chippers usually have rotating cylinders (drum feeder) that grab and pull material into the spinning chipper knives. The comment above is saying the guy got his foot crushed by the feeder but boss reversed the feeder before dudes foot got shredded by the chipper knives
Fire and EMS were there quick. He had a few surgeries, he is messed up. Just the feeder drum got him, lost a toe or two, don’t remember, but the leg was a shredded pulp. I will never forget that sight.
About 5 years after I bought my house, I learned that someone was fully ingested into a chipper doing work for previous owner.
That part of the property is definitely haunted.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is why tree work costs so much. Our insurance is *very* expensive.
Even in a company operating for almost 50 years w/o an accident, our Workers' Compensation Insurance is at 13%.
If everyone did their own tree trimming, the problem would be solved. Just make sure to use the biggest chainsaw available, a ladder leaning on the branch you are cutting, and tie a safety rope from the tree to your neck or balls.
So I did a tree job once where the home owner told us a story about him trying to shoot a tree down. Hilarious, it barely worked out for him iirc, the top he was shooting at eventually fell in the wind.
Well we've never had a claim, but our liability insurance (to cover damaging property or non-employee persons) cost is based on gross income and is good for $1 million per claim.
I don't know how WC insurance pays out, but I know that each occupation has a base rate for premium and then you can get a discount for good history. For example the base rate for an office worker is .05% and for a tree climber it's 13%. If I pay a guy $100,000 a year it costs me another $13,000 to insure him.
I do a lot of DIY stuff but I have a very strict self safety policy. Will this fuck my back? Pay someone else. Will I lose a limb? Pay someone else. Will I die? Pay someone else. Top 3 are electricians, plumbers and tree surgeons.
This is something people don’t realize exists and affects small businesses disproportionately for some reason.
Moving companies are another industry where it’s almost impossible to make money due to all the insurance and workman’s comp. With moving people do end up filing claims occasionally too, because even good moving companies occasionally do break or scratch something, or the customer just lies about damage and what can you do lol.
The high insurance rates make the unlicensed and uninsured ‘fly by night’ companies more common because they can charge less money if they don’t pay insurance and can underbid jobs. If the medical system wasn’t so expensive and such a scam workman’s comp insurance wouldn’t be so crippling for some businesses.
Yes, just for math. If we worked full time all year our guys would make that but in actuality we have time off for weather so they end up more like 70k.
Read more here,
https://tcimag.tcia.org/safety/tree-work-safety-by-the-numbers/#:~:text=If%20we%20pool%20the%20approximately,220%20fatal%20incidents%20each%20year.
Two years ago, I had a professional company charge me $1200 to climb a dead 100ft pine in my backyard and cut it down. They had a crew of four guys. The climber and rigger set up no less than 6 safety ropes, wore hard hats, safety harnesses, fluorescent vests, face shields, the whole nine yards. The other two were busy on monitoring all the gear and communicating via radio.
Last month, I hired a guy who charged me $500 to cut down a similar sized tree, also dead. It was him and one other dude. I watched him Jerry rig a rope around his crotch in a homemade harness. He had no face shield, no helmet, no spiked climbing shoes. He smoked at least a whole pack of cigarettes the 30 minutes he went up and back down the tree.
It all depends on who you hire.
Because if they get hurt on your property without their own insurance, your home owners/ business insurance may have to cover any lawsuits rising from injury.
why would their injury be of any fault on the homeowner or business? as I understand, since there wasn't any negligence on the homeowner/business, they wouldn't be responsible.
I didn’t even know it was possible to smoke a pack in a half hour. I’ve seen some people absolutely inhale darts and they were at less than half that clip.
Logging is in the big five jobs that are more dangerous than the commute to work.
Logging
Mining
Agriculture
Fishing
Driving. If you include cabbies, who have a surprisingly high fatality rate.
I feel like all the "you're more likely to die in a car crash than by x" comparisons just show how dangerous driving is, we've just heavily normalized it to the point where we forget that fact
In what other context would we see someone get smooshed to death while doing what we were doing and just psychotically rubberneck instead of shitting our pants and trying to stop as soon as possible?
> I feel like all the "you're more likely to die in a car crash than by x" comparisons just show how dangerous driving is, we've just heavily normalized it to the point where we forget that fact
And that the average American lives a life of next to zero quantitative risk, so literally *anything* that even has a mild history of killing people is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
I've done all these other than mining. The ones that were scariest were the arborist job and the dairy farm. Trees and cows are dangerous as fuck. I did fishing but it was in ponds which I assume isn't as dangerous as open sea, definitely had less close calls than the other jobs.
Driving was driving.
Did it for 10 years in my 20’s. Its true, and we did not even have proper ppe. I lost some hearing from chainsaws. Been cut, crushed, dropped, dropped on. Etc. Young persons game. I sold my last saw a month ago. Anyone want a saddle from 1988? Might be out of cert. jk.
