First 7 jobs!

Edit: 1A apprentice mechanic Freightliner Truck Center, Toronto (they went belly up)
1. Maintenance worker at campground
2. Hired hand on dairy farm
3. Shipper / receiver at maple syrup bottling plant.
4. Crawler loader operator at landfill
5. Debarker and log loader operator at sawmill
6. Self employment as arborist since c. 2000

#2 absolute hardest work I've ever done, yet for the very best and most incredible boss I ever had.
#5 was pure stress with very little satisfaction.
#1 was when & where I started climbing trees, (1987), and continue to do treework there occasionally. And where I met and married my long suffering spouse.
 
1) dishwasher
2) picked strawberries ( washed dishes in the evenings)
3) lawn maintainence/ brush dragger
4) climber
5) concrete laborer
6) climbing foreman and lead climber/ bucket operator
7) same as #6 but added safety officer and trainer to my list of chores

I really either want to leave to do my own thing or become a floater to go where I'm needed most out of our 5 crews.
 
1) lawn maintenance @ 12 yrs old, broke every child labor law in the book working 60hrs a week for my parents neighbors company
2) pressure washing company when I was 15
3) @17 an apprentice type position maintaining and repairing plastic injection mold dies at SC Johnson Wax
4) @18 Moved to Arkansas where I got my pilots license (what I wanted to do since I old enough to talk, then realized it wasn't for me) while going to college and working full time as a machinist at Brodix Inc. machining cylinder heads for race applications.
5) @20 I moved back to Wi and was attending school for a degree in mech engineering, while working full time as a tool and die maker at a pattern shop.
6) @21 I started at Twin Disc Inc and am still here full time 10 years later. I do a little bit of everything there from machining, assembly, dyno testing, but am now mostly out in R&D working on new product development and testing.
7) 5 years ago my wife and I purchased some heavily wooded property that needed a lot of tree work done. At the time I had trouble finding a competent, reliable company to perform the work I wanted done. So I bought some basic gear and the tree climbers companion and fell in love with climbing! Starting doing all of the tree maintenance on our property and some stuff for friends and family. Soon I started getting calls from friends of friends and so on. Then I started up a business. It's turned into a decent sized operation now and I can't really believe how fast we're growing.
 
1) Janitor for 6 years. Broke the record for the length of time I spent there, that's when I knew it was time to go. Was very tempted to put a target sticker in the men's urinal with a sign that said, "We aim to please".
2) Maintained shrubbery and flower beds at place I was Janitor at (at some point I became a, "Master Gardner" Ha ha)
3) Worked in a kitchen doing dishes and cleaning the place (met a pretty girl whom I married) Head cook was kind of a match maker :D
4) Delivered mail for a nonprofit organization
5) Worked for a housing contractor (one of my many tasks was to fell the trees chest high so the dozer could rip out the roots) When the housing market collapsed so did my job.
6) Started doing a few tree jobs for people I knew, climbing for an arborist and going to a community college for a Criminal Justice degree (sure glad I didn't become a cop). I can remember the first tree I got paid to climb. Made $75 dead limbing it. I didn't know how to isolate a crotch so there was an insane amount of friction as I tried to hump my way up there with a Blake's hitch. Years later I ended up dismantling that same tree. It was surreal climbing it with much better technique and gear. Made me a little sad though.
 
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1. Rabbit farm hand
2. VT state park trail maintenance
3. VT state park camp ground maintenance
4. Hardware store customer associate
5. Residential tree crew (rough and tumble)
6. Public display garden (arborist)
7. Self employed arborist !!

#2 and 3 were summer jobs
#4 began my first fullest part time job while in high school (they couldn't work a kid that much these days)
#5 my first tree job @$5.50 an hour. What are kids complaining about these days they get paid way better and work 1/4 as hard!
#6 was an awsome job, hated to leave but family must come first in life, work is not everything!
 
Lets see, kinda tough to remember... Oh yeah..
1. Paper route
2. Landscape maintenance and mowing
3. Christmas tree shearing, harvesting, bailing, and loading
4. Back to landscape maint and mowing (same company as before)
5. Security guard, midnight to 8:30 shift (SUCKED)
6. Lube rack at Buick dealership (sucked)
7. Landscaping again, design build company
8. Tree work/arborist

Tree work was interspersed with the landscape positions on occasion depending on the client. Next year will be 50 years in the green industry.
 
1. Dishwasher; 2. Metal Fabrication grunt; 3. Landscaping (install + maintenance); 4. Lumberyard Forklift operator; 5. Fishing Guide; 6. Gyppo Cone Collector (Roseburg, SPI, etc.); 7. Groundsman/Climber....

that gets me up to age 24. I'm almost double that now so there's a few more things thrown in there. :)
 
1. Dishwasher
2. Construction
3. Line Cook
4. Self employed Tree Hack
5. Launch Systems Engineer (VAFB - Lockheed Martin)
6. Software Engineer (Charlottesville, VA -National Radio Astronomy Observatory)
7. Research Mathematician (Aurora, CO - Northrop Grumman)

I was deadwooding my landlord's cottonwood trees with my rock climbing gear in Laramie in 1996 and a neighbor asked: "How much to trim mine?" A month later I quit my job as a cook and started doing tree work full time for myself with a Walmart Mcculloch. We had a free dump 1 mile out of town and I would carefully line up branches in my little Isuzu pickup way above the cab, tightening them with ratchet straps. I remember being overjoyed the first day I cracked $100 in profit. I used tree work to get through my undergraduate and graduate degrees (almost) debt free. I gradually picked up equipment and expertise and got my ISA cert about 10 years ago. Now I work 3 days a week for Northrop Grumman and spend another 3-4 days doing tree work.
 
Levi.CO said:
That's wild... Lockheed Martin....spooky...
Click to expand...

Yeah,

I joined up with Lockheed just after we crashed the mars lander due to a Metric System to English System unit conversion mistake (we forgot to convert from Newton Meters to Foot-Pounds in the orbit determination module if I recall correctly).

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/

I helped write the tracking and real time impact prediction algorithms for errant launches from VAFB and Cape Canaveral. One of the program requirements was that all internal calculations were done using the metric system. Radar and inertial guidance data in English units were converted to Metric on input.
 
I get along with the crew quite nicely.

Tom, my dad (Terrill Collier) actually introduced me to you in think in Chicago after one of the Tour Des Trees ride. We all ended up going out for Turkish food, i think.

No, i'm not the Lorax, that was Dad.

The BCMA was tougher than I thought it would be. I passed, but i really should have studied for it. I would actually encourage you to take a couple of college level soils and arboriculture classes to prepare.
 
1) drove around In a tractor
Picking up golf balls at a golf range from age 12-16
2) worked for
Ministry of natural resources 16-21 maintenance in provincial parks and forest fire fighting, where I first began using chain saws and such. Cutting down trees with crowns on fire was pretty fun and crazy !
3) refereed hockey from age 10-36 did all the way up to major junior A
4) volunteer firefighter for 15 years - did get a yearly pay cheque but wasn't in it for the money
5) police communications operator 16 years, ran my tree business 12 of those years pretty much full time between and during shifts
6) finally packed in my police government job 3 years ago and fully full time running my tree biz. Was a good time to leave that job, was losing my patience and insanity !!!



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