81 ft of main boom right here. 2018-05-01_07-30-10 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2018-05-01_07-30-30 by Griffin93 , on Flickr
Sometimes trees decide to take naps on houses. 2018-05-01_07-30-54 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2018-05-01_07-31-06 by Griffin93 , on Flickr
I have a bunch more to add later but I'll go ahead and do one more tonight. Had to set up in the driveway and reach over the house to get this maple out. The tree was completely surrounded by the brick work. 2018-06-12_02-29-26 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2018-06-12_02-30-16 by Griffin93 , on Flickr That's me hanging on the ball putting on slings. I'm actually tied in above the ball on a wired shut shackle per ANSI Z133-17. Nothing quite like floating through the air tied into the crane. 2018-06-12_02-29-01 by Griffin93 , on Flickr 2018-06-12_02-29-56 by Griffin93 , on Flickr
This one goes with the pine job above. 2019-01-29_10-51-47 by Griffin93 , on Flickr
Its been a long time since i updated this. Flickr was how i was posting pictures and it quit working. We still have our tms300 but we got a new to us grove GMK3050-1. We keep having to turn down jobs because we cant get in and setup in tight areas. We also needed more capacity at distance. We keep having to take apart oak trees at 80ft. The old tms is down to 4k gross out the back at that distance. The gmk will do 7200 with the same boom configuration. After talking crane ops ear off and looking at several other cranes, we landed on the gmk3050. This one came from all the way in NH. My guys had to check it out immediately.
Congrats! Liked the part about talking @crane operator ear off
We took down a 58 inch dbh oak tree for its first job. Bad root rot problems unfortunately. The new gmk performed wonderful. We had to drive in through a ditch. With our tms it would have taken lots of cribbing to fill it in. The gmk was able to drive right through with the adjustable suspension.
A few more from the same job.
That's great you've got it out working. Leaving the other slab at home? Better get the jib on before you need it. Its even hyd. offset jib- those are handy to offset to pick something, and then tip it back up to set it on your bumper. And just a heads up, watch your fingers stowing the pads on those GMK's. Everyone gets warned, and everyone still gets their fingers pinched.
Question: When you are supporting a tree and someone is cutting, how do you know how much load to support when he cuts the tree off?
This crane has a bunch of slabs that werent on in the pictures. We had a problem with the counterweight picker. It had a bad prox switch but to replace it we had to pull the cylinder so we wanted to replace both of them while we had the cylinder out. We fixed it the other day. Each small slab is 1 mt and the thick one is 2 mt. We have clamped a 1 ton slab on for 7.6t on the crane. Well probably leave the other 4 ton off unless doing long distance heavy picks. Got to take a couple of 26 to 28 inch pines at 70 ft week after next so well put the full load on for that. I don't plan to run the jib unless needed. We can hang it with the tms300. We dont want it hanging out as we have had problems manuvering in tight spots with the tms300 due to the jib hanging off the side. Yeah definitely got to be careful with the pads but its nice not to have to pick them up.
I do a lot of the cutting personally. We use wet wood charts and measurements to determine approximately how much a pick weighs. A lot of it is experience. You dont want a piece to jump when its cut free but you also dont want it to roll off and fall. These kinds of things coupled with the unkown weights are why a lot of crane companies wont do tree work. There is a lot of crane specific cuts made when doing tree work. Theres also dead eye slings that are tied to balance pieces. We do use round loop slings for log picks too and sometimes for tops. We are only supposed to pick calculated weights to 60 percent of the load chart to allow for the pieces being heavier than calculated.
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.
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.
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.
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
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"
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.
Here's some pics from the second job we took the gmk on.
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!
Another one
Taking down a couple of large hackberry trees with the gmk3050 at our local ambulance service.
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.
One of the remaining pieces we picked with the tms.
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!
that sucks about the new crane. At least you were not broke down in a road closure or something.
I like how clean of work yall do, the tarp under the crane is really nice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
whew! I was refraining from asking. But it was killin' me smalls.
I really need my gmk back. Grove dealer still hasnt fixed it and have been dropping the ball at every opportunity. Had two trees on top of a house this week. Lots of damage to these poor folks house. So glad we kept the old tms300 but really could have used more lift capacity. At one point, we were working at 80 ft radius with a net capacity of 3300 lbs. That's not enough when dealing with a 34 in dbh poplar tree. No larger rental cranes could be had in our area.
No school like old school.
that sucks John, I hope they get you sorted soon.
Sometimes when you dont have enough crane capacity, you have to get creative. We had to cut in and stack cribbing to lift the tree off the house with a 30 ton jack. We were then able to crane out the rest of what was inside the house and have the remaining tree not fall on the house. We had to cut small pieces off at a time next. Unfortunately, the brick fence is very much in the way.
Damn that popular did a lot of damage to that house. That sucks.
I've never had anything good to say about either poplars or cottonwoods. Nice work on solving the issue.
Not so much on that house but I never understood people building a house in the middle of the woods with dozens of tree's within close proximity. Sure it looks nice but but way too many bad things can happen. A fallen tree is probably the least serious. When a big fire went through by my property the only house fully destroyed was right in the middle of a stand of spruce tree's. I was lucky I only caught the edge of it. The fire boss even said people need to think of what could happen when they're planning to build a house in the country. Not only is being in the tree's hazardous, it's even harder to get emergency vehicles like fire trucks in to try and limit the damage. When I built my pole shed I took out a big poplar tree about 15ft. away because I sure didn't want it falling on the shop.
Wow that’s a ton of damage to that house! Hopefully nobody got hurt! Great pictures, hope you get your other crane back soon! In the late 80s we had a cold snap with howling arctic outflow winds go through and it knocked a ton of trees down. Our house was literally 10 feet from some 48” DBH fir trees. Luckily they stood their ground but one about 150 feet from our house snapped off thankfully 30 feet up and only the top 6 feet hit the house and just shattered without any damage to the house. Had it uprooted like most all the others did I’m sure our house would have looked a lot worse than that one! There are now far fewer trees close to the house but still some big ones. My dad doesn’t want to cut them down because he’s fond of them… hopefully that won’t bite him in the rear one day…
That's flirting with disaster.
Had to break it all out today. Jib and boom are 136 ft together. Had a couple of tops and logs laying on this house at 100 ft radius. 2600 lb poplar log flying over the house. Dont use the jib much but when we do, we dont take it back down until we have to. Tried out these bagsters. They work great vs other bags we have used. 4x8x2.5 size makes it way easier to put limbs in it.
that shows the difference in chart between a real crane and a boom truck. That 28 ton National 1100 was good for 600 total @100, including the ball.
