So around me we have this tree company called Asplundh. They drive orange and black trucks. They contract through WE Energies (our power line folks in the area) to clear the power lines of trees. I get very excited when I see these orange rigs on the horizon! They cut wood all day every day along power lines and just leave it sitting there, in nicely cut piles right under the power lines. If a guy like me don't come along and grab it...it will sit there and rot away to nothing. Anyways, these fine gentlemen were out cutting on a road right by my house. It was a couple mile road that was just littered with piles of cut wood all along it! Luckily for me, it's all in a HUGE forested area of mostly hardwoods too. So needless to say I filled my long bed F350 up as much as I could possibly safely transport, and filled my little Honda Civic trunk and back seat twice! Most of it was all some type of elm (pizz elm i believe) which was some of the same wood and spot I had gotten it from a while back when I put up a wood ID post after the Village cut there. This time though...there was a hidden treasure among the elm...a real elusive unicorn of a beaut...some OSAGE ORANGE! OHHHHH I was ecstatic! Didn't get too much of it, but a good bunch of pieces for sure. First time I've scored any of that. Here's a couple pictures of one of the pieces... I'd estimate maybe 10 pieces of it. Here's showing that beautiful yellow interior. Quite a bit lighter yellow than mulberry.
You can see off to the right two more pieces of the Hedge. And one way at the top of the bottom picture. And straight ahead is majority of what I got...which we determined was pizz elm in a previous ID endeavor.
Looks like black locust to me too. Asplundah is national company I believe. We have em here too. Last Tuesday I went out and picked up two large loads of ash they had taken down. Most.of this was either still in log form, or chunked large enough that it needed to be cut further before lifting. I can't wait until the snow melts and I can get back out to where they were cutting before the last storm.
Benjamin Turner, nice score. When you get wood off of a power line you want to check with the land owners before taking any wood. I don't know how it works in your state but where I live in upstate New York the land owner own the land that's under the power lines. The power companies have a right of way to maintain the land under and roughly 75ft either side of the lines. They do not own the land. I own two pieces of property that has power lines running through it and I'd be pretty pizzed if I saw guys taking wood off my property without asking. Asplundh does a lot of the power lines work around here also. Just a heads up for future picking.
Asplundh also has contracts in MI in our area. Davey's had the contract up until a couple years ago but they were either underbid or did not do a good enough job. In our area, neither of them is doing a good job as we keep going without power way too often. It used to take a big storm to knock us out of power now all it takes is rain and we lose power. That sucks big time.
I'm going with option 3 Power company wants lowest price and wants to pay as little as possible. Resulting in less trees being cut and not clearing the ROW's back far enough. A contract is a contract... If the tree company is not clearing the trees as the contract specifies, then they should be made to come back and do it right. The last time the tree guys were here, I asked them to take a leaner down. They told me they were only allowed to cut trees that were dead/Ash. The leaner is still there and leaning toward the powerline... They did however pull all the wood up to where I could get it easy and even stacked it up
TurboDiesel, I have dealt with a few different tree companies that cut the power lines on my property. Two years ago they were contracted to cut everything directly under the lines and so many feet outside the lines. I talked with the foreman of the power company about all the Apple tree's under the lines. We made a deal that I would top the tree's and they could stay. By right he could of said no and had the tree cutting crews clear cut everything, they also sprayed any woody tree's and shrubs under the lines. I have plenty of apple smoking wood for years to come. Wasn't much of any hardwood worth taking for burning
Davey was probably out bid because Ashplundh has been paying illegals peanuts for years. Asplundh to Pay $95M in Immigration Case, Largest Ever Fine
Yup. That's the way it works. We too wanted a couple trees cut down because they were dieing. They would die then fall right on the power line. They did call in to get permission but permission was not granted. They'd rather pay overtime to clean up the mess after a storm takes them down. Well, we got them down before the storms did.
I have had trees leaning towards power lines on my property and when I called my co-op they were out in a couple of days and safely dropped the trees. No charge for their work. Dealing with a public utility may be different. Our co-op would rather have their guys work to prevent outages and not have to go out during a storm, at night, on a weekend to deal with problems.
Several years ago Asplundh worked on our road for a couple weeks after a storm. After the crew of three or four had worked for a week, I told my wife I could have done in one day as much as they had done all week. The next day she was talking with our neighbor and he told her the same exact thing nearly word for word. All the work they did here in two weeks could have very easily been done in two days.
It's not just the utility in many cases. Here they have to run their tree cutting plan past the Planning Board which is linked to the Historical Society. Often times they are denied permission to alter the historical character of a street/neighborhood.
