What's the real problem?

Re: What\'s the real problem?

Good point I haven't returned a call since early Sept. Not good, but I still got work. The one man band's missing a beat. I lost interest after I flipped on a guy form three doors down that was driving back and forth over my ropes. I just catch the phone when it rings.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

I'm going to try to put it another way. Once a company is in debt they can't stop and they can't not bring in some revenue. They risk losing it all in a week. So even though many of them probably should go back to whatever they're good at they're stuck working to keep making those minimum payments so the banker can get a little fatter.

This has everything to do with competition, pricing and low skilled companies keeping on rolling. The only thing that keeps me going is my love for the work and trying to bring a quality service to my home town.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

[ QUOTE ]
Germany didn't have a single tree climber fatality last year. That's worth something.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wonder how many man hours of climbing they did...

Regulation alone can't be the difference. They must have good training to go with it.. In my area, very few arbs know how to use a chainsaw... unbelievably clueless...

A guy I worked with for a few months, showed up with 12 years experience, having worked with several of the premier companies, where he was considered a top tier climber... He was a great climber, but didn't have a clue about how to fall a tree.. His first notch had a 3" bypass in the face.. I took one look at the stump and knew who had made the cut.. Had to be the new guy, everyone on my crew knows better...

How does a man work 12 years in the industry, for household name companies, and no one ever told him not to bypass the face cuts.. It's unbelievable... yet far too common, at least in my area.. I get the impression that anywhere in country where there is an overlap between loggers and arbs, the arbs know how to drop a tree. Around here its very uncommon.

So after showing him, just the basics (clean notch, level of back cut, gunning lines, tapered hinge etc) he got a job with a company with over 60 employees, and was immediately recognized as their best faller... He does pretty much all their tight drops now.

Worked with another man for a few months, who had been a free lancer.. Worked over 20 hurricanes and claims he's worked with over 100 different tree crews.. Same thing... he didn't know how to cut a notch...Day 1 & 2 he thought I was "crazy"... my crew told him to relax... no big deal... day three he said "show me how to do that"... 30 minutes later he was off to the races....

So more regulations and licensing etc. is just about revenue.. taxing the working man, unless there is proper training. Unfortunately the organizations that should be leading the way in that area, are more interested in profits than education.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

If you have lots of iron you can do bigger jobs faster. But not very many people can run a tree business with lots of iron unless they finance it. And then you need competent staff to run all that machinery you are paying for. You probably need a shop and a yard to store it in. You may need office staff and either you will be the salesman or you will hire one of those too, to keep the funnel full.
This works well if you have good staff and a good market. It works for those high energy people who like running a business and don't mind being a slave to it, and working 5 or 6 days a week all year long. Most of the people who are good at doing it this way have built the business over time, acquiring one new piece of equipment when the previous one is paid for.

Then there are the rest of us. We like doing tree work, not running a business.

I would rather just get paid by someone else as an employee, but that doesn't suit a lot of people either. The very best non business climbers become contract climbers, but that has it's own set of stresses and issues.

But most tree guys I know are independent and like to work on their own schedule and don't like to be told what to do.
If you work this way you have a small one or two man company and way more flexibility because of little overhead. You probably don't have too much iron either and you do many things by hand. The downside is that if you get injured, you might really be screwed.

In the end, the way we work, if we are happy at it is the way that suits our personality best. It's only a problem if you are not working the way you want to work.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

[ QUOTE ]


How does a man work 12 years in the industry, for household name companies, and no one ever told him not to bypass the face cuts.. It's unbelievable... yet far too common, at least in my area.. I get the impression that anywhere in country where there is an overlap between loggers and arbs, the arbs know how to drop a tree. Around here its very uncommon.


[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

The same way a guy can work 25 years in a glass shop with bare hands and never get cut. But what's that got to do with debt?
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

We have some overlapping ideas going on here.But they are related.

Being able to run a business without going into debt (or at least not more debt than the owner is comfortable with)-> competing successfully with the hacks, or better yet, getting rid of these guys -> way to get rid of these guys is by having tighter controls and enforcement on who can do the work -> enforce existing regulations, especially those related to safety -> safety should include training on proper cutting, rigging etc as a minimum prerequisite to compete in this business.

Or, we could just wait for the hacks and those unfortunates who have received little training to kill themselves. This has not worked very well so far. There is a legion ready to take their place.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

how about improve training and safety information available for little or no cost.

!,000 companies put up $1,000 each... Only problem is who is going to produce it? ISA??? TCIA??? they don't have the knowledge.. OF all the books, videos and seminars I've gone to, the only one that stands out as bringing great info with tremendous practical value is a one day seminar on climbing and rigging by Mark Chisholm..
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

ISA's Art & Science of Practical Rigging vids and workbook should be mandatory for anyone doing any rigging.

Daniel...consider that you've been cutting for years and have picked up bits and bobs of information along the way. Some formal more by experience. How would any of us put even part of that into a training session? Wayyyyy too complex for a shake n bake approach.

Maybe some entity would take Mark's session and make it into a training program.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

[ QUOTE ]
ISA's Art & Science of Practical Rigging vids and workbook should be mandatory for anyone doing any rigging.