Yeah its not equal. Our tms300 is good for 2470@100. Its a 35 ton crane. The 2600 lb log was taken at 80 ft. We have a 28 ton manitex boom truck. Its 28 tons at 6 ft. If you move out to 10 ft on the chart like the grove, it becomes a 17 ton crane.
yes and you don't leave the jib on like that either
A2B weight isn't going to do much good sitting on the ball. And what in the tarnation is that whole conglomeration of becket /plates/ and miscellaneous detritus above your ball? Looks like you got some optional equipment going on.
Unfortunately we hung the a2b and tore the switch apart on this job. I didnt have a spare one. That's our ansi rated climber tie in point above the ball. It's not legal anymore for us to tie into the hook, not that i ever really liked to anyway. Its a tie in point that you can't come unhooked from on accident and has a backup in case something was to happen. Both sides of that are life support rated.
Send me a better picture of that if you would, I've seen the bolt plates, but I can't see your becket- I'm always up for learning.
kinda like our manbasket safety, it goes above the becket.
Here's a close up from today. 3/4 shackle around the load line with the screw "secured" against unscrewing. Two independent tie in points in case of a failure of one you are still tied into the crane. This is per ansi Z133-17.
That would be a trip being hoisted into a tree like that. I've climbed some to take down trees, but I mostly use a bucket truck or aerial lift. Never been part of a tree removal with a crane and I wouldn't know where to begin. Nice work, I love seeing your pics.
Yeah its a bit different. Closest thing to being able to float. I tied in a went up to put slings on another smaller tree today personally. Rigged it whole. It was about a 50 ft tall tree. Tree work with a crane is kinda its own specialty. Its definitely not normal tree work or normal crane work. Ive taken down hundreds if not over a thousand trees crane assisted and its a great way to do it when the situation calls for it. There's even specific cuts you only use when doing crane work. We have dead eye slings that you actually tie around the picks. We also use regular loop style crane slings.
Okay, that's the way we tie in on manbasket work also. I was thrown off by your hendrix becket, you've been stealing from a dragline.
It was on it when I got the crane. No idea where it came from.
We keep filling up the chip box on our forestry bucket truck multiple times a day. Our record is 7. We chip into our f550 as well but we really like the top off so we can easily load logs. We like to load as we go vs having to deal with a pile of logs at the end. Ive been casually looking around for a bigger chip truck as we have an international 4700 we plan to do a switch and go on at some point. With those crane picks our bottleneck has become material handling. I had one fall in my lap yesterday. Its an LT7500 sterling with a 3126 300hp/860 ft lbs and a 9 speed. We need a heavier truck to tow some of our bigger machinery. Moving an 18k lb machine with a lighter truck isnt awesome. It needs some misc repairs and was getting oil in the diesel so injector seals or injectors are in order.
That is a nice looking truck. I had a big Chevy 8500 grapple truck with a 3126 and a 10 speed. That was a good combination, and a very dependable set up for me. I also had two trucks with the 3116 and ten speeds. Both o those smaller Cat engine were great engines for my needs. Some people do not like the 3116 and 3126 Cats and call them throwaway engines. Both sizes did well for me. Jeff
I have a 3126 that has an internal problem right now but overall they have been good to me. I own 4 of them now with this new truck. They overall have been pretty reliable and get decent economy. I would buy another tomorrow. Im also a fan of dt466 engines as long as they arent asked to do more than they are suited for.
Got the injector seals replaced in the 3126 for the big chip truck. Well see if it fixes it. They were hard and crusty. It was putting about a quart of oil in the fuel every 50 miles. Got a call from grove. They finally got the replacement cable installed. It fixed can hi but not can low. Im really not pleased as i tried to get the grove tech to bypass the 24v hot wire going through the bad cable and see if the problem went away. He declined. Now we have more down time as we could have ordered whatever else it need back in november.
Kinda confused, is the voltage off on can low. The only thing between can high and can low is your 60 ohm resistors. If you have a short to voltage or short to ground on either line it will affect both. Also it’s not super difficult to unplug nodes off the circuit one at a time to find you culprit. Unplugging one node should not take the whole circuit down. If you have one bad node it will take the whole network down however. More times then not a node will be shorted to can voltage vs a bad cable. It’s pretty easy to tell tho, you can ohm a can line to tell if it’s bad. And I’ve built more then one can network out of wiring, alligator clips, and resistors to rule out any wiring/connectors. Not anything I’m gonna take a picture of cause it didn’t look great but it works. Did they verify the can voltage at the can driver?
Yeah this is all second hand from the service advisor who im not at all impressed with. I think hes used to talking to folks that dont know what a can bus is. I personally tested to see if i had a terminating resistor that had died or gotten unhooked. I've asked repeatedly to have the tech call me back. Every time they promise but dont deliver. It had 24v on the can line in the first place when it started having a problem. I suspected then and still do that its a control unit bleeding voltage into the can bus.
On a different note, got some new tire spoons so we tried them out on mounting a float for the front of the new chip truck. I have mounted a lot of 11r22.5s but never a float. It went well but that tire is really heavy.
Our gmk3050 is still down with a computer problem. One of the cables in our wiring harness shorted power to the can line. It damaged the lmi module. We pulled it out and tore it down to see if it can be fixed instead of buying a $5400 module. Found a burnt resistor right off the bat. It ended up having the can bus driver blown up as well. Parts are on order. Fingers crossed this fixes it.
When it rains, it pours. Had to put a head gasket in our grapple truck. Leaking coolant externally.
You really need a clip on tire chuck with a whip hose to go with those new tire spoons.
Yesiree. It makes me cringe when I see someone with his head over top of the rim when inflating a tyre.
They are tubeless so I am thinking ear muffs and eye protection at a minimum.
I almost blew up a tire last week with a clip on air chuck on a whip. I had a low trailer tire so I clipped on the air chuck, set regulator at 75psi, and finished loading my truck to leave my house. I've done this method plenty of times, once tire reaches 75psi, it quits filling as it is at regulated pressure. I'm not sure whether my regulator froze, or the cut off switch on compressor died, but I recognized the compressor wasn't cutting out. I ran over and shut it off and took the air chuck off the tire. It got to 140psi on a 235/75-16 tire, almost double my target. Absolutely my fault and I'm damn lucky I didn't blow it up. I bled it down and have towed about 500 miles in the past week with it without incident. Trying to be efficient with my time almost cost me a lot more time and possible injury.
To clarify the above picture, he is setting the pressure. We seated the bead with a clip on and a cheetah. He should still have his safety glasses actually over his eyes instead of putting them above his hat. He has clear safety glasses as well.
We had a bad storm come through here last Friday. We have been pulling trees off houses all week. This one was a tight spot. Wires on three sides. Couldnt get the dead stick out. Really wishing my gmk was back to us.
that looks like a miserable boom show.
Yep. Lots of booming up. Just glad we were able to get the boom up and reach it.
Heres another one. I only took a couple of pictures as it started to rain.
We had a nasty one with two pine trees on the same house.
