Grapple truck

A

Axemen tree

Location
Atlanta
Hi everyone, new to the board. Been in the tree business 5 years and started my own company 2 months ago. Bought a grapple truck to get started vs a chipper and truck, working good so far. Hardest part is getting my driver up to speed on using the grapple. He is learning (which btw is costing me money as he learns ha). I found a good diesel mechanic that is assisting on engine and truck related issues but does anyone have any info on training materials on grapples, also servicing them, greasing, what level to keep the hydraulic oil, etc. Busted a few hoses, now keep those in stock. Grapple has a pretty good leak around the housing where it rotates (again the operator was pushing down debris broke something inside, hoping it's a seal. Will be getting it fixed between Thanksgiving and Christmas when it slows down). Anyone else running a grapple truck? It's a 2009 freightliner.
 
The grapple manufacturer probably has training material. Grease it on hour intervals or when needed. Keep the hydraulic up to the tank level indicator. We have a grapple truck as well as a chipper. The grapple truck is a maintenance hog. Be prepared to spend thousands a year keeping it up. Every time you turn around something is leaking, etc. Some of the parts like a rotator are very expensive. If it wasn't such a useful and efficient way to move logs, I'd get rid of ours. It also keeps us from having to have a backup chipper.
 
All those worker's comp/ wage/ HR dollars saved should pay for a good maintenance program.

Even if it can't work some days, it will never do anything stupid from a lack of judgment from being tired, distracted, tweaking, stoned, etc.

It will never endanger someone unexpectedly. Raised loads...known, high pressure hydraulic lines...known, etc. Sooo much more predictable that people, and employees are getting worse all the time.

Thankfully, a customer nut-shelled it for me...The age of critical thinking is gone. It's easier to operate, knowing that someone has poor critical thinking and judgment. Easier to use a machine.
 
Fivepoints said:
The grapple manufacturer probably has training material. Grease it on hour intervals or when needed. Keep the hydraulic up to the tank level indicator. We have a grapple truck as well as a chipper. The grapple truck is a maintenance hog. Be prepared to spend thousands a year keeping it up. Every time you turn around something is leaking, etc. Some of the parts like a rotator are very expensive. If it wasn't such a useful and efficient way to move logs, I'd get rid of ours. It also keeps us from having to have a backup chipper.
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Im puzzled...why would you have a chipper if you have a grapple truck? We had a chipper for 8 years, and we were all happy to see it go. Have been using a new JMAC grapple setup for 2 years now, and have had zero problems with the grapple and outrigger setup. The 2009 Freightliner that we put it on has been problematic though.
 
OasisTree said:
Im puzzled...why would you have a chipper if you have a grapple truck? We had a chipper for 8 years, and we were all happy to see it go. Have been using a new JMAC grapple setup for 2 years now, and have had zero problems with the grapple and outrigger setup. The 2009 Freightliner that we put it on has been problematic though.
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I have a chipper because a lot of the time we don't have another cdl driver. I have one part time guy with a cdl. I've tried to get my other guys to get one. I'm usually driving our bucket truck. We also don't use the city dump. I can get rid of all the chips for free but have to pay $29 per ton for logs and brush of I was to go to be dump. I also really don't want piles of brush at our lot. Logs and chips I don't mind to much. We mainly use our grapple as a log truck. We do have a nice bandit 990xp wood chipper that we don't mind using. Also a lot of our utilities are overhead along with extremely small yards. Sometimes the grapple truck won't fit.
 
Well, you could actually use the services of a driver recruiting software, and look for a driver that could actually operate with a grapple truck. Trust me, I do understand you really much, back when I bought my first grapple truck, my driver had no idea about how to use it. So I actually had to look for another driver. The driver that I have right now, has been working for a car shipping company before. He was actually one of the cofounders of the company. He decided to leave it, after one of the best factoring companies for trucking refused to work with them.
 
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OasisTree said:
Im puzzled...why would you have a chipper if you have a grapple truck? We had a chipper for 8 years, and we were all happy to see it go. Have been using a new JMAC grapple setup for 2 years now, and have had zero problems with the grapple and outrigger setup. The 2009 Freightliner that we put it on has been problematic though.
Click to expand...
Hey Oasis, I was wondering about your ability to offload brush and logs. I like the idea of throwing it in a truck but it seems a large chipper can work efficiently and condense material much better. Dumping brush is a 40 min one way haul for us and chips are free and like 15 min away at the most. There are days we dump 50 or so yards of chips I wonder how many truckloads of brush that would be. I am not arguing grapple truck or chipper each business and market is different. I am just wondering how you are able to work it out where disposing of brush is cost effective.
 
When I worked in the city, the office had an ongoing list of homeowners looking for chips and we dumped for free all over the city, 95% of the time. I'm no longer in such populated areas, but these days it seems like the ChipDrop app is a popular way for tree companies to get rid of chips free/cheap.
 
We started with a grapple truck as well and got going in april last year. Follow the manual and keep things greased and be prepared to have some big repair bills. We have $10k into work on the hydraulics already. We were also able to dump for free all last year.

The grapple truck first worked well for us as we were able to handle large removals without hand loading wood but have since bought a chip truck, bandit 15xp and an avant 423.

The best thing about having both the chip truck and grapple truck is the redundancy. Were not dependant on one piece of equipment to get work done.
 