Daniel...consider that you've been cutting for years and have picked up bits and bobs of information along the way. Some formal more by experience. How would any of us put even part of that into a training session? Wayyyyy too complex for a shake n bake approach.

[/ QUOTE ]

The art and science of practical rigging is a perfect example of how lame the training material for such matters is. There is nothing practical about it.. they didn't show a thing about setting blocks, force vectors, etc.. They showed a fishing pole & speedline (extremely rare applications) and midline alpine butterfly, where a floating block would have been much better. Total garbage and a waste of money IMO. If that's the best you can recommend, no wonder there is such ignorance in the industry. What type of training materials for rigging do the Germans use????

Though its complicated and there are very few people that understand how all the pieces work together, it wouldn't be that hard for a good team to put some video and book materials together that could bump everyone way up the learning curve.. I could do a far better job than the ISA with a decent budget...
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

[ QUOTE ]
People do not value trees as much as they value cell phone service, working toilets, home renovations and other things also requiring skilled trades.
It's short sighted and to those of us that understand trees, it's plain wrong. Education is the key but interest in the natural world is waning fast.
We do this work because we love it but most of us won't reap big financial rewards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Frax-

You hit the nail on the head right there. Our society doesn't see value in nature. It is obsessed with technology and completely out of sync with the natural world and the limits of what that world can provide. I think we as a species are doomed because of this short sightedness.

If society doesn't value nature, then why would it value the skills of those who take care of living things?
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

Boreality, you seem like a well written intelligent person so it's boggling to me why you would write the things you write, especially owning a business. If you don't like borrowing money from fat bankers, then don't borrow money from fat bankers? I don't get it, I was under the assumption we all had a choice?

I own a business, I have some debt, enough that I'm comfortable and it far outweighs having the debt than not having it (the debt works for me, I don't work for the debt and that's the only way it should be). If you don't like your situation, don't blame others change it yourself. Blaming big america, or bankers, or society is childish, make a move don't sit back and be lazy.

jp
grin.gif
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

Aloha That sounds like more work. I also just realized this -30 weather forced a person to stop. Actually mopped the floor yesterday. That's real chillaxin'. And paid some taxes.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

I think it's good to have some debt. Just enough where you have what you want to work efficiently but not too much to make you start cutting your own throat to keep the work volume. Debt is just another motivator in keeping your eyes on goals (material ones anyhow).

As far as training goes... Definitely a big one. If as a business owner you keep buying nice toys but neglect your employee training you are totally screwing up. If I only had a dollar for every tree worker I talked to and had to explain the fundamental concept of the forces on a static rigging point being up to 2x the force of whats being supported. "naw uh, you're not doing your math right man". Just an example right there of the lack of training in our field.
 
Re: What\'s the real problem?

Debt is an interesting thing. Some really leverage it understanding a very fundamental part of the equation, if the market is going south on you then there is always bankruptcy to clean the slate. Funny how the banks will just go along with that without much ado. Its part of the business and lending world. Why is it that the solution to taking on debt to finance more equipment and thus to grow always seems to come around to cutting prices to make sales? How about identifying your demographic and ensuring that the market you're in actually has the numbers to support your business model. Then putting in place a marketing plan to reach that market. Then develop a sales program that will achieve the closing rate needed to drive the sales that were forecasted to generate the revenues you forecasted? Whether you're 2 or 200 its all the same. So, here is another big problem in our industry and one that is seen in plenty of others, business training. With that I mean managing, financing, bookkeeping, sales & marketing, hiring practices, communications, etc...

What a better regulated industry will do is force the owners to either improve their business acumen or fail. Note Daniel, better regulated not more regulated. Part of this regulation should govern the training of the individuals in the business.

In Ontario they started a voluntary apprenticeship program. Much alike to all the other trades except the fact that it isn't mandatory (here's one of the training problems Daniel). For many of the business owners there its a nice thing to do for your employees that you lay off for the winter and want to come back. If they learn anything that's ok too. It's a pretty good course though it's light on rigging and the physics, biology, plant physiology tree biomechanics that goes behind that. The math portion of the program is actually exceedingly basic, as well as the english course, yet many in the program balked at having to take it. One of the problems being that many who entered our profession did so because they didn't like school or weren't good at it (math and english especially).

A winter program or night school program that would take the budding arborist through the fundamentals of rigging would need to start with the basics of the applied math. I.e.,, conversions (we need to be fluent in metric and standard measures) geometry, trig, then onto forces and vectors leading into mechanics. We need to move beyond idealized systems and at the least gain a basic understanding of friction (as witnessed by the thread on the petzl testing results). Tree biology, physiology and biomechanics will give them the necessary understanding of the materials we work with day to day.

Then there will be the communications course that would focus on firstly how to build a sentence (as my teacher described it "Something/Doing") such that everything else falls in to place. By that I mean, writing letters, reports, analyses, memos, and such.

And, like the other apprenticeships, we'll need to teach the regulations that govern our trade.

There's plenty more that needs to go into the course but most importantly this needs to be delivered in a timely fashion where it can be applied to their work place soon after.
 
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