Hate it when that happens. It reminds me that I have more than a dozen hundred plus tall Doug Firs around my house.
I was going to say that didn't look too bad, till I got to the last picture and can see there has to be a bunch of structural damage on that side.
That's why I'm not a fan of trees near houses. There's a large cherry tree behind my parents house that I've been wanting to take down for years. My dad wants it to stay because it shades the house during the summer. Its around 75ft tall, about 30" DBH, and about 30ft away from the house. It would need a stiff south wind to blow it to his house, and our worst storms usually come from the W or SW, but then the tree lands on his workshop if it falls to the east. Some day I'll convince him it's time to come down.
Nice work you do . I used to think we were safe with no trees near the house but after living on the property for 30 years the trees have grown so much i think the house is in reach of some of them.
Here's another one. This tree landed on top of a small barn.
Not directly crane related but we got all the fixes and tag stuff situated on the new chip truck. With craning pieces we can put enough on the ground to make our hauling off debris be the bottleneck. It tows the mini ex like its not even there.
So much for taking the weekend off work.
Oh My. Where were these photos taken? Jeff
Hartselle, AL
More trees on buildings today.
I set up a rig that in hindsite would have skipped the jib altogether and rteally made it drive better with less weight up top as well. This is a super way to specialize in crane work. Very good biz plan.
What do you do with the timber in those trees? I got a Red Gum taken down yesterday, the tree lopper reckons there's some saleable timber in it. Dressed timber is quite a thing here apparently and the more deformed the better. The other way of getting some coin back is to block and split it for firewood which retails at 2 bucks a kilo.
I've read that first sentence several times and still don't understand what you are trying to say here. If you are suggesting we don't run the jib, theres multiple times we have had to swing it. 104 ft of main sometimes is not enough for us. Its also 2400 lbs on the tms300. Not a lot of difference when talking about a 72,000 lb crane.
We give it away sometimes, we haul some to a custom cut sawmill that makes lumber and gives it back to us in whatever sizes we want, or we process it for firewood. Anything 12 inches and smaller we chip generally.
I am not suggesting you do anything.
We finally got to use our gmk again. Fresh back from the grove dealer. Very tight setup between two houses.
So what exactly was the problem with the GMK.? Enquiring minds would like to know, expecially seeing as I have three of them in my current sphere of influence and one of the three is the twin brother to yours.
One of the cables from the i/o box to the eks module behind the operators seat shorted the can line to battery power. This took out the can driver and resistor in the eks. It also took down the pressure transducer in the boom.
Worked on picking an oak tree apart at 80 ft radius. Tree was dead and in danger of falling on the shed. We had to put the whole counterweight stack due to the radius. It gets a bit heavy with all 25,500 lbs of counterweight. They insisted we go ahead regardless of yard damage.
External damage to the harness or internal.?
Internal. No cuts or impacts to the cable.
That's great news. It sounds like that last job was only possible with the new crane.
Glad to see you got it going.
Very glad to have it going. We have been using it a lot. I did a bit of flying off of it today.
Got a couple of more pics one of my guys took at our crane job the other day.
We took a whole maple tree in one crane pick yesterday. We were next door picking apart an oak tree in bad shape when the neighbor came over asking if he could hire us to take out this maple that has been giving them problems due to its location. Its brances were intertwined so we decided to pick it whole. It weighed 7100 lbs.
I ran our crane today myself. I have operated a bunch but not much with this new crane as Im usually climbing with it. I could get used to this crane. Its very nice to operate. This thing has lots of capacity at distance. 89ft and 4200 lbs of net lift capacity with 125 ft of boom out. Still 92 ft up too.
We did two crane jobs yeaterday. The first one we spent some time training a friend of mine's daughter how to install slings. She did excellent
Glad to see your crane out working.
Took down some pine trees over a garage.
Had to get tight up to the neighbors house. Reach over the fence and into the back yard. We took 15 trees down in the side of this yard.
are there any trees left in Huntsville ?
They're all over the place here. Literally several thousand on my street alone. On a side note, we do really try to do everything we can to keep any of the tree from ending up in the landfill. We chip all the brush and give the chips away to farms or gardeners though chip drop app. All the logs from this job went to a local independent sawmill so they can turn it into lumber. Any logs that werent good enough to saw will go into our wood lot to be processed into firewood. Yes, even the pine. We use it for campfire wood for campgrounds.
I wish I had a stump grinding business there.
I get manure from a dairy and mix it with my wood chips. Let it breakdown for a summer and have nice, rich compost to amend my garden with every fall. The logs (any species) gets hauled back to my house and processed for firewood. I don't cut trees daily, more like couple jobs a month. Just enough to get paid to process my own firewood. I burn about 7 full cord a heating season. Still loving your thread @John Griffin . I wish I could have had a crane on my last removal. Seven red oaks towering over a lake cottage on a very tight lot. The smallest oak was 24" dbh, the biggest was 40". The bottom 16 ft of logs were full of nails, wire, insulators and screws. I spent more time swapping chains than I did cutting at the end.
We are mob'ing into your neck of the woods next week for a big box retail addition. It has 6 planted water oaks in 3 islands to be demo'd however they are pretty big at 8-10" in dia and 20' tall so probably out of your wheel house size wise.
the kind you could oops counterweight with a big excavator.
You like being covered in clay dust and wood chips? We grind our own stumps usually. We use a grinder i built on our mini ex.
I still dont understand the need for folks to screw stuff to trees. Ive found all sorts of stuff in them. We do a lot of tight access close quarters removals so the cranes are a huge help. We also stay pretty busy so they help speed up the difficult jobs. I could have roped all of these trees but no where as quick. 15 trees since yesterday morning. Got a small load of logs and some stump grinding to do.
Maybe I could do them on my lunch break. Are you actually working in huntsville?
Have you ever ran into tree huggers sabotaging tree's that need to come down? Years ago I heard there was some tree's that had to be removed in a rural location and some tree huggers were driving big nails into tree's to damage chain saws and potentially injure the operator.
No. Most of the time no one know what trees except the property owner and the tree guy. Ive hit plenty of nails with a saw but they were all inside the tree. I dont really see how it could injure the operator as it just rounds the cutting edge over a bit.
I had a stump grinding business for 15 years. I know all about dust and chips. I started with a little Rayco 25HP machine, buy later on had several bigger tracked diesel machines. I enjoyed that business, but, you are right about dust and chips.
LOL. Yeah. It's a small addition to one of the big box stores around 565 and 231.
For the same reasons I have a metal detector when I am repurposing salvaged lumber. They make these little sticks that find nails and screws. One nail sure messes up a set of planer blades.
You got any pics of your stump grinder attachment? I do a fair bit of stump grinding, but I rent the machine. A local rental yard has a Vermeer SC552 that they rent quite reasonably with a trailer to haul it. I can easily grind 5 times the rental rate in an 8 hour day with it.