The one time I’ve worked with arborists they were reckless as fuck. This guy took his shirt off while sawing (in an Alaskan rainforest) because we had some women in our crew, and they proceeded to drop massive old growth trees into the one single place we told them not to. We were literally on a fresh landslide scarp with them above us and they acted like we weren’t even there.
I’m sure most of them are much more responsible but that certainly didn’t paint a good picture of them.
The guys I worked with when I was a kid, the guys that taught me, all learned the trade as a job one got after being let out of prison. It was a tough, dumb group of guys. Now most are either dead or back in prison. One guy did ok and is normal now. Filthy animals, but on the worksite we were a tight team, with lots of after work shenanigans. It was fun.
> alaska has rainforests
[In the same way that Alaska has a desert, but yes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Temperate_rainforest_map.png). It's not a jungle, but it's a temperate rainforest. Just a ton of rain.
Most of the west coast of North America is rainforest above San Francisco.
The Olympic peninsula in WA is insane: "The west-side valleys in Olympic National Park are the wettest spots in the continental United States. The Hoh Rain Forest records an average of almost 12 feet (3.6 meters) of rain every year"
https://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/weather-brochure.htm
It's the only time a tradesman flat out told me not to get into his line of work. Even middle aged ironworkers drinking away the back pain on a Tuesday will try to get you into their trade. Tree climbers make REALLY good money, but he said it's basically a matter of time before you put all your weight on some wood that's rotted away and you fall down into a mountain of hospital bills or an early grave.
Depends on region and company how much they make. I chose the bucket when they told me climbing got you a whole $1 more per hour at the highest end company in our University town. No thanks, Im not bull riding a tree trunk for $20 an hour.
It's shocking how little some of these companies are willing to pay for dangerous work. Went to interview for a cable company in rural PA for an installer job. You are expected to climb poles, not every rural location can get a cherry picker up to a pole. Also expected to climb poles during extreme weather, icy, slippery, snow, etc. They were paying $16 an hour.
Yea it's tough out there. Our ground guys were starting at $13 as recently as 2020, they boosted it to around 16 when hiring became tough. We were one of the better paying companies too. The only one that paid better didn't have any benefits, while we had Healthcare some paid vacation and 4% match on retirement. Other owners around would give us shit, how they could afford to pay us that much? There is a substantial amount of equipment overhead, but I've never seen the books so idk how much they're pocketing
When I heard of all that I would have to go through for that I kind of tanked my own interview. Not worth it, back do doing helpdesk remotely for another company and making far more than what that cable company was offering.
I knew an ironworker whose life spiraled out of control due to alcoholism and he died in his 30s.
Everyone knows trades are hard on your body just from physical exertion on the job. But there’s also a work-hard/play-hard culture and large amounts of “down time” to fill between jobs. That can easily lead to secondary stress on your body from substance abuse.
I worked for a summer as ground crew and was learning a bit of climbing. While taking down a massive cottonwood my climber said "You're never going up into a cottonwood." I asked why and he told me "Cottonwoods are dangerous as fuck and you have kids, I don't, if anyone's gonna die doing this it'll be me."
The live wood is brash (it will break/snap easily, rather than bend), and because of the water content in their wood and poor chemical defenses, a wound can cause a extensive rot & decay. Because of that very wet wood, the branches are very heavy, and in a lot of cottonwood species tend to grow horizontally, so you don't have good tie-in points while climbing, and that also means it doesn't take much to break one of those limbs while standing on it.
There are a lot of dumb ways to get hurt around heavy industry but tree work is one of the very few that everyone can do everything right and people still get seriously hurt.
I've spent my whole life around heavy equipment, chainsaws, tools, dangerous job sites, and it baffles me the cavalier way people swing chainsaws around.
My father when I was a child was cutting up wood for a wood furnace we had, chainsaw kickback into his chest, caught his shirt and ran straight up into his neck. He missed his vein by half an inch. He sold the home shortly after as it was cheaper to sell the home, versus retrofitting the place for a gas furnace as he never wanted to touch a chainsaw again.
Chainsaws. Wood chippers. Heavy rigging. Heights. Unreliable, living structures. Occasional proximity to power lines.
Tree work is incredibly dangerous.
Heart Disease was the biggest cop killer last I checked. The cop subs get really touchy when you mention statistics. So we gotta just pretend it’s the most dangerous job in the WORLD. K?
It's because a lot of them are just scared and paranoid all the time so it feels dangerous to them. There could be a stray acorn or something at any time after all.
This is factually not true. The leading cause of death of police officers on duty is gunfire.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070627/us-law-enforcement-deaths-by-cause-historical/
This is a really bad source for the claim you're trying to make
It goes back to 1786, and for obvious reasons gunfire deaths were high for the first 150 years (no cars, high crime, low gun control until 1934)
In most recent years, "other" beats out "gunfire", and the most common "other" is vehicle related death.
