MPDT

From Cooktown and Cape York down to Brisbane, Logan and the Sunshine Coast, our travelling tree crews cover a stretch of Queensland that would keep three ordinary tree companies busy. We run MPDT out of the Far North, and the day to day patch takes in Cairns, Mossman, Port Douglas, the Douglas Shire, the Tablelands and the Daintree. North of there we work Cook Shire, the Gulf and Cape York, and to the south we run through Townsville to Brisbane, Logan, Redcliffe and the Sunshine Coast. Remote, rural and regional communities sit on that run, and a travelling crew is how we get to them.

Up here the weather sets the calendar, and palms are the clearest example of it. A palm carrying a full load of nuts over a driveway, a pool or a roof turns into property damage the first time it blows, so de-nutting and palm maintenance gets booked hardest ahead of cyclone season. Our climbers use the latest climbing technology to get up there safely, strip out the seed and nut load, tidy the crown and check what the fronds have been hiding. Where a property has a whole row of them, we diarise the maintenance program so the work is done before the wet rather than after it.

For a householder it usually starts with a tree that has died, split or grown into the house. We handle the tree removal, then the tree pruning that keeps the rest of the garden in shape, and the grinder comes through behind us for stump grinding so you can plant, pave or park over the spot again. Everything that comes off a job goes through the chipper and comes back out as mulch and wood chip, which we supply by the load. When what you need is a document, our arborists write tree reports and consultancy advice for development applications, council conditions and arguments over boundary trees.

The commercial side of the business puts our crews in front of large power companies, shire councils and mining groups. Power line clearing goes to utility arborists qualified to cut trees with the reach to hit live conductors, working from insulated EWPs that hold the exclusion zones while the saw is running, and every one of them sits bi annual refresher courses to keep that ticket current. The same crews take on land clearing contracts, weed control and spraying, mowing and slashing and ongoing grounds maintenance, and we do landscaping where a site needs putting back together once the machinery leaves. Whatever the job, the site is left tidy and the fallen and hazardous debris goes with us.

Bud, Billy and Priscilla Quaid started the business in 2005 with more than 30 years of combined industry experience between them, working for homeowners, real estate agencies and local councils. It grew into the utility, mining and civil sectors from there, and our crews have been engaged for work in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Hawaii. Asplundh, the largest vegetation management company in the world, has since brought us into its Australian operations. It is still run as a family business that hires from local families and buys from local suppliers, and more than 22 per cent of our workforce is Indigenous.

The paperwork behind all of it is certification to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, plus $20 million in public liability cover, professional indemnity and the relevant Work Cover insurance. That is what gets us onto utility corridors, mine sites and council land as readily as into a suburban back yard. Office hours are 8am to 4pm and emergency work is available around the clock. Send through a request for a quote or give us a ring, and we will have someone out to look at the tree.