I just remember the article mentioning it. If the the chain broke and flew off could injure someone.
They don't even fly off. That's just somebody posting up some drama. You are in far greater jeopardy of getting hurt by a barber chair or something like that.
It was a news story so anything's possible.
I have broke chains multiple times. They can hurt you a bit depending on where they hit you. Other things are much more likely to hurt you.
Ill try to find some better pictures or take some.
Ive since changes the spring mount a d added a second spring due to having trouble breaking springs.
Its funny how small of a world it is sometimes. Cm1995 was doing a job about 20 minutes from our lot. We ended up helping him out with it by taking down 6 oak trees. No more trees. We left the stumps high for them to have leverage when digging them out.
John and his guys came in and knocked it out. We have yet to meet in person so all this was done over the phone and email. John tell your guys good job! If it works out I'll see you next week.
We had a codominate Maple tree failure. The standing portion had a large vertical crack. Whe it failed, it would land square on the house. Thankfully we were able to get it down before that happened. The part that did fail hit the pool fence and the backyard fence. It did bust the pool deck concrete.
Ill let them know. I actually took them out to lunch after we finished your job as a thank you.
Strange no one is watching, seems the whole neighborhood should be out to see that thing performing. 2 people late in the action but that's it. Joe H
This above was replying to post #20, I wasn't paying attention to the date when I put it up. Joe H
Pretty cool machine. As far as the tree removal job CM seems really happy with it.
This is not where I wanted to have the crane. I had a lady come into my lane head on. I moved over about 6 to 8 inches to avoid hitting her head on and the soft shoulder pulled me into the ditch. The only thing hurt was one brake chamber. So glad I didn't end up on my side and didn't kill the lady.
Like isn't the right way to react to your post. The lady should have been charged with careless/reckless driving. That could have ended a lot worse. Must have been on the phone or something. How do you not see a fricken big crane! I imagine you needed a big tow truck to get out?
Lot of water setting in that ditch. Doesn't look like much of a hard bottom to it either. Once you get on the shoulder, if its soft, it just sucks you right in. Top heavy like they are, you're correct to be happy its not on its side. They go over easier than one would think.
So a 50 ton heavy wrecker couldn't get it out. We had to leave it overnight and come back the next day with 60 ton rotator. I doubt she knows how lucky she is to be alive.
Yeah the county had dug up the ditch several weeks prior right at the edge of the road.
I'm guessing it was over a $1000 to get pulled out? I think the rotators are around $600/hr. here from when they leave the shop. Glad it didn't roll.
I may have posted it here, but I came across a 50 ton truck on it's side on a gravel driveway coming up off the Roza Dam site. Paging @Truck Shop The road was wide there and either he got in trouble in some fog, or looking at his phone to get the map set up. He could not have a reason like a person in oncoming traffic.
? * Any time a tow driver is dealing with soft ground-there is no point in over taxing the equipment. didn't need a rotator, just two units working together. What do people think happened before rotators cane along? I've removed loaded mixers and dumps with just two.
$1800. It was made much worse by the 50 ton wrecker driver dragging it forward 20 ft into a deeper part of the ditch. I wanted them to pull it backwards. I still think if they had, they would have gotten it out. The guys were kinda new and were in way over there heads. A rotator definitely made it easy. We seriously considered bringing our tms over there to recover it with but k wasn't sure I could get it to d ok what I needed with the rigging I have.
you know the spot where the access road goes down to the Roza dam. It was at the top where the road is about 40' wide for making turns on and off the highway, and he just fell off the river side of it all on his own. I was heading towards Selah and look over and see this crane belly up down the bank
It seems kind of ridiculous to pull it forward into even softer ground, especially since the heavy back end only needs to come back 10 or 12 feet. Might have made it even more suseptable to rolling pulling forward more and even harder to pull once the tandems were fully in the ditch. They must have had no experience at all. They should have deducted the cost of their incompetence.
You made the right call. There's a thread in here about a company that tried to recover their own crane and it went so bad. It was up in BC. It's just not a proper lift. You can't figure the suction so it becomes an unknown load and a traditional crane can't take any side loading.
Old School Rule of Thumb-90% of the time the wreck comes out the way it went in. No sense continuing to plow more mud or snow. Path of least resistance.
Damn! That could've been really bad. So glad all it ended up being was a wrecker bill. I know the bill sucks but the alternative is much worse. I had a close call like that back in 2009 in a Mack tri-axle with nothing in the bed but pulling our 55K tag trailer with a 420D IT on it driving across Lakeshore Drive over 65 in the 'ham. 4 wheeler loaded with at least 4 that I saw comes off the 65 exit ramp and doesn't even hit the breaks at the intersection. All I could do was hit the breaks, lay on the air horn and pray as I had no where to go. The left lane was full of traffic and the intersection was full of stopped cars waiting for the light to change. By the Grace of God the driver jerked the wheel and ran the car onto the very narrow shoulder. I don't know if they hit the guardrail, all I know is I didn't kill at least 2 of them that day.
So far the first guys haven't billed me at all. I called again the other day and asked for the owner to call me. They were very embarrassed.
As they should be. Even on the wrecker shows they'll often call in a 2nd truck even if it's a different company but closer to the accident.
Should be, amateurs.
We were going to have a light maintenance day monday and maybe take the 4th off. Then we got a tree on an apartment building.
How did you find a empty parking lot at a apartment building, usually I get to play "find the car owner" for at least a couple hours before getting set up. Can't ask for much better than 1/2 way between the parking and the building.
It's called a tow truck. To the credit of the maintenance guys, we actually only had to have one towed. They were even in the handicapped spot and management refused to tow them at first. Someone is going to get reamed over the situation when they get our bill. We had to wait a bit over 3 hours for the car to be moved. We charge $250/hr for delays to to cars and equipment being left in our designated work zone. Bad thing is a storm came up and we had to call it. We would have been finished had we not had to wait on the car.
Regarding the rotators: if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. Why send a roll-back if you can bill for a rotator?
And that's common--it's called spiking the job, happens all the time.
Maybe a rotator in the 1st place depending on the situation. In the case of crane like this I think you'd you'd want to send out your heaviest truck or go out to the job first in a small vehicle to see what truck(s) should be sent. Would 1 rotator be more expensive than 2 standard heavy wreckers?
Probably not-but you can buy three 50 ton units for the price of one rotator.
The 75 ton Western Star rotator on Highway thru Hell was apparently $739,000 in 2012. In about 2020, I think, a custom built Kenworth with a Vulcan 50 ton conventional wrecker was around $600,000. I think those are both Cad. prices. In the same year I'd guess close to 200K difference. It probably depends a lot on what options are ordered. They mentioned the Kenworth was a wrecker and everything was custom and not a cookie cutter tow truck.