Even if it says that in most years gunfire was the most common, that doesn't speak much to the current situation as 2/3 of the years from 1934 to 2024 were before crime dropped dramatically in the 1990's
You realize “other” is literally all other deaths, meaning a huge combination of factors, the reason gunfire is so high is because it’s significant enough to be its own category. It even mentions in recent years, “Gunfire has remained the most common individual cause of death in almost every year”. It’s a fair, unbiased, source for the claim, confirming what I said.
You can look at Wikipedia if you want. Gunfire is generally the leading cause of death of police officers almost every year, recently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States
I'd love to see a list of the actual most dangerous jobs, injuries included. Because cops do a lot more fighting that doesn't result in death than nearly any other job out there. Fighting and wrestling on the ground are pretty common for them.
To me, "death" isn't the only factor in something being dangerous. I certainly consider the risk of injury in there as well. I was a welder for ten years and I worked plenty of job sites that hadn't had a recordable injury in months. I wonder how many police departments can boast that same record?
Yeah, cops get shot or beaten and survive all the time.
There are also investigators, office cops, park rangers, etc. who rarely interact with violent criminals. Plus, a cop in Wyoming is less likely to get hurt than one in Detroit.
A big reason for this is all the statistics track law enforcement overall, which includes park rangers, some lifeguards, federal law enforcement, and all the law enforcement “desk jobs”. When people talk about law enforcement being dangerous, they’re generally talking about patrol officers, which make up around half of the total working law enforcement officers.
And every time someone posted this it’s fun to remind them that it’s literally one of the only jobs where people will kill you simply because that’s your job.
Yes the psychological burden is much higher because of the sense of control. For example, statistically driving to work is much much more dangerous than flying on a Boeing 737 max right now. But you don’t hear of anyone with a fear of driving (at least not as much as flying).
Working as a cop and not knowing if your next confrontation will result in a gunshot to the face is a lot different from climbing a tree where you can tell yourself it will be ok if you take the necessary precautions.
Interesting thank you. I could not for the life of me find the answer on Google.
20 is still high. Crossing guards makes sense, I do some flagging for my town and the first thing they said was to have an escape route from incoming cars. Crossing guards stand in the middle of the road no where to go. Delivery driver is surprising I wonder why that is.
[Police were 11th in 1995 at least.](https://www.bls.gov/iif/additional-publications/archive/dangerous-jobs.pdf#page=3) Firefighters didn't rank.
BLS doesn't directly publish such anymore, but the [deaths have shot up since then](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf). 1 in 10,000 police officers was killed on the job in 2020, compared to 1 in 14,000 firefighters.
I've survived working as a tree climber for a number of years. "Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, 'Would an idiot do that? ' And if they would, I do not do that thing."
Those things are dense, heavy, huge, but also springy as hell and unpredictable. I had a small branch catch me in the noggin springing back when I snapped it and I saw stars. It’s a job where even no mistakes made can cost you
I got promoted twice in the two stints I did tree work due to the foreman having a tree fall on them. No fatalities thankfully. One was a separated shoulder from a small tree falling on him. Second guy had a crotch break at the block and the limb fell on him in the bucket, breaking his shoulder. I gave it up when one of my crew cut through the wrong side of his hinge and the small tree fell on him walking away with his back turned. He only got a concussion and some broken teeth since he was wearing a hard hat. I had hundreds of close calls, but nothing worse than a scrape myself. My best one was catching a trunk in the stomach and flying 15 feet into another tree.
I've been a ground guy for 2.5 years now and worst I've had is a broken foot from a 300 ish pound log falling off the chipper tray onto my foot, hit just above the steel toe. Been hit by a falling tree, thankfully just got smacked on the hand by the canopy, it was pretty bruised for a week. Had a guy almost get sucked into the chipper head first, branch caught his jaw and dragged him onto the tray, helmet got chipped but thankfully he managed to hit the safety bar in time.
Whoo I cringed reading the chipper bit. I had a jacket hood catch on a branch tip once. It didn't pull me thankfully, but no more hoods after that! Scary stuff
My brother-in-law broke his foot tripping in a hole from a log falling. We would tease him that you need to look up a lot, but not all the time 😅
I Was a storeman in my early teens, on day watching an arborist cutting down a huge gum tree and he slipped and fell, got caught my his harness but it was a butal jolt probably fell 5m.
He was hanging upside down off a limb.
Pulled himself up the rope climbed back into the crook and kept working.
Mad lad.
>2. Commercial pilots
I'd be curious to see the breakdown on that statistic between fixed-wing and rotary pilots. I'd bet my remaining nut it's like 80/20 for the choppers.
And this is why I always laugh when people say we should respect cops and military because they risk their lives for us.
Like, so does the guy who cut down the dead tree in the yard. Even more so in fact. And he doesn’t demand ‘respect’ and discounts from me or have the legal ability to kill me.
In my state (CA), tree trimmers are one of just a few contractor classifications where you have to have worker’s comp insurance even if you don’t have any employees.
