ed resistance — until Savadyga realized the top side of the piece was rotted through. “All your weight is on the top,” he said. “With the load, the lateral — it would spring up with the rot there. That would definitely cause a failure over the road.” “If there’s a possibility, take two piec- es,” Anderson said. “If you’re renting a cable crane you’re between two and three hundred dollars an hour. Your natural instinct is to hurry. And hurry- ing always gets you in trouble.” Pipitone ran three separate load charts on his machine: one for static hook lift, one for grapple saw operations, and one for limb cutting — each accounting differently for dynamic movement.
Climbers work in tandem with grapple saws to tackle the larger wood.
keep the lines in alignment are inspect- ed and adjusted as needed. “That’s what keeps the crane boom going out straight and coming in straight.” “If you’re going to commit to purchas- ing one of these, you have to be willing to turn a wrench,” Pipitone said. “You have to be willing to be able to change hydraulic lines. It’s not rocket science — but having them in inventory, like if we blow out most of the lines that we have on this truck right now, we can fix them with what we have on site.” The grapple end of the crane sees the most flex cycles — the constant up-and- down articulation of the grapple head puts more stress through those hoses than anywhere else on the machine. Carrying replacement hose inventory on site turns a blown line into a thir- ty-minute field repair rather than a towed crane and a lost day. Pipitone also pointed to the aftermarket plastic spiral wrap his crew uses to bundle and protect hose runs along the boom from wear and tear. Wear pads — the Teflon and nylon guides that keep boom sections travel- ing straight and prevent metal-on-met- al contact — are a scheduled replace- ment item, not a failure-response item. The outriggers are kept greased, so they move smoothly without clanking or scraping.
“Everything should go smooth in and out,” Pipitone said. “You shouldn’t hear clanking or rubbing or scraping or any- thing like that.” The annual preventive maintenance cycle has not been skipped once in sev- en years. “Every single year for seven years, I’ve never skipped,” Pipitone said. The cost is real. But the alternative is far more expensive: larger repair bills, unexpected downtime, and the opera- tional uncertainty that comes from not knowing the machine’s true condition. For a business whose productivity depends on the reliability of a single piece of equipment, that uncertainty is
WHAT MAINTENANCE ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
Pipitone offered the most detailed ac- count of what a sustained maintenance commitment looks like across a full equipment lifecycle — and why his machine had delivered seven years of near-trouble-free performance. “No matter what, you’re always go- ing to have hoses that you need to be able to fix. Gaskets and O-rings that leak. Just basic stuff like that,” he said. “Cranes tend to want to leak, right, be- cause there’s a lot of vibration.” The en- tire machine, from base to boom tip, is plumbed with high-pressure hydraulic fluid. The daily discipline begins there. The steel hydraulic lines that run along the boom sections require daily atten- tion. “If you tweak a line and the lines rub each other, eventually you’ll rub a flat spot, and then you’ll get a pinhole and you’ll have a hydraulic leak,” Pipitone explained. Every day, his operator extends the crane fully, watches the lines travel out and retract back in, and checks for any rubbing contact. Brass fittings that
Proper grapple placement sets the stage for a safe cut.
ArborTIMES ™ Summer 2026 | 39
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