This morning a large, green bucket truck rolled into my neighbor’s backyard. It was re-painted and had no visible name on it. Uh oh. Joe-the-tree-guy! You know him. He does tree work on the side when it’s too hot to do roofing and asphalt. Two guys get out: one has on a hardhat and is carrying a chainsaw – no other protective gear. The other guy is chewing gum and has no safety gear what-so-ever. Chainsaw-guy gets in the bucket, lets the chainsaw rip and proceeds to limb up my neighbor’s 75′ oak tree. You remember the one? It had two main leaders and split about a month ago, one leader slamming into the ground, but hitting nothing.
Anyway, safety-guy (sans any safety gear) chats with my neighbor occasionally checking on chainsaw-guy. Chainsaw-guy continued to limb up the oak, moving the bucket higher and higher up the tree. Did I mention the bucket truck didn’t have stabilizers? I don’t know a lot about bucket truck safety equipment, but I do think if I’m 60′ up in the air, stabilizers would be a nice feature.
In about 45 minutes, chainsaw guy had the tree limbed up and was ready to start taking the tree down. He made a notch on the side of the tree closest to my yard and let the top go! It skimmed our tree line…thank you chain-saw guy. That old white oak needed a bit o’ pruning.
Joe-the-tree-guy service finished up in about an hour. No chipping (can you say, thank goodness?!), no clean up. They just left.
In NJ, we have a Licensed Tree Expert bill that recently passed. It requires that companies who work on trees be licensed, so that drive-by-night companies like Joe-the-tree-guy’s cannot kill their workers with lack of safety. Click here to learn more:
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2008/Bills/S3000/2503_F1.PDF