I love watching those big wrecker shows! At least we don't (usually) have to worry about getting run over by passing traffic, that looks pretty spooky. The ones with the outrigger beams that extend very low to the ground...., I guess they assume they'll not be working on many slopes. My pads are often almost touching the ground once the beams are extended due to the double fall line slopes I have to contend with.
We took down two large pines in bad shape today. The piece in the first picture was 8300 lbs.
We had to lift out a tree that fell at one of our local state parks. It tore out a retaining wall. We also took down a good sided poplar tree in bad shape. I had to use the crane as a tie in and walk down the log to cut it apart. It was a bit unnerving cutting it out from under my feet.
Really like your posts on tree service and removal. Never realized that big cranes were part of a tree service. I thought they might just call a crane rental when needed instead of owning the crane(s).
I forgot to mention, the ash log in the picture with two yellow slings on it weighed 4400 lbs.
Glad you're enjoying them. We're the only one in our area with our own cranes. We end up helping multiple other tree services as a sub. This is in part because there's only one crane rental service that will do tree work in our area. They have three cranes total and no AT cranes. We rented a lot prior to buying a crane and really had a hard time getting enough rental time. When storms come through you have 15 tree services trying to get the same 3 cranes. They have a 2892 manitex, t340 terex, and an 8670 link belt.
Took a dead tree on top of the mouth of a cave today with the crane.
Is it common to not use a man basket?
Yes. We tie our climbing system in above the ball on an ansi rated tie on just for that purpose. Its attached to a wired shut 3/4" shackle that is around the load line above the becket. You can't really use a man basket for our work. In this picture, I have three dead eye slings on the hook. I installed then on my way down the dead tree. Then I rappelled to the ground and made a cut. Most of the time where I go through a top, a man basket wouldn't fit. We also have to be able to hook slings and a basket would be in the way for that as well. We have used one before if we just need to cut apart a tall dead tree. They suck terribly to cut from. There's no way to keep their reaction down so you can't push or wield a chainsaw very well from them. I want to buy on that installs in place of the jib so it basically turns the crane into a big bucket truck.
Monte Santo?
I hope that big ash log went to a small sawmill to be turned into lumber for a woodworker.
Cathedral caverns
Yes it'll go to a custom cut saw mill. We also took down a 28 in dbh poplar tree. Got a good 16 ft log out of it as well.
Thanks for the weights. Who knows I may have to take some trees down some day.
Welcome. If you ever do, there's wet wood weight calculators. They'll actually get you pretty close. You put in the average diameter, species, and length. If you measure with a tape they'll normally get you within 300 or 400 lbs. Your calculated pick weigh is not supposed to be beyond 60 percent of the net capacity of the losd chart to allow for the overages. Crotch wood weighs more than straight wood as its grain is more dense.
That's good to read. I really dislike it when beautiful, straight, clear logs get cut up into firewood. So many beautiful pieces of furniture can come from one log.
We try not to cut up good logs but sometimes you have to or it's not worth the effort to deal with it. On jobs without the cranes it can be very hard to deal with loading and moving them depending on size and access.
On a side note, I have a 4 ft tall stacked and stickered pile of cherry board 15 inches with with no knots.
Well we got stopped with the tms300 at a Dot weigh checkpoint today. Had lots of trouble with them not knowing anything about our states crane rules. Our state has a gvwr limit of 80k. Our tms300 scaled at 74k but they gave us an overweight ticket. I've previously asked our permit office if we need a permit for this crane. Their answer was no as it's not over 80k and not wider than 8.5 ft. Now we have a weight ticket for a crane they wouldn't issue a permit for. The claim was the max our crane could weigh was 57k. They at one point told me I would have to have it hauled on a lowboy. In our state, cranes are considered off highway equipment. We are allowed to run red fuel, we have mobile equipment coverage (no commercial auto), and there's no license plates for cranes. They decided detain my crane while they had someone to come take a fuel sample. They also wanted to ticket us for no tag or commercial auto. We requested a supervisor. They declined to provide one or let us talk to one. They dropped everything but the overweight after doing some research. The state views moving cranes like roading a backhoe. There was a bunch of discussions on that we could cross the road but not drive down it. Backhoes and tractors drive all over the place here. They ended up letting us drive away. Now we have to either pay or fight the overweight charges.
It really sucks when the people who are supposed to know the laws don't, especially at a weigh station. Sometimes it's a case of a cop or someone having a power trip. There's some video's out there of cops being schooled on the laws they're supposed to know. I think you should fight it and have a copy of the weight and other laws regarding cranes in hand. Otherwise the DOT/cops might have a target on your back and be watching for you all the time. It's not like a crane is a daily driver. It's even worse when they won't let you talk to a supervisor. Could it be because they don't want to be humiliated by the supervisor telling them they don't know the laws?? That would be my guess. Idiots with power trips thinking they're hero's instead of knowing their job.
I just thought of something else. They may have known they were wrong but had to give you some kind of citation just to save face. That's why they let you drive off. Let him fight it if he doesn't agree with it. Your situation is the kind that makes a good story on the 6 O'clock news to highlight the incompetence of people who think they don't have to answer to anyone. It can cause a public outcry and enrages some. It can also lead to changes where better training is implemented. Did they really think you'd be driving a company crane around without knowing the DOT regulations??
So put it on a lowboy and make the whole package heavier? That makes no sense I keep all the pertinent laws printed out and in the truck. More than once I've have to walk a cop through it. It helps when they throw out a specific code they're trying to cite me for. "I've got that printed out right here, lets read through it together". Highlight why it does or doesn't apply
The clue is in the name. They’re called mobile cranes for a reason……
You can be sure if there was a big tree that fell on the highway they wouldn't have bothered you. It's also possible they thought a "tree service" couldn't possibly know the rules for cranes and that's why they tried to cite for you for numerous violations.
One of our storm jobs recently. We have done nothing but storm work in the past two weeks. Been to busy to take many pictures as we have been working 12 plus hour days. Our whole week this week will be pulling trees off houses. The whole hackberry was partly uprooted and hung in three little elm trees. We picked it whole to minimize the damage to them. It weighed 4900 lbs.
You certainly know your craft.
It's very wet here right now from multiple storms. We had a large pecan tree land on this house and had to get setup in the front yard.
No doubt it has been wet up there. We can’t catch a break on the daily downpours and have other projects lining up. Bid a Starbucks on Memorial that has 3 small trees on it. If we get it I’ll be in touch.
Yikes! They don make driveways or sidewalks like the used to! ( just kidding, that crane would kill any flatwork )
I've got a set of 12 of the 4'x8' plastic mats, and I'm pretty impressed with what they will carry. They are night and day difference from plywood. Sorry about the state boys, I find it helps if I walk them through the key phrases "Special Mobile Equipment" and the special subsections. But a lot of them have the attitude "I know and you don't "- which I don't care if the guy actually does know his stuff, but a lot of them don't know what they are talking about.