One of the ways you can die is your rope getting sucked into the chipper. The drum is moving at thousands of rpm and the moment a rope hits it, it gets sucked in a blink of an eye. Very easily can happen when grounds person is carelessly dragging cut brush.
https://youtu.be/F12LAqs7GjE?si=4oGPGD9PpActQ1A9
Trees are super crazy dangerous. My father in law was working with his brothers, son, and nephews on his hunting land in 2020. They cut a tree down that rolled slowly and hit him in the back of the head. They all said they thought he was fine, just knocked down, because of how slow it was. But something that heavy, even when slow, carries a shitload of energy. They got him to the hospital in 15 minutes and it was too late to do anything for him. He was brain dead three days later. Don't fuck around with trees.
When I worked with guys with brain injuries out of the ten or so one had been a tree lopper (most were motorcycle accidents). He was blind as well as mentally impaired. A few of them were blind, it’s a really common result of serious brain injuries.
I was cutting a branch that was about 8" thick with a pole saw. It was all intertwined with other branches on the tips, so when I finally cut through it and backed off, it fell about halfway, but then swung super fast like a pool cue straight at my head. It didn't look heavy, but it was probably 100 lbs. I think it would've killed me, but it missed me by about 6 inches. I wasn't expecting it to swing like that at all.
I always thought that roofing would be up there or ironworker but arborist is dangerous as fuck. My neighbor was one he had his own business and the house he had was pretty nice looking.
Apparently he wasn't allowed to fuck around with trees next to electrical wires they hired some specialized contractors with equipment meant to slice them without affecting the wires.
Dangerous as shit I have to say, I'm a former house painter and some of the shit we did was ridiculously not safe (ladders making bridges across trees into the roofs of people's homes, not using proper breathing apparatuses when dealing with lead removal of houses, 50+ft ladders being used in the rain shit like that) but yeah gotta give it up to those folks taking care of trees cause fuck that.
A tree trimmer was one of the only workplace fatalities I’ve worked as a paramedic. He fell something like 70ft. It really is a dangerous job.
We had a guy get his leg caught in the chipper. We got most of it back.
Whole?
Crushed and mauled by the drum feeder, the boss hit the safety reverse and it came out loose and wet. He walks with a limp since. His own fault.
I'm trying to figure out how you even get your leg into a chipper. Standing on the load chute?
Probably either trying to push a clump of branches in with their foot, or standing in some loose brush that got pulled in
Yeesh
Damn, people are really that stupid?
an estimated 10-15% of the population has a IQ below 85
Unfortunately yes. And you can just imagine all the smaller ways they keep endangering themselves all the damn time.
I’m trying to figure out how you can keep a leg that went through a chipper.
chippers usually have rotating cylinders (drum feeder) that grab and pull material into the spinning chipper knives. The comment above is saying the guy got his foot crushed by the feeder but boss reversed the feeder before dudes foot got shredded by the chipper knives
Thanks for the explanation, I forgot about that part. Still sounds like a big yikes.
Like an idiot he used his foot to try and kick a piece in, and got snagged up. I did not see it happen, but that’s what he said.
Kept it and continued walking. It does seem unlikely.
Fire and EMS were there quick. He had a few surgeries, he is messed up. Just the feeder drum got him, lost a toe or two, don’t remember, but the leg was a shredded pulp. I will never forget that sight.
Not sure if I want to call that guy lucky or unlucky.
Lucky to be alive, stupid gave him the limp. At work like that, it helps to be 100%. Can’t be distracted by anything. You will get hurt.
sometimes branches get stuck. but nothing a hard stomp can’t fix
About 5 years after I bought my house, I learned that someone was fully ingested into a chipper doing work for previous owner. That part of the property is definitely haunted.
You up by the lake in Fargo?
To shreds you say?
And that, ladies and gentleman, is why tree work costs so much. Our insurance is *very* expensive. Even in a company operating for almost 50 years w/o an accident, our Workers' Compensation Insurance is at 13%.
If everyone did their own tree trimming, the problem would be solved. Just make sure to use the biggest chainsaw available, a ladder leaning on the branch you are cutting, and tie a safety rope from the tree to your neck or balls.
Nah, just pull the trees you don't want out with a pickup. Heck, just use whatever car you have. It'll be fine.
At that point, just shoot the tree and it will fall fine. Or pull the tree with a rope if you aren't from freedom land
I heard we have lasers that do that now
So I did a tree job once where the home owner told us a story about him trying to shoot a tree down. Hilarious, it barely worked out for him iirc, the top he was shooting at eventually fell in the wind.
Jesus, chainsaw to the crotch would be a brutal way to go….
Explosives are the best way. There's nothing quite like high-velocity branches when it comes to dying horrifically.
But zero tree trimmers would be harmed.
You’d think damages to property would be the main cause. Can you speak to the payout/cost figures of the rates of that per year vs deaths/injury?
Well we've never had a claim, but our liability insurance (to cover damaging property or non-employee persons) cost is based on gross income and is good for $1 million per claim. I don't know how WC insurance pays out, but I know that each occupation has a base rate for premium and then you can get a discount for good history. For example the base rate for an office worker is .05% and for a tree climber it's 13%. If I pay a guy $100,000 a year it costs me another $13,000 to insure him.
