Tuesday: May 13

Today was another productive day at MBTS. We started at 7:00am and ended at 4:00pm. Today we did three different jobs, and all consisted of tree removals. We were back to our crew of four today and we were cruising through the jobs like always. All of the jobs today for the most part had a good setup, which means that you can practically set the bucket truck and the chipper up side by side. This always makes life a lot easier because you don’t have to lump a lot of brush. On the first job, Kevin climbed two small Maple trees behind a shed, and removed them completely. While Kevin was in the tree, I was on the ground watching the different ways he ties his safety line into the tree, and also made sure that his lines did not get caught or the fence or any branches he was cutting. We were in and out of this first job in no time. The second job we went to was right down the road. Again, we had to remove a Maple tree, but this time it was a lot bigger, and we were able to use the bucket truck, which makes the job a lot easier. When we pulled up to the job, Kevin positioned the truck the way he would like, and then I was in charge of putting down the outriggers, with pads underneath, and then making sure the truck was stable. The last job of the day we did was another Maple tree. This Maple tree was the biggest tree of the day, and was going to be the most difficult because of how windy it was out, and because there were power lines down below. This meant that we had to set up a lowering system with two different lines off the back of the truck, with a man on each line. Lowering limb by limb is never an easy or fun technique to use, but in today’s situation with the wind and power lines, it was a must. Once Kevin had the whole tree limbed out, and everything was lowered to the ground, Kevin began to chunk the rest of the tree down, and luckily we got to leave all the wood there for fire wood. This was the last job of the day. We headed back to the shop, to prepare for tomorrow, which is going to a big day because we have crane jobs. Kevin sharpened up the saws, I got my practice driving in by driving to the farm to dump the chip truck, and Linus headed off to do estimates. It is now time to rest up for tomorrow!