And have a big power trip especially if you try to educate them on the actual rules.
What kinda do you have? We have been using the regular alturna mats and they will not hold the crane up in ground conditions like this was. They just turn into a taco.
Yeah they have definitely made it a hassle. I've found the state code for exempt from bridge law. I'm going to print out copies and put them with the insurance paperwork in each crane.
Yeah it's made trees uproot easier in the storms we have had. I'm getting tired of working in the rain. It's harder to deal with and ropes dont work as well. I'd be glad to bid on some more tree work for you guys. Maybe we can meet up as well at some point either way.
These are some of the picks we made from the job we had to mat in for. There were two trees on two houses. It was quite a mess.
Ruts in the lawn are pretty minor and easy to fix compared to large tree's falling on your house.
LibertyMats are what mine are. I don't think they would be any stronger than the alturnamats, but they might be. https://store.dicausa.com/products/libertymat-95-x-47-ground-protection-mats I've got some 8"x8" bolted mats that are 4'x8' long, and used to have some 2"x8" three ply mud mats that were 8'x16'. If its really been that wet, that's usually the only thing that will hold you up. The mud mats rotted to pieces. I've still got the 8x8 ones, but you really need 20' long ones laid in with a forklift or loader to make a floor.
This is the aftermath from the last job. The lumber is 5x5 rough cut pine.
We took apart this pecan in bad shape. It was looming over a smokehouse built in 1809 and a house built in 1814.
This is the knuckle from the pecan. It was 8300 lbs.
We had a double trunk hackberry tree on top of a house. Both sections fell on it. It came down during a rowdy storm so it was really wet. We had to setup on top of the cast iron sewer pipe. It was buried about 2 ft but we still didnt want to push on it so we spread the load way out.
Had to take a sweat gum apart in a tight spot between houses.
Wish I lived closer some of that Pecan would of made some pretty wood I bet.
slab that giant knuckle for some live edge.
I just want a couple of limbs for the parrilla.
It was rotted out in the middle
Pecan is real bad about being furry. I had a friend mill some and make a table. He ended up scrapping it.
We had to setup mostly in the street downtown the other day to reach three trees between houses in a very tight spot. It was so cramped it was very difficult to use a bucket truck because of trying to swing the boom off to the side would run into the house. It was 90 ft to the farthest tree so we had to load up all the counterweights.
That is a neat crane being so compact.
that is what I was thinking. It looked right there all jacked up on the sidewalk.
That's a big part of why it works so well for what we do. A lot of times a bigger crane wouldn't fit between houses or around a corner. We quite often setup between two houses and reach into a back yard. It's also nice for stuff like the downtown job where you can get it perpendicular to the street.
We had to set the crane up in a tight spot yesterday. This nice lady has a codominate tree failing at the base. One half was going to fall on her house when it let go. We had to reach over the length of the house and take this oak tree apart in small pieces. We made one pick yesterday at 96 ft working radius. Were down to 3000 lbs net lift capacity at that distance. We limited our picks to an estimated 1000 lbs just to err on the safe side. Our heaviest pick ended up at 1000 lbs.
We took two trees down at the local tech school. I bet a lot of their students would have liked to watch but we did it on a Saturday so the parking lot would be empty. The last log was 3300 lbs.
Sometimes you just have to pick up a crane with your crane. This is our project tms300. The pumps are out of it and we were seeing if we could pick it up to move it.
We had to use our crane to unload my latest shop purchase so the riggers didn't have to bring a crane out. This press brake weighs 22,400 lbs. Had to brake out my 20 ton 4 leg bridle. We never use this kinda stuff doing tree work but it's really nice to have around. This is actually the first time we put the block on this crane.
Around here, that kind of equipment comes out of the railroad auctions.
This one came out of a local truck body outfitter. It has a 10 ft bed and 90 ton rated.
What is rated for about 3/16" at 10'? Did you get extra dies with it? Very handy machine to have. Now you need a shear to go with it.
I think that's correct. I remember them saying with the right dies it would do 8 ft of 1/4". I didnt get any extra dies as they didnt have any. I probably wont buy a shear as we can cut whatever we want with our cnc plasma table.
We took a large oak tree apart that was just off the corner of a house. It was in bad shape from all the line clearance work.
Our local power companies will put on the plastic covers free of charge. One city utility will charge for it.
I didn't realize you had a CNC plasma table. I have to ask the obvious, what does a tree service need a CNC plasma and press brake for?
Making chainsaw bars.
If he's like me, he wants to venture into multiple other avenues of income. Keep his guys busy in the slow season (if he has one down there). Winter gets scarce for tree work where I'm from, but might not be an issue for John down south.
Not speaking for John but the winter rains is all that slows us down here. That and the occasional 24 hour snow storm in which we just take the day off.
We have had them do that in the past. They are an absolute pain to deal with over it. They wont do it beforehand and dont show up when they day they will. The last time we had them do it they stopped our jobsite for more than half a day and still didnt cover the whole section we wanted covered. It was a total cluster.
I also own a fabrication and machine shop. We have 2 3 axis cnc mills, 1 4 axis cnc mill, a cnc lathe, the plasma table, manual mill and lathe, mig and tig welders, tubing bender, jig table, etc.
It does slow down some here due to the winter rains. No one wants to do tree work when its 40 and raining. We certainly dont take the whole winter off or anything like that. Some weeks it rains 3 or 4 days.
We took apart a poplar tree in a backyard. It had some major structural issues. We were setting the picks down in the street.
It was crane repair day today. Our rear wishbones for the gmk suspension have some play kn them that's causing the back axle to steer itself based on the road crown. It's also wearing the tires poorly.
you don't need a heavy rig like that doing the bump and crown steering at the end of a long day.
My hats off to owner/operators of cranes. They seem to have to do a lot of maintenance and more involved repairs to keep them operating properly. At least the owners who look after their equipment like you and crane operator.
I've never been around a GMK that didn't wear tires unevenly. Or for that matter any AT.
Having a bunch of play wont help. It's to the point it's making it a handful to drive. The rear end will be 6 inches off to one side going down the road
Does it have a bunch of road time on it? I always thought the megatrak needed a lot of maintence and didn't hold up very well on the ones I've been around. They sure ride nice though. Its full time rear steer in road travel mode also? Rear steers opposite of the front two? If its getting difficult to drive you're going to have to get after it, did you have to get the bushings from Grove or can you get them aftermarket?
Yes it's always been a crane moved from site to site constantly. We rarely have it in one place more than 2 or 3 days. Its rides awesome. The front and middle axle steer when in road mode. Really makes it where rear steer isn't needed mostly. Rears can be crab, countersteer, or independent in offroad mode. It's getting to where you have to stay on top of the steering wheel constantly. I got all factory parts from grove. I really didnt think about trying to find aftermarket as iij wanted stuff that fit well.
