1 Million dollar truck makes $300 per hour 4K

Protree Outdoor Services just got a brand new truck and it comes in at just under a million dollars for this rig. And what it does is it has a grapple at the end of it and it allows it to extend really far out into the tops of the trees, grab a hold of them and saw cut them, keeping their operators a lot safer. But let's check it out a little bit closer. Watch out cuz you're really high up here. It's like not close to the ground. So you're going to hook up the grapple right now, right? Yep. This one's an SG220. Uh so it is the grapple with a hydraulic chainsaw. Um, and this one is is a T220, so it's a slightly smaller version, little more lightweight. It articulates and rotates a little bit better, but it only has a grapple head. So, this one would be used for just dismantling trees with a climbing arborist or a lift operator. And this one is used for if you just want to uh dismantle trees on the ground with just a truck. What does a rig like this go for, then? Uh, a lot. About 600,000, isn't it? More than that. More? Yeah. But this is brand spanking new. So, brand new. Yeah. You're talking about the rig plus all of the fabrication cuz they don't they don't build these off the shelf. When they know that you're going to order one, then they start making one for you. Yeah. I mean, I think they take like I don't know over a year to build. We got lucky where somebody ordered exactly what we wanted and then they backed out on the order so we were able to just take it from them. Um, so you were able to buy that one that they built for someone else. Yeah. But I mean they we they had to spec out. That is an awful lot of money just to get this part up to the top of a tree so that it can the saw these two saw heads alone are like $40,000 a piece each one of these. Yeah. I can't imagine. They got a whole team of engineers that puts these things together. Okay. But so this truck here, we were going to buy this exact truck 5 years earlier. We're looking Yeah. I mean, they these came out like six or seven years ago. This style of, you know, articulated grapple cranes, but they were like way longer and the cranes were way smaller. So, we've been kind of watching them and waiting and, you know, the engineering and the research and the technology has gotten to the point where they were able to make it shorter and put a bigger crane on. So, I mean, what you would have bought, you know, 6, seven years ago is a completely different animal to this and is that a lot of that due to the outriggers then? They just put bigger outriggers on. I have no idea how they're able to do it, honestly. No. TR, do you have any idea how they made these trucks be able to pick up so much more and get shorter over here? Stabilizer. Oh, it comes out the back. Yeah. They didn't have those when they first started out. So, before your truck would have been this long with the crane in the same spot. Okay. So that's a big difference is they they just put in a rear stabilizer and probably bigger side stabilizers. Yeah, they're further out they probably put more weight on the truck themselves, too. So how much can that lift like that? Does it do you have a scale on your It gives me percentages and then I have just a manual chart. So you on your remote you have percentages? Yeah. So it just shows me. So this is how this operates. So that lower boom, you see that's extended out. Yeah. Is at 40% and that fly jet's at 35 right now. At 35%. So it'll tell you when you've reached 100%. It'll they'll start beeping at you. Okay. But we we're usually never trying to get close to 100%. We stay within 50 to 70%. 50 to 70%. Okay. Not even off the ground. It's not very forgiving when you're 70 ft in there. Heat. Heat. Heat. try quick. How much can it lift? Um, so it all depends at how much boom each boom you have out and the radius from the back of the crane. This is our load chart that we we have to reference here. But basically, this crane has 108t of stick. So, fully extended out at 108 ft, we can pick uh 1,540 lb, which isn't a lot, but that's that's a damn good amount. Yeah. I mean, it's quite a far distance. And then like right off the back of the crane, uh I got to go. So, we're picking off just our main boom like at 20 ft off the back of the crane. If Tanner's just picking off his main boom, not his fly jib, he can pick at 20 feet, he's good for 20,600 lb. Holy crap. Wow. What does a rig like that go for? Like 7 800,000. What is it? Uh I think it was like 720,000 plus that you got paid sales tax and the HVT. Like that's another like 80 grand. Oh god. Like the federal tax%. Yeah. FBT tax or whatever. I haven't paid it yet. I'm trying to figure out how long you can kick it down the road. [laughter] You have to pay that. Oh god. That F feet tax is terrible on new trucks. 