SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/753045
www.stma.org December 2016 | SportsTurf 21 Tracked lifts can squeeze into sites impossible for other equipment. Tree inventories have become commonplace for just about every municipality and large, landscaped campus. Many com- panies have started marketing tree inventories as a stand-alone service offering, and are able to deploy a small team of trained technicians to complete a survey in a matter of days. There are even savvy municipalities that are including "Provide detailed map of treated trees" as a requirement in their bid specifications for large-scale treatment programs. This is allowing them to get valuable GIS data on their urban forest while rolling the cost of it into their treatment budgets. 2. MOBILE TECHNOLOGY Part of the reason GIS has become so common in the industry is the technological barrier to entry is significantly less than it was just a few short years ago. Taking all the information available on the Internet and putting it into a device that fits into your pocket has been one of the great leaps forward in recent memory. Con- sidering how universal smart phones and tablet computers seem today, it wasn't that long ago when all your cell phone could do was make phone calls. Today, arborists are using their phones for just about every part of their business. We are using phones and tablets for collecting GIS data for inventories that used to re- quired specialized, often expensive and cumbersome, equipment. We also use our phones for diagnosing health issues, writing up bid estimates for the client, and checking the rates for a treat- ment application. Mobile devices are chock full of possibilities with millions of apps available that can help with a specialized task such us tree ID or learning to tie a new knot. They are also extremely valuable for helping pass the time waiting for a client who is late to the appointment. 3. TRACKED LIFTS If you aren't familiar with a tracked lift by name (they also go by mini-lift or spider lift) they are boom lifts that are mounted onto small tractor-like bases. They fold small enough to get through an average backyard gate, but then they have support legs that telescope out, providing a wide, stable base. From there it works just like a bucket truck would, allowing the ar- borist to access a tree's canopy up to 72 feet above ground. I had the chance to see this type of lift in action in late March. The tree was one of the largest American elms our tree care service, Rainbow Treecare, has ever taken down. The tree was massive — a 57-inch DBH tree in a tiny backyard in south Minneapolis with no alley access and a tree that went over several adjacent properties. Our team was able to access portions of the tree overhanging the next-door neighbor's home by driving the tracked lift up their cobblestone driveway, set up in the backyard, and perform the necessary limb removals with- out the need for a team of climbers and/or a crane. No other piece of equipment could have allowed this. This technology presented not only safer working conditions for our technical arborists, but the time and labor reduction significantly reduced the final cost to client. 4. MODULAR TRUCK MOUNTS Spray application equipment was formerly attached to heavy trucks that could only be used for the purpose of spraying. New versions are mounted on removable bracket systems that allow you to use a pickup truck as a spray rig when needed, or remove it and have another truck available when it is not. Modifiable systems such as these are popular with tree service companies for good reason — they are less expensive and more flexible, which, in the end, makes them more profitable as well. Several different manufactures are producing their versions of this concept; and with tanks ranging from 40 gallons to 500 gal- lons you can start small and go bigger as your plant health care business grows. The entry cost for modifying a pickup truck into a spray truck is anywhere from $500 to $2,000. Compared to the price of a dedicated spray tank truck — which ranges from about $20,000 for a used vehicle to $60,000 for a new model — the modular truck-mounted system is allowing many more compa- nies to expand their operations. 5. TREE HEALTH CARE TECHNOLOGY Modern tree health care is built around the diagnosis of issues and the prescription of their treatments. To many, the idea of using any type of chemical treatment for tree health rings of the "spray and pray" era when chemicals were utilized in an