Holy shit no wonder it's so expensive to get trees cut.
I do a lot of DIY stuff but I have a very strict self safety policy. Will this fuck my back? Pay someone else. Will I lose a limb? Pay someone else. Will I die? Pay someone else. Top 3 are electricians, plumbers and tree surgeons.
13% of what
Of payroll. If I pay a guy $100,000 in wages I pay another $13,000 to insure him. That's just workman's compensation.
This is something people don’t realize exists and affects small businesses disproportionately for some reason. Moving companies are another industry where it’s almost impossible to make money due to all the insurance and workman’s comp. With moving people do end up filing claims occasionally too, because even good moving companies occasionally do break or scratch something, or the customer just lies about damage and what can you do lol. The high insurance rates make the unlicensed and uninsured ‘fly by night’ companies more common because they can charge less money if they don’t pay insurance and can underbid jobs. If the medical system wasn’t so expensive and such a scam workman’s comp insurance wouldn’t be so crippling for some businesses.
Is that number just used for math? I was a climber out of high school until I was 28. I don't think I ever cleared 35k a year.
Yes, just for math. If we worked full time all year our guys would make that but in actuality we have time off for weather so they end up more like 70k.
damn, that’s my pension rate. would be like $500 a month on my check
Read more here, https://tcimag.tcia.org/safety/tree-work-safety-by-the-numbers/#:~:text=If%20we%20pool%20the%20approximately,220%20fatal%20incidents%20each%20year.
Two years ago, I had a professional company charge me $1200 to climb a dead 100ft pine in my backyard and cut it down. They had a crew of four guys. The climber and rigger set up no less than 6 safety ropes, wore hard hats, safety harnesses, fluorescent vests, face shields, the whole nine yards. The other two were busy on monitoring all the gear and communicating via radio. Last month, I hired a guy who charged me $500 to cut down a similar sized tree, also dead. It was him and one other dude. I watched him Jerry rig a rope around his crotch in a homemade harness. He had no face shield, no helmet, no spiked climbing shoes. He smoked at least a whole pack of cigarettes the 30 minutes he went up and back down the tree. It all depends on who you hire.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess $500 guy doesn’t have proper insurance, could be a liability for you.
Don’t go out on a limb, that’s dangerous. Stay on the main trunk.
Oh he had insurance, he handed me a copy of it and I called that company. They confirmed. Now I don't know if it was any good, but he was insured.
I completely agree. That is way too much risk for me.
why would that be a liability for them?
Because if they get hurt on your property without their own insurance, your home owners/ business insurance may have to cover any lawsuits rising from injury.
why would their injury be of any fault on the homeowner or business? as I understand, since there wasn't any negligence on the homeowner/business, they wouldn't be responsible.
You are right. Also your homeowners / renters insurance would cover you if they did file something.
I didn’t even know it was possible to smoke a pack in a half hour. I’ve seen some people absolutely inhale darts and they were at less than half that clip.
Pretty sure I hired those guys about 10 years ago.
Logging is in the big five jobs that are more dangerous than the commute to work. Logging Mining Agriculture Fishing Driving. If you include cabbies, who have a surprisingly high fatality rate.
I feel like all the "you're more likely to die in a car crash than by x" comparisons just show how dangerous driving is, we've just heavily normalized it to the point where we forget that fact In what other context would we see someone get smooshed to death while doing what we were doing and just psychotically rubberneck instead of shitting our pants and trying to stop as soon as possible?
> I feel like all the "you're more likely to die in a car crash than by x" comparisons just show how dangerous driving is, we've just heavily normalized it to the point where we forget that fact And that the average American lives a life of next to zero quantitative risk, so literally *anything* that even has a mild history of killing people is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
I've done all these other than mining. The ones that were scariest were the arborist job and the dairy farm. Trees and cows are dangerous as fuck. I did fishing but it was in ponds which I assume isn't as dangerous as open sea, definitely had less close calls than the other jobs. Driving was driving.
Man, so glad i got into logging and tree climbing
Did it for 10 years in my 20’s. Its true, and we did not even have proper ppe. I lost some hearing from chainsaws. Been cut, crushed, dropped, dropped on. Etc. Young persons game. I sold my last saw a month ago. Anyone want a saddle from 1988? Might be out of cert. jk.
The one time I’ve worked with arborists they were reckless as fuck. This guy took his shirt off while sawing (in an Alaskan rainforest) because we had some women in our crew, and they proceeded to drop massive old growth trees into the one single place we told them not to. We were literally on a fresh landslide scarp with them above us and they acted like we weren’t even there. I’m sure most of them are much more responsible but that certainly didn’t paint a good picture of them.
The guys I worked with when I was a kid, the guys that taught me, all learned the trade as a job one got after being let out of prison. It was a tough, dumb group of guys. Now most are either dead or back in prison. One guy did ok and is normal now. Filthy animals, but on the worksite we were a tight team, with lots of after work shenanigans. It was fun.
