D & C Tree Services

The machine that decides most of what we can say yes to is a 23 metre elevated work platform, rated to 66kv, with 12 metres of side reach. The rating is what lets us work safely near live powerlines, and the side reach is what puts a basket over a fence line and into the back of a block no truck is ever getting into. D & C Tree Services has spent more than thirty years in this industry building a fleet around that idea, out of Muswellbrook.

We work right across the Hunter Region, with Singleton, Denman, Merriwa, Scone and Murrurundi all on the list alongside Muswellbrook itself. Thirty years has brought the memberships with it: fourteen years with the Tree Contractors Association of Australia, three of those sitting on its committee, plus the National Arborist Association of Australia, the International Society of Arboriculture Australian Chapter and the Timber Trade Industrial Association.

The rest of the yard reads the same way as the platform does. Chipping runs through dual 20 inch Vermeer machines feeding 15,000kg and 13,500kg chipper trucks, every one of them carrying a spill kit. For land clearing there are 25 tonne and 30 tonne excavators fitted with hydraulic saws and felling heads, S770 and S250 Bobcats with log grabs, mulchers and grinding attachments, and an ST30XP for the stump grinding. An 800 horsepower hammer mill sits on site, and a firewood processor and a Lucas Mill turn usable timber into firewood and milled product instead of sending it to landfill. A full time mechanic keeps all of it going, along with the four wheel drive service vehicles, and on a job two hours out of town that is the difference between a delay and a lost day.

Severe weather, a structural failure or a sudden branch drop tends to leave cracked stems, weakened attachment points and large hanging or fractured limbs. The first thing we do on arrival is a hazard assessment: the condition of the tree, where it has actually failed, and what is standing underneath it. Only then does anything get touched. The tree is stabilised, then brought down by controlled lowering and sectioned as we go so the weight stays under control the whole way down. Where a tree has been left unstable by heavy winds, lightning or saturated soil, that same assessment is what tells us whether it can be saved at all.

The everyday work is tree removal, tree pruning, stump grinding and land clearing, and the office keeps ordinary hours of Monday to Friday, 7am to 7pm. Our 24 hour emergency arborist service does not keep those hours, and it runs to Scone and Denman as well as Muswellbrook. So if a tree is across your drive at midnight, or a limb is hanging over the house and morning feels a long way off, ring Muswellbrook on 02 6541 3303, Singleton on 02 6571 2877, or the office mobile on 0418 685 373.