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Al_trees said:
Hey Oasis, I was wondering about your ability to offload brush and logs. I like the idea of throwing it in a truck but it seems a large chipper can work efficiently and condense material much better. Dumping brush is a 40 min one way haul for us and chips are free and like 15 min away at the most. There are days we dump 50 or so yards of chips I wonder how many truckloads of brush that would be. I am not arguing grapple truck or chipper each business and market is different. I am just wondering how you are able to work it out where disposing of brush is cost effective.
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Well, Im not sure I understand your question...we had a chipper for a number of years before we bought a grapple truck.

Here is my rationale - a large chip truck is still over cdl, and with the combo of a truck and large chipper you are well on your way towards a grapple truck purchase.
With a chipper you are processing brush onsite which takes time and manpower, to say nothing of the safety issues of a chipper. The brush needs to be processed as it comes out to prevent tangles and headaches, and it takes a lot of space to stage brush for a chipper. With a grapple truck you can easily work ahead of it and stage brush piles by the street.
I feel that we use less manpower with a grapple, and I dont think there is much difference in using your space versus a chip truck if you have a good operator. We used to use a 20 yard chip truck for the chips, and a 16' dump trailer to handle all of the logs. Now we put the brush in the bottom, pack it down with the logs on top, and take it home. It puts all of the weight on the truck where it belongs, and we now use the dump trailer to haul equipment, rakings, and stump grinding chips.
Here is a couple more perks - we dont have to back a chipper, and we take all the logs home in log lengths, no matter the size!
It it works for you to chip, more power to you. But our crew still talks about how we sure dont miss chipping, and we have been running this way for 3 years now! But I have my own dump sites and we manage them ourselves.
 
As far as dump sites go, have you ever thought about your local resorts? I put an ad on Craigslist stating that I was looking for dump sites, even offering a per load fee, and a local resort said that i could dump truckloads of brush and logs there anytime and they would cut the firewood out of it and manage the brush. I dont dump there often, but when we work in that neighborhood it is nice to have it there. That is just one example of what you can do with brush and logs.
 
I think there are disadvantages and advantages to having the grapple truck.

On a real large job, are you really going to be able to pack all brush and logs in there without having to make more dump runs then if you were using a chipper? Or do you have take extra time to climb into the dump body to slice and dice everything up nice and small so you can fit more in; that's what I did with my dump trailer to pack a lot of brush / logs in, ground guy would feed me brush and I would dice it up with saw and then he would feed me another branch. It worked real well mind you, the dump trailer usually holds a lot more than it looks like it would hold once everything is cut up in there. Then I upgraded to a chipper for bigger jobs and it is even more efficient.

Whereas on grapple truck it may be able to hold a certain amount, could just chipping it into your chip vehicle or dump trailer, or whatever you have hold more material with less trips to the dump, which equals less time on site, less mileage on vehicles, less gas, etc.

I think it depends on the job is just my opinion and the vehicle / trailer you have to hold chips versus the size of the grapple truck. I think there's some jobs where it may be a great idea. On other jobs, my thought process is you might be more efficient with a chipper if you have a big enough vehicle / trailer to hold a lot of chips just because of the fact when you are loading brush / logs whole, you can only pack so much in, etc.

In the case of someone who doesn't have a large chip truck or dump trailer, then maybe you could hold more material with grapple truck. It all depends on your equipment and the job.

Just my thoughts. Never used a grapple personally but have seen others pack tree brush and logs in there.
 
A lot of it depends on how you work. For us doing a lot of work in back yards and rigging down long pieces to our avant being able to just run a long rig through the chipper is faster than cutting and stacking for the grapple truck.

We definitely have more capacity for brush with chipping over strictly using the grapple truck.
 
climbingmonkey24 said:
On a real large job, are you really going to be able to pack all brush and logs in there without having to make more dump runs then if you were using a chipper? Or do you have take extra time to climb into the dump body to slice and dice everything up nice and small so you can fit more in; that's what I did with my dump trailer to pack a lot of brush / logs in, ground guy would feed me brush and I would dice it up with saw and then he would feed me another branch. It worked real well mind you, the dump trailer usually holds a lot more than it looks like it would hold once everything is cut up in there. Then I upgraded to a chipper for bigger jobs and it is even more efficient.
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Forget about slicing and dicing....that is what the grapple is for. We cut the large crotches, and cut our brush in 10 ft lengths, and then just compact it with the grapple. If you ever get the chance to work with one you will see what I mean. Yes we do have to take loads out, but that is just part of doing multiple removals in a day. But with the grapple you can stage brush so it never slows us down.
 
27RMT0N said:
When I worked in the city, the office had an ongoing list of homeowners looking for chips and we dumped for free all over the city, 95% of the time. I'm no longer in such populated areas, but these days it seems like the ChipDrop app is a popular way for tree companies to get rid of chips free/cheap.
Click to expand...
We also recently started advertising a similar service called Mulch2garden to help arborists find the nearest drop sites. The difference is that we currently don't charge arborists a penny. The goal to to keep this free model and most homeowners are glad to give us a small donation to cover any development/business costs. Please let me know if you have interest in learning more or look us up online.
thanks,Marc
 
Marc Liebmann said:
We also recently started advertising a similar service called Mulch2garden to help arborists find the nearest drop sites. The difference is that we currently don't charge arborists a penny. The goal to to keep this free model and most homeowners are glad to give us a small donation to cover any development/business costs. Please let me know if you have interest in learning more or look us up online.
thanks,Marc
Click to expand...
I just signed up as what I believe to be a professional, but the only option I am seeing is to request a drop, so I’m thinking something went wrong. Perhaps send me a PM, or look at my account, and let me know what’s up?
 
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