The Background
TreeStory, which grew from a small side gig to a large tree service contractor, found success using Loftness equipment to increase efficiency and safety when managing vegetation along approximately 1,000 miles of right-of-way.
Customer
Mark Kivisto | TreeStory | Dassel, Minnesota
Equipment
The Basics
TreeStory has greatly increased efficiency on its right-of-way maintenance contracts, thanks to a Loftness Kwik-Trim and Battle Ax.
The Challenge: Efficiently Maintaining Rural Right-of-Ways
Based in Dassel, Minnesota, TreeStory is a tree service contractor founded by Mark Kivisto. The business began as a side gig while Kivisto was employed as a civil engineer, designing roads and railroads, but quickly blossomed into something much more. Today, TreeStory is a full-service contractor focused on commercial land clearing and utility right-of-way vegetation management.
However, the right-of-way work got off to a slow start — literally. “We were doing a utility contract for about a year, and we were dragging bucket trucks through ditches with skid loaders,” said Kivisto. “It was slow, and we quickly realized it wasn’t a good way to do things.”
Part of Kivisto’s struggle was due to the location of the work in rural Minnesota, where some utility lines are located in short spans of trees off the road. He said, “Some spans were too far from the road for a bucket truck to reach easily, but not long enough to justify struggling to drive a truck across fields.
We needed a better way.”
The Solution
The first part of TreeStory’s solution was a Loftness Kwik-Trim, a compact mechanical tree trimmer built on a mini excavator chassis. The Kwik-Trim has a 24-inch carbide-tipped blade at the end of an insulated non-conductive fiberglass boom with a 53-foot reach to cut tree branches that encroach on utility lines.
“The Kwik-Trim’s mobility is a huge advantage,” said Kivisto. “You can haul it with a pickup and tilt-deck trailer, unload, clear a section, and move to the next. For our mix of short, scattered spans, it’s perfect.”
The other part of the solution for TreeStory is a Battle Ax mulching attachment. Used on a Bobcat T86, the Battle Ax mulches underbrush ahead of the Kwik-Trim to clear a path. Then, after the Kwik-Trim comes through to handle ground-to-sky clearance, the Battle Ax is used again to mulch the fallen branches on the ground.
The Battle Ax rotor has a unique depth gauge design to help operators maximize productivity by optimizing the amount of material being fed into the drum. It also has a two-stage cutting chamber, capable of processing material against two different shear bars to create fine particle sizes for fast decomposition.
“We work in people’s yards and along farmers’ fields, so we need to be conscious of what the final product looks like,” said Kivisto. “The Battle Ax grinds material to a finer size that homeowners have really appreciated.”
Kivisto also enjoys the simplicity and durability of the Battle Ax. “We’ve had very few problems with it,” he said. “Forestry work is inherently hard on equipment, but the Battle Ax has held up really well.”
The Results
Since putting the Kwik-Trim and Battle Ax to use, TreeStory has seen a significant boost in efficiency along the 1,000 miles of utility lines the contractor services. In some areas, TreeStory still needs to use a bucket truck, but that doesn’t detract from the Kwik-Trim’s benefit to the operation.
“In some yards we can’t run over the brush with a forestry mulcher, so we have to use a bucket truck and a woodchipper,” said Kivisto. “But the places we can use the Kwik-Trim and Battle Ax, we get a lot of work done in a day, whereas it would take quite a while with a bucket truck crew.”
An added benefit of the Loftness equipment is safety — a key focus for TreeStory. Unlike with bucket trucks, crews are able to work within the protection of a cab, rather than close to power lines, exposed to the elements. And both pieces of equipment have proven to be stable when operating on uneven ground.
Success is credited not only to the performance of the Loftness equipment, but also the service received from the manufacturer. Since originally purchasing his equipment, Kivisto has stayed in close contact with Clint Major, Technical Service/Sales Support Specialist for Loftness. “If we have an issue, you call up Clint or anyone in the parts department,” he said. “You say what you need or ask what an issue could be, and they know the equipment inside and out. They’ll provide a solution to get you back up and running as soon as possible.”
The customer service solidifies Kivisto’s decision to use Loftness equipment. “They always get me back up and running, so we can keep working on a project,” he said. “It’s been a great working relationship.”