I went one time from a tms 300 for a daily to a gmk 4080, and what a change that was. From straight walking beam to mega trak just blew me away. Very eye opening considering they were very close to the same weight. I distinctly remember giggling a little when I went down a regular route with a bump that sent you bucking with the tms300, and how the 4080 handled it. I was really just curious on how many overall km's were on the machine. My liebherr doesn't have a lot of miles, but the rubber bushings are showing their age. I just saw a 2006 or so 110 ton sell, but it had over 330,000km's on it, which I thought was a lot of travel time. I'm probably staring at totally rebushing mine some winter.
We still use our tms300 and every time I get in it I feel like it tries to beat me to death after spending time in the gmk. Its absolutely amazing how well they ride. My bucket truck rides rougher even with a load in it. I would have to look as I really don't remember what its odometer is sitting at.
Had to reach over a house from one side to the other to take down a pine tree that was dropping limbs on the house. Built in 1887 iirc.
Been roading it around with all the weights on? or you strip some off? I see you're hauling a stack of lumber along with you on a flatbed. My 70 ton with no removable counterweight to haul, we started with a short gooseneck as a support truck, and then went to just a f450 with a rigging box and wood. Leaving the jib at the shop too I see. Every time I pull the jib off my liebherr, it needs jib on a job the following week. Or I have a job that I might not reach on main, then I'm out back with another crane, hanging it back on the side.
We take of 8800 lbs normally. We only load them when doing long distance stuff. We have been hauling them on our 20k trailer. We are going to start moving them on a flatbed international 4700 that we have been working on. It's an under cdl truck so itll make it easier to get it around. Also a lot more maneuverable for getting into tight spots. The crane can actually out maneuver the truck and trailer. We have yet to need to put the jib on our gmk. With tree work, it just has not been needed. We keep our gmk and the good tms300 in town at a lot so it easy for us to take the jib over there to hang it. The jib lives at my place outside of town just to not clog up our city lot.
All the main on your GMK eliminates the need for jib. I find I go fewer places all the time, that I would have room to put jib on.
Yeah that's another issue we encounter with the jib. Often we don't have room to swing it anyway. That's one reason I bought this gmk is the long main boom.
We took down this dead oak tree touching a house. It was a very tight spot.
We took down a large sweat gum that was dropping limbs onto the homeowners cars.
The log weighed 6400 lbs. We were good for 11,200 due to the winch limit but the crane itself was good for 17,000 at that radius with all the boom out.
What brand CNC plasma table do you have? What size table? What are you using for plasma cutter? Max thickness of material? Any recommendations for someone that has been serious thought into purchasing one for a side business?
Amazing to see what you can do with a crane. I have a friend who has been in the tree removal/trimming business for 30 years. He is an old geezer like me. He will not use a crane or any kind of lift for tree work. Always has one or two climbers on his crew. Oh, and he only has one arm too. You should see him start and run a chainsaw. He does everything the old time way.They take down trees hanging over houses with ropes. I like your method better.
I have a dyna torch table. 4x8 is the listed size but it's really about 110 inches long. Not much is left over cutting from a 4x10 sheet. I have a thermal dynamics a80. It'll cut 1 inch plate. I'd save your money or do something else. Between the cost of the table itself, consumables, electricity costs, a serious air compressor, and the cost of materials it's really not very profitable just to cut stuff. Throw labor in there too. Plus you have to have room for it, plus room to store material, and a way to load it. It makes a metal dust mess in the whole shop. Places like send cut send have really pushed the market down. We make ok money with it on making and selling some of our own products but that has another set of headaches. We also use it for some of the industrial kinda repairs we do at times.
Talk about doing stuff the hard way. I'm certainly skilled at running ropes and climbing but I dont know why you would want to limit yourself to just that. I can and do still climb when needed. Labor is expensive vs the production that a lift can bring in a decent operator's hands. My bucket truck basically allowed me to gain enough revenue to buy my first crane years ago. Also a lot of pruning work doing tip weight reduction properly is very hard to do climbing. One of the climbers that works with us is good enough to compete on a national level and it's still difficult for him.
It's a fine thing to use ropes and do it old school, but then you have to hand job 10 tons of tree out of the back yard, when you just fly it out for easy disassembly.
My friend's crew took these big trees down by climbing and using ropes. We dug out the stumps and loaded them, so he could haul them off. did quite a few that were bigger, but forgot to take photos.
We took this big one down all on rope. I'm in the orange shirt. I'm 6'2" to give an idea of how big the tree is. It had gotten hit by lightning, twice.
Wow. We had very few trees that big in north Texas.
Does lighting bake the reson making it difficult to cut like it does with eucalyptus. Iron Bark becomes almost impossible to anything with, won't burn either.
We used ironbark for chain guides in the saw mills in the US, it is crazy hard stuff. My dad had 2x6 lignum Vitae rub rails on his boat. We steamed it for a day and then pulled it around the hull with 3/8" carriage bolts, until it threatened to break the mahogany frames we were pulling on. It never did get tight at the front of the boat and I faired in the gap with epoxy and wood flour. We pre-shaped a little taper on the top and the bottom and burned up a few saw blades doing it.
@skyking , you should see it going through a horizontal grinder. People who don't know panic thinking the grinder is on fire.
That's not the normal size for oaks here either but we have some giants.
Not really. You get occasional harder spots I guess but it still cuts.
A rough terrain crane followed me home the other day. We needed a bigger yard crane to load our gmk counterweights and do other tasks around the shop. We also have jobs we have to turn down because even our gmk wont fit. This will allow us to get into tighter spots at times. Our crane op had to check out the various steering modes on the new crane.
tell us more, that fancy pain job covered everything up
It's a terex rt230. 30 ton with a 94 ft main boom and a swing away jib with a stinger. Sets up in 19 ft so it's even narrower than our tms300s.
that's handy. Lots of times you could drive right up on some work that you would be long reaching for with the other cranes.
Already using the new crane around the shop. We picked up sterling 7500 parts truck the other day for the 3126 it had. It was easier to just lift it off the trailer d swing it around in front of the shop for disassembly.
We took down a large oak tree with the gmk. Tree had several dead tops and some would have fallen on the house. Got a nice saw log out of it. It'll probably make some more cribbing.
A couple of more from the job above. My new guy lost his gloves at our shop before we left. I found them once we got to the job. They stayed there for a 15 mile ride including some interstate. The other one is just some of the limb wood close up. Far away pictures trying to get the crane in the shot just don't really show how big these trees are very well.
Put the rt to work today loading logs. We put 14,300 lbs of oak on the trailer and hauled it to the sawmill.