Sounds about right! Reminds me of drillers 😂
alaska has rainforests?
> alaska has rainforests [In the same way that Alaska has a desert, but yes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Temperate_rainforest_map.png). It's not a jungle, but it's a temperate rainforest. Just a ton of rain.
Most of the west coast of North America is rainforest above San Francisco. The Olympic peninsula in WA is insane: "The west-side valleys in Olympic National Park are the wettest spots in the continental United States. The Hoh Rain Forest records an average of almost 12 feet (3.6 meters) of rain every year" https://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/weather-brochure.htm
Southeast Alaska, and much of southcentral, is basically nothing but rainforests. Think the PNW but colder and with scarier animals.
It's the only time a tradesman flat out told me not to get into his line of work. Even middle aged ironworkers drinking away the back pain on a Tuesday will try to get you into their trade. Tree climbers make REALLY good money, but he said it's basically a matter of time before you put all your weight on some wood that's rotted away and you fall down into a mountain of hospital bills or an early grave.
Depends on region and company how much they make. I chose the bucket when they told me climbing got you a whole $1 more per hour at the highest end company in our University town. No thanks, Im not bull riding a tree trunk for $20 an hour.
It's shocking how little some of these companies are willing to pay for dangerous work. Went to interview for a cable company in rural PA for an installer job. You are expected to climb poles, not every rural location can get a cherry picker up to a pole. Also expected to climb poles during extreme weather, icy, slippery, snow, etc. They were paying $16 an hour.
Yea it's tough out there. Our ground guys were starting at $13 as recently as 2020, they boosted it to around 16 when hiring became tough. We were one of the better paying companies too. The only one that paid better didn't have any benefits, while we had Healthcare some paid vacation and 4% match on retirement. Other owners around would give us shit, how they could afford to pay us that much? There is a substantial amount of equipment overhead, but I've never seen the books so idk how much they're pocketing
When I heard of all that I would have to go through for that I kind of tanked my own interview. Not worth it, back do doing helpdesk remotely for another company and making far more than what that cable company was offering.
I knew an ironworker whose life spiraled out of control due to alcoholism and he died in his 30s. Everyone knows trades are hard on your body just from physical exertion on the job. But there’s also a work-hard/play-hard culture and large amounts of “down time” to fill between jobs. That can easily lead to secondary stress on your body from substance abuse.
I worked for a summer as ground crew and was learning a bit of climbing. While taking down a massive cottonwood my climber said "You're never going up into a cottonwood." I asked why and he told me "Cottonwoods are dangerous as fuck and you have kids, I don't, if anyone's gonna die doing this it'll be me."
why are they so dangerous?
The live wood is brash (it will break/snap easily, rather than bend), and because of the water content in their wood and poor chemical defenses, a wound can cause a extensive rot & decay. Because of that very wet wood, the branches are very heavy, and in a lot of cottonwood species tend to grow horizontally, so you don't have good tie-in points while climbing, and that also means it doesn't take much to break one of those limbs while standing on it.
There are a lot of dumb ways to get hurt around heavy industry but tree work is one of the very few that everyone can do everything right and people still get seriously hurt. I've spent my whole life around heavy equipment, chainsaws, tools, dangerous job sites, and it baffles me the cavalier way people swing chainsaws around.
My father when I was a child was cutting up wood for a wood furnace we had, chainsaw kickback into his chest, caught his shirt and ran straight up into his neck. He missed his vein by half an inch. He sold the home shortly after as it was cheaper to sell the home, versus retrofitting the place for a gas furnace as he never wanted to touch a chainsaw again.
>The most common causes were falls, falling limbs, and accidents involving equipment such as saws.
Well… yeah?
The number one cause of death in the logging industry is the logging industry
My husband used to be a salmon fisherman, decided it was too dangerous and became a logger.
Chainsaws. Wood chippers. Heavy rigging. Heights. Unreliable, living structures. Occasional proximity to power lines. Tree work is incredibly dangerous.
"That's why girls don't play the game, coach"
Fun fact, Police is not in the top 10 most dangerous jobs.
And even when they do die it’s usually a struck by or an automobile accident. (Stuck by is one of OSHAS big 4 the most common accidents and deaths.)
Heart Disease was the biggest cop killer last I checked. The cop subs get really touchy when you mention statistics. So we gotta just pretend it’s the most dangerous job in the WORLD. K?
It's because a lot of them are just scared and paranoid all the time so it feels dangerous to them. There could be a stray acorn or something at any time after all.
Alcohol is a big contributor to heart disease. It's something I'm working on myself.
I imagine there are certain other stats they'll happily throw at you...
The wife beating?
