FAQ: Won’t Your Equipment Tear Up My Yard?

​One of the main concerns we hear from potential customers is that our equipment will leave tracks on their yard or tear up existing landscaping. After all, even our smallest motorized vehicle weighs in around 3,000 pounds! Surely that can do some serious damage to your newly-laid sod?

​And these customers are right – without the proper precautions, it would be easy for our industrial equipment to cause problems. But at Classic City Arborists, we truly believe that age-old adage of “leave it better than you found it.” We take a range of steps to ensure that, aside from the tree we take down or underbrush we clear away, you won’t be able to tell we were there! 

​Equipment

​The gear, tools, and vehicles needed to do any kind of tree work come in many shapes and sizes, and every arborist has their preference. One of the main considerations we keep in mind as we choose what to use (aside from making sure the thing can actually get the job done!) is the impact it will have on the environment around it. 

​For example, one common vehicle used in tree work is a bucket truck. These help workers get up close and personal with higher limbs, which is very important to most all kinds of tree work. Unfortunately, bucket trucks can weigh around 26,000 pounds or more on average. All that weight will definitely leave some gouges in soft ground. 

​At Classic City Arborists, we choose to use a self-propelled lift. The lift’s base is much smaller than a truck, which means we can get to tight spots in your backyard where a truck simply wouldn’t fit. The lift only weighs 6,600 pounds – which is still a lot, but certainly much easier to swallow than 26,000! 

​And lastly, the lift is on tracks (think the kind of rotating wheels on an army tank). Where a bucket truck would have all that weight on just four or six wheels, the weight of our lift is distributed along the entire length of both tracks. This creates more surface area, reducing pressure at any given point. With tracks, there also aren’t any individual wheels to bear down in one spot as the vehicle turns, which means no holes in your yard.

​Our other major piece of equipment we use on a frequent basis is our miniature skid steer. This compact vehicle allows us to clear away limbs, trunk sections, and other debris from an area in larger loads. While actually cutting down or pruning a tree is the main part of any job, that’s only half the work. Cleaning a tree up from a hard-to-access site is a physically-demanding process, and the miniature skid steer helps cut down on the time and effort needed to get everything spick and span. The miniature skid steer only weighs around 3,000 pounds, and is also on tracks like the lift to protect your ground.

Preventative Safeguards

​While having our equipment on tracks definitely helps reduce any wear and tear on the ground, we still take certain measures in special circumstances. For example, if you’ve just laid down delicate sod, or if it’s been raining and the ground is wet. In cases like this, we will lay down simple ¾-inch plywood for the machinery to drive over. Sometimes, we only need to lay plywood over certain areas. Other times, we might lay it all the way from the road to the tree we’re cutting down! 

​The pictures here show a job where we used our miniature skid steer, SK, and self-propelled lift steer to remove and clean up numerous cypress trees from a backyard. We laid down plywood in strategic areas to protect softer ground, especially over areas where the machinery would need to pivot. After over 20 trips back and forth, you can see that the sod was virtually unaffected – even in the areas where we didn’t lay down plywood. 

​For more images and videos showing us using our equipment, check out our Photo Gallery!

Initial Assessment

When Scott (our certified arborist and co-owner of Classic City Arborists) comes out to your property to give you an estimate, he isn’t just looking at the work you want done. He’s also looking at factors like how crowded the area is (which will impact how easy or hard it is to get the work done), and what the access to the work site looks like. 

There may be multiple ways to get from the road to the site, and Scott will consider all of them before deciding which they will use. Now, the route he recommends may not be the shortest or most efficient path from the road to the work site. The equipment we use is, for the most part, big, bulky, and heavy, and Scott takes these things into consideration when planning out a job. 

Whatever route he decides on will be noted on your estimate. This lets you know the plan, and also gives you the chance to weigh in.  

If you still have questions or concerns regarding our equipment, your yard, or our methods, please don’t hesitate to contact us! We’re happy to walk you through the process more thoroughly and discuss any thoughts you may have. 

Or, check out our other Frequently Asked Questions, to see if we’ve answered your question before!

Author

​Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio.