Monday: Day 1 With Murphy Brothers Tree Service Inc.

Today was the first day of my Senior Project. I reported to the shop at 6:30am where all the trucks are kept. The shop is located in Danvers, Ma, which is where we will meet every morning before we start working. At the shop we were told the plan for the day. Today, we headed up to the Amesbury, Ma and Newburyport, Ma and had four jobs to do. We had a crew of four guys today, Kevin and Linus Murphy who are the owners, and myself and Steve Cameron. Kevin, Linus and Steve are all firefighters so they insured me that I would be in good hands. At the shop, Kevin walked me through the pre-trip inspection on the bucket truck and chip truck. He stressed the importance on the chip truck that always making sure the chipper is secure on the hitch before you start the truck, and on the bucket truck that you do not see any hydraulic fluid leaking. Today we just started with the basics and the most important for the pre trip inspection because over the next few weeks I will be learning all of them. I will be taught a new part of the inspection every morning. From the shop, all three trucks and the chipper needed to be fueled and the chip truck needed to be emptied. We packed the trucks with out lunches and tools. As we were getting in the trucks, I was asked by Linus, "What are you doing Denny?" I didn't know what I was doing wrong, I had only been on the job for 15 minutes. They wanted me to drive the chip truck to the dump and then to be fueled. I thought they were kidding, but they weren't. I jumped in the drivers seat with Steve in the passengers seat, and we were off. I had never driven a truck this big before never mind with a 7,000-pound chipper on the back. I was extremely nervous and Steve was instructing me as I went along and made me try to feel comfortable behind the wheel. After we dumped and fueled the trucks, they still had me behind the wheel, until we had to get on the highway. They told me that I would be driving by the end of the week on the highway. By 7:45 the saws were starting and the cutting began. The first two jobs were removals of dead trees, which I thought were big trees, but the guys informed me these trees were small compared to what we will be doing in the next few weeks. The third job we did we had to remove tree limbs off a house and power lines. I surprised all the guys by identifying the tree we were pruning, in which it was a Horse Chestnut. I learned how to identify a Horse Chestnut tree in Forestry class this year along with any other trees, so I hope it comes in handy in the next few weeks. The guys were extremely shocked that I knew that. We finished the day in Newburyport, Ma by chipping a large brush pile. With four guys, we were able to finish this job in about 20 minutes. This took us to about 3 pm. On the way back, I went in the chip truck with Steve to dump the chip truck at the local dump in the area. They wanted me to go with him so that he could teach me how to hitch the chipper back up to the truck after you dump. On the way back to the shop on the highway, Steve told me to make sure to never have a full load of chips in the truck so you don’t get pulled over and fined at the weigh station for driving an overweight truck. We returned to the shop at 4pm, and emptied out all the trucks to prepare for tomorrow. I will meet back at trucks early again in the morning. I really enjoyed my first day with MBTS and am planning on bringing my camera tomorrow to take pictures.