I see you have it all lettered up.... I'm horrible about that. I think we've got our name on about 2 cranes. I'd just as soon not have my phone # on it- so I don't get the "I'm behind this huge orange slow crane with 27 other cars- get off the road" phone call.
Zero need to letter this one up. It lives at our wood lot out in the country. So far it hasn't been to a jobsite. Everyone that would drive by already knows who I am. It's a dead end road. Probably have worked for at least half of them.
Not quite tree work but still tree work equipment. We put a dump bed on a chassis with the rt crane. Picked it off one chassis and put it on a newer chassis. We didnt want to have to move the crane or the chassis so we stretched it out a bit. 68 ft radius with 94 ft boom.
Mini skid broke down in our lot. It doesnt roll easily. Basically have to drag it or open the valves. We decided to just crane it right into the shop door. I bought a tb240 mini ex recently. It does on the trailer so I just craned it off.
Took a dead tree out of a tight spit in a back yard. The gmk would barely fit around back of the house.
Took 5 trees down in an area with no room thg o drop them. This day 1. We had a problem with the gmk lmi at the end of the day.
We had to pack up the gmk and go get the tms300 to finish the job. The pressure transducer for the boom shorted out and took down all the sensors on the can bus. This is why we keep the old crane as a back up. We ended up with a couple of nice oak logs we took to the sawmill.
Used the rt crane at our lot to unload those oak logs so we can take them to the mill on a rain day.
We had a bunch of storms roll through here a little while back. Spent 6 solid days craning trees off houses. Started tuesday morning and got wrapped up just in time sunday afternoon. Monday morning we had a snow and ice storm move in. We had snow and ice on the ground for a bit over a week. I didnt get any pics of the crane setup for n this one as I was running the crane myself. Our normal crane operator was out after having surgery. One of my guys found the old septic tank under a dirt driveway with our f550. The house had been hooked up to city sewer 30 years ago. Part of this was they were supposed to pump out the old tank and fill it with gravel. Someone didnt fill it with gravel.
The last pic is of another oak tree that slammed into a house. It was the last one before the snowstorm. Packed the crane in at 4 and headed back to the lot.
Started snowing monday morning and didnt stop for a couple of days. Had to go rescue a friend of mine tha thg had trouble with his obs truck. Many years we dont see snow here. I think I remember two times in my life it has stayed around more than a week before this. I'm 40.
Got my new work truck by the scales. We plan to use this to haul a fuel tank for filling up the cranes, counterweights, and extra cribbing. Plenty of capacity for hauling 8800 lbs of counterweights. It's a 25999 gvwr truck. Itll be handy for hauling crew back on multi day jobs.
It didnt take long for us to put it to work. I have apparently been slacking on posting pictures. All loaded up with 25500 lbs of counterweights. It really wouldnt hurt my feelings to have more at times. We had to really stretch out the crane to pick the broken half of this cherry tree. It had split and was hung in several small hickory trees. If not for them, it would have been on the neighbors house. This ended up being a 4400 lb pick. We had 5800 lbs net lift capacity when we first started lifting it. We were able to boom up as it came up and closer to the crane but I dont like getting that close to the limit. We dont work beyond a calculated 60 percent of net normally.
Sorry you've been having troubles with your GMK. Its rough to spend that kind of money, and still end up in your old rig.
Yeah I'm not happy about it. The gmk ended up down for almost 3 months over the sensor. The sensor was replaced by grove about a year ago. Our local grove dealer has some problems. It took them a month to dispatch a tech to look at my broken down crane.
Our 90 ton link belt has lost its boom/ cylinder location a few times. The operator that runs it the most, has been in it each time. After the third time, I was like "why is it doing this"? Turns out, each time he had shut the crane off with the boom extended, for lunch/ break/ discussion, it sometimes looses the location of the tele cylinder, and then you have to do a complicated "reboot" to let the computer locate the telecylinder. I just told him to not shut the crane off with the boom out, and it hasn't happened again. Don't want to suck boom in for lunch- let it run, I would rather burn the fuel than have to go through the whole length reset.
I've been slacking on posting but still doing a good bit of crane work. I'm going to try to catch up some. Reaching way out. This hackberry was splitting at the main union. I think the farthest pick was about 95 ft.
Here's a few more from the hackberry
Took pine tree down with the 55 ton. Last pic is so you can get an idea of size. The guy in the picture is 6ft 8 in tall. The one behind it got hit by lightning and also has to come down. It jumped from the tree into these folks house and caught it on fire.
The bucket truck reaches 65 ft all the way up. These trees were tall. I went up on the ball and rigged the tops of all of them.
It was pretty close to the house so you can see why the lightening was able to jump. The did all the house repairs before removing the tree for some reason.
Nice work as usual. Strange they didn't remove the dead pine before repairing the house. That's one of the first things I would've done.
Thanks. I think it didnt die at first. They had just finished rebuilding when we were removing it.
Zone 2 - First 100 Feet flathead.mt.gov
Elm tree had a failure. This lead ended up on top of my customers house. Unfortunately it broke some of the branches in the nice oak tree by the corner of the house.
Picking the rest of the tree whole and pruning the oak.
Cool pictures! Do you usually dangle or climb?
Thanks. Glad to see some folks enjoying them. We climb up from the ground at times and we tie into the crane above the ball on a life support rated climber tie in. Its situational to what we are dealing with. Storm work you never want to be under a large broken section. We have had stuff shift just from the wind at times or it settling. The guy in the tree in the pictures isn't me in these pictures. We often work as two climbers with the crane. One carry a saw and makes the cuts and the other rides the ball up to set the rigging.
Pretty good looking operation your running there. I helped a neighbor out last week with yard cleanup after he had about 15 nice straight firs and hemlocks taken down by a tree service. They hacked every thing into unusable lengths , firewood chunks 12" long ,potential saw logs 5' or 6 '.It looked like double the saw work to me. Seems most of the tree services here see no value in the wood. Do you get much added value from wood the customers dont want?
Yeah normally the shortest milled logs here would be 8ft6in. We do get a bit of value from the wood at times but not much. We pick out the good saw logs and sell them to one of the mills around here. Sometimes we take them to a different mill and have them custom cut for our purposes. We mostly get them cut for crane cribbing. We stock 2.5x5, 3.75x5, and 5x5 rough cut for cribbing. Let's us setup on decently slopes fairly easily with at least one support in the middle. I do occasionally get some nice stuff for lumber. I have some 15 in wide cherry board with no knots in them from a cherry we craned off a house. We also split firewood and sell it. It's not really actually profitable if you really count the costs but it gives my guys something else to do on rainy or wet days especially in the winter so they can make a full paycheck.
Took down this tall poplar tree. The tip of the boom is 132 ft up. Unfortunately the poplar got struck by lightning. It actually jumped from the tree and totalled the homeowners car and damaged their other one.
How do you like the crawler man basket.