Licensed and bonded.
In case anyone cares, here is how you take down a tree.
(wish it were a bit longer with more detail, but)
3 Likes
I’ve seen that only once; that was here in SoCal. An old 100 foot tall palm tree… a local attraction all alone and set between a couple of auto repair shops. I was picking my car up from a nearby shop and had time to see a brave dude shimmy up the entire length with a chain saw hooked to a very long power cord (or perhaps more than one cord). He sawed off all the fronds first. It kind of saddened me.
It is a very American thing. When I moved to England in the 80s my neighbors were surprised (and a little scared) at the things I did myself while rehabbing my flat, rather than hiring a “fully qualified” whatever.
Also, licensed tree surgeons are expensive. Felling a tree like that in my neighborhood would cost a couple of grand at least. I wouldn’t try it myself, because I have a good sense of my limitations as well as a healthy respect for chain saws, but I can easily understand why someone might.
2 Likes
like on that car driving by… cause they didn’t even bother to stop the traffic. 
3 Likes
Trees are not our friends. They scream at us but we don’t hear. We scream at them but they don’t care.
They attack the guilty and innocent alike. They took out Sonny Bono and a Kennedy as well as my uncle who should never have parked his lawn chair under an avocado tree in Guatemala – the 10kg fruit cracked his skull.
Trees are meant to be burnt. But they exact revenge. Shudder.
4 Likes
I was looking for this clip, good find!
1 Like
Well, I think about it this way: if the job was done competently, and some damage incidentally occurred anyways, covered by insurance, would it be reasonable to not pay the worker? (And in this case, the incompetence was why they hired him in the first place, so that’s on the homeowner.) Also: the guy could have just walked off and left the tree on the house, and they would have had to pay someone else to cut it up and haul it away.
The owner seemingly wasn’t there at all. He seems to have been under the assumption that his “lawn guy” would do it in some competent way, despite the fact that he knew the guy didn’t have the skills and was offering to do it less than those who did. So I’d still view the homeowner as culpable to some degree…
2 Likes
Sure as heck wasn’t a sugar maple!
Edit: For an additional 2 bits:
I too have enough sense to (most often) hire someone. The cranes seem like overkill. My hired crew bucked off the branches on the way up, then attached a turning block below themselves with the bitter end tied onto a section above. They cut between the two contact points and an X-length piece of trunk fell about 15 feet then stopped and was lowered to the ground by the rest of the crew. rinse and repeat until you are on the ground. The cutter was careful to make it fall away from herself* then hang on while the trunk swayed a bit. Very efficient, quite entertaining.
The crew I watched was male, but a 90 pound female friend of mine does this too. She had the smallest feet measured for hobnails at Dayton’s.
Three memorable books related to logging: Annie Proulx’s Barkskins, Lee Henderson’s The Man Game, and John Vaillant’s the The Golden Spruce.
2 Likes
In the video I shared? I heard that each section of that tree was over 60000 pounds…
My google-fu was strong today.
1 Like
Is there any kind of fund set up to buy this guys a bigger saw? I wanna watch him in action
1 Like
next time I trim the hedge I must remember to pick up the trimmer
post edit for itches older then…
Sincerely. That is one of my all time favorite clips.
2 Likes
Because they don’t realize some things need expertise in the first place. “It’s a tree, how hard can it be to cut it down? I’ve got a chainsaw already!”
1 Like
Two hours earlier:
1 Like
And on a residential street too! Lucky someone wasn’t squashed.
1 Like
So many gems on re-watching. I love how many noticed the woefully inadequate rope dude. Top of the list for my personal questions is why the stump is cut right at nipple height.
Technical victory!
