I'm not sure - being I don't have cable or other modern connections - that I've seen this guy but maybe once, on a motel t.v. somewhere.
The show had a crane back into a derelict yard, after cutting down a hackberry and removing some fencing and operate a few inches from a house, to remove a larger hackberry?
While out east for a season I contracted with just such a crew for a few takedowns. Burly, direct, and brute force.
I have to admit I held some admiration for these guys - loggers from Vermont who followed Hugo in '91 and stayed afterward. Heavy drinkin', punchin'-happy crude neaderthals, but kinships made and trust developed (had to, they often manned the controls). A solid high-end customer base too, trusted that they would do what they promised they would do, suprizingly little or no collateral damage and other than a rope burn and a close-call on a chunk comin' down thru the lower canopy, no injuries.
All the equipment cheap from salvage, no inspections on the bucket or trucks (state didn't require it), I welded my behind off staying late and fixing things that wouldn't be otherwise. I somtimes wake up in the night still, with cold sweats about getting off that job alive and in good shape. I wonder if any of them made it this far too.
I chose this outfit because the two or three "other" professed "professional" services were no different other than claiming to be, flyers and adverts especially. True, new and better equipment and the words were there but in the end they jobbed the same, if not less so than the bruts I signed with.
I just needed some climbing work for a short time and it seemed the "respected" services were shortcutting the help, trimming more than trees, and not paying the legitimate state requirements. They played politics and alliances with builders and assemblymen, the Vermont outfit were at least honest and sincere about the work, safety and methods be damned.
Once mutual respect was earned all around (I'm a Texan), they listened a little, saw some possible changes, and we got along like a squad on ambush, me learning probably more from them as they did from me. The one thing that elevated their position with me was the absolute refusal to employ poisons and the respect they showed employees (aside from close and certain death). They sold a backhoe to pay for the lowest groundie's wife's second child's heart operation.
Oh, they gave away free firewood for some of the Island black families with no jobs and shacks for homes. Can't say I ever saw the loftier "professional" outfits go that far.
Just some input to color it some.
It was Nosak passing through. We talked a bit, he told me they were on their way home and figured they'd help if they were needed. Told him i had no jobs in the backlog category. As fate would have it a few hours after i spoke with him a call came in for a gnarly storm damaged tree - huge 40" Beech on a cottage!