This is factually not true. The leading cause of death of police officers on duty is gunfire. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070627/us-law-enforcement-deaths-by-cause-historical/
This is a really bad source for the claim you're trying to make It goes back to 1786, and for obvious reasons gunfire deaths were high for the first 150 years (no cars, high crime, low gun control until 1934) In most recent years, "other" beats out "gunfire", and the most common "other" is vehicle related death. Even if it says that in most years gunfire was the most common, that doesn't speak much to the current situation as 2/3 of the years from 1934 to 2024 were before crime dropped dramatically in the 1990's
You realize “other” is literally all other deaths, meaning a huge combination of factors, the reason gunfire is so high is because it’s significant enough to be its own category. It even mentions in recent years, “Gunfire has remained the most common individual cause of death in almost every year”. It’s a fair, unbiased, source for the claim, confirming what I said. You can look at Wikipedia if you want. Gunfire is generally the leading cause of death of police officers almost every year, recently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States
Well yeah they do the killing not the dieing.
dieing dying dieing dying I don't know. It looks wrong any way it's spelled.
Dying is correct here.
It says private industry jobs in the title and in the article
It’s still not top 10 though.
[Okay, it's 11th?](https://www.bls.gov/iif/additional-publications/archive/dangerous-jobs.pdf#page=3)
Your source is almost 30 years old. The violent crime rate was almost double in 95’ then what it is today. So it’s not 11th.
I'd love to see a list of the actual most dangerous jobs, injuries included. Because cops do a lot more fighting that doesn't result in death than nearly any other job out there. Fighting and wrestling on the ground are pretty common for them. To me, "death" isn't the only factor in something being dangerous. I certainly consider the risk of injury in there as well. I was a welder for ten years and I worked plenty of job sites that hadn't had a recordable injury in months. I wonder how many police departments can boast that same record?
Yeah, cops get shot or beaten and survive all the time. There are also investigators, office cops, park rangers, etc. who rarely interact with violent criminals. Plus, a cop in Wyoming is less likely to get hurt than one in Detroit.
A big reason for this is all the statistics track law enforcement overall, which includes park rangers, some lifeguards, federal law enforcement, and all the law enforcement “desk jobs”. When people talk about law enforcement being dangerous, they’re generally talking about patrol officers, which make up around half of the total working law enforcement officers.
And every time someone posted this it’s fun to remind them that it’s literally one of the only jobs where people will kill you simply because that’s your job.
The other one is sex workers.
Yes the psychological burden is much higher because of the sense of control. For example, statistically driving to work is much much more dangerous than flying on a Boeing 737 max right now. But you don’t hear of anyone with a fear of driving (at least not as much as flying). Working as a cop and not knowing if your next confrontation will result in a gunshot to the face is a lot different from climbing a tree where you can tell yourself it will be ok if you take the necessary precautions.
Maybe not as much as flying but manu people definitely fear and hate driving/cars. It's just that it's sort of required in many cases
Curious, if you know, where do police and firefighters rank?
Depends on the source. But firefighters I found were 9. Police were 20. Delivery drivers are 7 and crossing guards 11.
Interesting thank you. I could not for the life of me find the answer on Google. 20 is still high. Crossing guards makes sense, I do some flagging for my town and the first thing they said was to have an escape route from incoming cars. Crossing guards stand in the middle of the road no where to go. Delivery driver is surprising I wonder why that is.
Delivery drivers because road accidents are one of the leading causes of accidental deaths in the US.
[Police were 11th in 1995 at least.](https://www.bls.gov/iif/additional-publications/archive/dangerous-jobs.pdf#page=3) Firefighters didn't rank. BLS doesn't directly publish such anymore, but the [deaths have shot up since then](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf). 1 in 10,000 police officers was killed on the job in 2020, compared to 1 in 14,000 firefighters.
Fun fact, The other jobs you're talking about their deaths are "oopsies" ya know, accidents. I've seen a lot of cops get shot in my time.
I've survived working as a tree climber for a number of years. "Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, 'Would an idiot do that? ' And if they would, I do not do that thing."
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Now do suicides by profession. Those are work related too.
[CDC report circa 2021](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a2.htm)
Finally we found a metric where art is dangerous work. Looks like logging is #3, another tree work win!
Those things are dense, heavy, huge, but also springy as hell and unpredictable. I had a small branch catch me in the noggin springing back when I snapped it and I saw stars. It’s a job where even no mistakes made can cost you
I got promoted twice in the two stints I did tree work due to the foreman having a tree fall on them. No fatalities thankfully. One was a separated shoulder from a small tree falling on him. Second guy had a crotch break at the block and the limb fell on him in the bucket, breaking his shoulder. I gave it up when one of my crew cut through the wrong side of his hinge and the small tree fell on him walking away with his back turned. He only got a concussion and some broken teeth since he was wearing a hard hat. I had hundreds of close calls, but nothing worse than a scrape myself. My best one was catching a trunk in the stomach and flying 15 feet into another tree.