70,000 140,000 and just feet tax. Yeah, something like that. It's a lot. Now, you said this truck is around $700 and some,000 plus another $140,000 in tax. So, just a little bit under a million dollars what the value of a truck like this is going for. Correct. Brand spanking new. And you rent these out to companies. So, you your plan with this is to go work for other companies cuz not a lot of companies have a truck like this. Correct. Yeah. We're going to use it internally obviously as much as we can, but you know, we have a full-time operator running the thing. Um, so it's going to be out available to work with other tree contractors specifically to help with taking down uh dead and dying ash trees. That's what we're doing right now. I mean, you can see these ash trees are dying from emerald ashbor. They're not completely dead yet, but in our market, these trees are going to be completely dead and you can't take them down with a lift anymore. You can't take them down with a climbing arborist. So your only safe removal method is going to be something like this where you know we can reach out, we can grab the top of the tree, close the grapple, use the hydraulic saw on the grapple and take the tree down remotely without anyone having to be anywhere close to it. Well, what about using a regular frame versus something like this? That I mean that that is an option, but again you have to put a lift operator or climbing arborist up in the tree to set rigging and to make the cuts. Right now, we're using it like a [music] traditional crane cuz this asht tree is pretty alive and stable at this point. But if it's dead, we wouldn't want to do that just because the potential that it could fail and break apart. What else do we need to know about a truck like this, Wes? You got to have specialized training to run truck like this. Yeah. So when we got it, we uh we we got three days with the training and then Tanner, he doesn't have it yet, but he's working on is something something something crane certified operator. Yeah, there's a certain certification to operate this type of crane. We don't need to as arborists because um we're we're technically like agricultural. We're not like lifting rated things. So technically we don't need to be a licensed operator, but we're just going to do it just because it's a good thing to do. We we got it built by Pallet Fleet out of Tiffen, Ohio. We did a lot of researching different builders. They're the best builder in the country that we found. You in your opinion, they're the best builder. What is the name of them? Pallet Fleet out of Tiffen, Ohio. Pallet Fleet. So do they start with a regular chassis on this thing or is this a custom chassis? Uh they have to they spec the chassis out to be like a certain length and it's got like a double wall frame and I think there's a lot more that goes into the engineering but yes this chassis was from the factory built to have this crane mounted on the back. What about right from the factory now? Is this is this from pallet figure? Yeah, that's these the stabilizers are part of the crane and then it's got if you look at the frame on this thing like Tanner calls it like a torsion frame. So like this is the axle frame down there and this is all molded on top of it and that it creates stability in the truck. So here's the actual frame and here's the rest of the frame. Correct. Well, that's the last bit of it coming down. I got to see all of your cool equipment, Wes. Thanks for coming, Stan. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. So you're you're now if you guys are in the Twin Cities, St. call Minneapolis and you need to rent a truck, you're actually going to rent this out to other tree companies, not to homeowners. Right. Correct. Other tree contied tree contractors can call us and hire this at an hourly rate just like a regular crane service. We're also looking for somewhere later this winter like somebody that's uh down south where I don't care where it is. Long as it's warm, we'll come down there and we can maybe negotiate a little bit on the pricing. But Taran and I are trying to like go south, run the crane all winter. So run it all winter long. Well, I mean, if it's not busy up here, it probably will. We'll have work for it up here, too, but I'm sure there'll be times where it's slow. So, then, yeah, we'll go down south. Well, how do guys find you then if they want to reach you? Uh, call us 6124058733 or look us up, pro-tree.com. All right, cool. Thanks, Dan. Thank you. Hope you guys enjoyed the ride. I think it was pretty fun to discover this new truck. There's very few of them working around here in the Twin Cities. So, big thanks goes out to you for letting me come out and invade your space today. And uh that's it for this one. Thanks to you guys for uh coming along with God bless. Go get them, you guys. We'll see you on another one.