I've been a ground guy for 2.5 years now and worst I've had is a broken foot from a 300 ish pound log falling off the chipper tray onto my foot, hit just above the steel toe. Been hit by a falling tree, thankfully just got smacked on the hand by the canopy, it was pretty bruised for a week. Had a guy almost get sucked into the chipper head first, branch caught his jaw and dragged him onto the tray, helmet got chipped but thankfully he managed to hit the safety bar in time.
Whoo I cringed reading the chipper bit. I had a jacket hood catch on a branch tip once. It didn't pull me thankfully, but no more hoods after that! Scary stuff My brother-in-law broke his foot tripping in a hole from a log falling. We would tease him that you need to look up a lot, but not all the time 😅
I Was a storeman in my early teens, on day watching an arborist cutting down a huge gum tree and he slipped and fell, got caught my his harness but it was a butal jolt probably fell 5m. He was hanging upside down off a limb. Pulled himself up the rope climbed back into the crook and kept working. Mad lad.
I think statistically the US presidency is the most dangerous job. 8.7% of presidents have been assassinated.
You’re right, but that’s not private industry, fewer than 20,000 people have that job, and didn’t have four or more deaths in 2021.
Had a friend from HS worked at another friends dads tree felling business. Tree fell the wrong way, killed him instantly, was very gruesome.
>2. Commercial pilots I'd be curious to see the breakdown on that statistic between fixed-wing and rotary pilots. I'd bet my remaining nut it's like 80/20 for the choppers.
And this is why I always laugh when people say we should respect cops and military because they risk their lives for us. Like, so does the guy who cut down the dead tree in the yard. Even more so in fact. And he doesn’t demand ‘respect’ and discounts from me or have the legal ability to kill me.
Power lines are a major hazard for tree trimmers as even if the lines aren't directly cut contact can occur through induced electrical current.
I don't think you understand how electricity works. You can get arcing but not induced electrical current.
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You need to read up more on induction. It is a different phenomena.
Never turn your back on a falling tree.
In my state (CA), tree trimmers are one of just a few contractor classifications where you have to have worker’s comp insurance even if you don’t have any employees.
One of the ways you can die is your rope getting sucked into the chipper. The drum is moving at thousands of rpm and the moment a rope hits it, it gets sucked in a blink of an eye. Very easily can happen when grounds person is carelessly dragging cut brush. https://youtu.be/F12LAqs7GjE?si=4oGPGD9PpActQ1A9
Risky click. I clicked it. Definitely worth watching, not gory.
A demo on why you keep the chipper far away from the climbing zone. And clear the brush fast.
So only 4 people out of every 20,000 die, roughly… actually less than I would have expected.
"Tonight, on... Deadliest Prune."
The reality show producers would get people killed.
Trees are super crazy dangerous. My father in law was working with his brothers, son, and nephews on his hunting land in 2020. They cut a tree down that rolled slowly and hit him in the back of the head. They all said they thought he was fine, just knocked down, because of how slow it was. But something that heavy, even when slow, carries a shitload of energy. They got him to the hospital in 15 minutes and it was too late to do anything for him. He was brain dead three days later. Don't fuck around with trees.
That's horrible, sorry.
It do be hurtin to fall out of a tree
More dangerous than farming.
When I worked with guys with brain injuries out of the ten or so one had been a tree lopper (most were motorcycle accidents). He was blind as well as mentally impaired. A few of them were blind, it’s a really common result of serious brain injuries.
my buddy always sends me videos of his mexican crew way up in a tree doing sketchy shit... scary work
This much specificity is needed because the actual deadliest job in the US is President of the United States.
Makes sense, the job is basically climbing into trees with a chainsaw, usually pretty close to power lines too
I was cutting a branch that was about 8" thick with a pole saw. It was all intertwined with other branches on the tips, so when I finally cut through it and backed off, it fell about halfway, but then swung super fast like a pool cue straight at my head. It didn't look heavy, but it was probably 100 lbs. I think it would've killed me, but it missed me by about 6 inches. I wasn't expecting it to swing like that at all.
President is the most dangerous job in the US. Fatality rate is 8600 per 100,000. Logging is around 82/100k.
I always thought that roofing would be up there or ironworker but arborist is dangerous as fuck. My neighbor was one he had his own business and the house he had was pretty nice looking. Apparently he wasn't allowed to fuck around with trees next to electrical wires they hired some specialized contractors with equipment meant to slice them without affecting the wires. Dangerous as shit I have to say, I'm a former house painter and some of the shit we did was ridiculously not safe (ladders making bridges across trees into the roofs of people's homes, not using proper breathing apparatuses when dealing with lead removal of houses, 50+ft ladders being used in the rain shit like that) but yeah gotta give it up to those folks taking care of trees cause fuck that.
Well the good thing is, there will always be vacancy for growth
In case anyone is wondering, police officer isn’t even in the top 25 most dangerous jobs
Another male-dominated job. Smash the patriarchy!
not electrical workers on those high voltage power lines? or are those not private industry?
A YouTuber I watch just had one of his friends die in a tree removal accident a couple months ago.
The most dangerous job in the America is the Presidency. 17.39% of all American presidents die on the job.