Chapter 22 – Information for
Foremen and Crew Bosses.
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This
information was taken from www.replant.ca
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Useful
and/or Required Equipment:
If you are planning to become a
foreman, you may be in for a bit of shock when you start to prepare
yourself. In addition to all of the
equipment that a normal planter needs, you will want to consider carrying many
of the following items, depending on the size of your crew, how long you have
been running a crew, and of course, your financial health. As I did with the planter equipment list at
the beginning of the chapter, I’ll begin with just a simple list, and then get
into details on each choice afterwards.
I will also assume that you have already planted for some time and are
familiar with the industry, and have already gone through the lists of
equipment for planters, as seen in chapter five.
Here is a summary of some things
that you will probably find useful on the job, if not mandatory:
First Aid #1 kit for each truck
[usually provided by company].
Spill kit for each truck [usually
provided by company].
Fire extinguisher for each truck
[usually provided by company].
Oil for trucks and quads [usually
provided by company].
Jack-all and axle jack [usually
provided by company – axle jacks come with rental vehicles].
Two spare keys for each truck.
Lengths of rope.
Lighter.
Duct tape.
Flagging tape.
Sponges/foamie.
Briefcase.
Pens/Markers.
Calculator and Stapler.
Elastics.
Tow rope.
Star wrench.
Adjustable wrench.
Multi-screwdriver (bring a whole
tool kit if you can).
Extra planting shovel and set of planting
bags.
Booster cables.
Anti-histamines.
Tampons.
Squeegee.
Air pump.
Bottle of puncture seal.
Gloves.
Watch.
Tally book or tally sheets.
Magnifying glass.
Cell phone (optional).
Compass/GPS unit (optional).
Laptop computer (optional).
Axe/Chain Saw (optional).
Many of these are items that are
needed on the blocks. In other words,
they won’t do you any good if they’re sitting back in camp. My suggestion would be to find a big tool kit
or carrying case so that you always have this stuff with you. Canadian Tire sells some nice lockable
“Action Packer” plastic containers that are very sturdy, space-efficient, and
waterproof, which is a necessity. Many
of the items on the above list, plus extra stuff that planters should carry
(ie. sunscreen, solarcaine, toilet paper) can go in your Action Packer. The other bulky but useful items such as tow
ropes, booster cables, etc., can all be stored behind the back seat of your
truck. It seems silly to have to carry
around extra supplies for your planters, but remember that sometimes they can
be pretty forgetful. And especially if
you are paid by commission, which is a fairly common practice, you need to be
able to keep your crew planting, rather than sitting in the truck with
logistical and/or equipment problems. I
don’t mind carrying sunscreen and so on, because these can prevent greater
medical problems in the long run.
However, if planters forget items such as bug dope (or are too cheap to
buy their own), I tend to let them suffer.
If you are going into your first
year as a foreman, accumulating everything on the above list will be
costly. You may want to prioritize and
only buy some of these items for your first season. If you are trying to cut costs until you get
a few paycheques, I would suggest holding off on the following items: cell phone, compass/GPS unit, laptop, and
chain saw (get an axe though) These
items are some of the priciest, although a cell phone can be very, very useful
for keeping track of your planters, if you leave voice-mail messages on it so
they know where to meet on days off, etc.
Now, let’s go through everything in
greater detail:
First Aid #1 kit for each truck – This is a specific type of first aid kit as required (in British
Columbia anyway) by the Workers’ Compensation Board. It contains a number of basic first-aid
items. Normally, the company you are
working for provides such a kit for each crew vehicle. It is important to note that in some cases,
planters may want to drive their own vehicles out to the blocks. If this is the case, such vehicles may be
legally considered to be part of your company’s fleet, and therefore you will
probably get into trouble if they do not have a first aid kit, spill kit, and/or
fire extinguisher. When I had my personal
truck in camp, it sometimes ended up being used in emergencies, so I always
made sure that I signed out an extra set of first aid/spill kits and
extinguisher for that vehicle for the season, just in case. In addition, I don’t let planters bring their
personal vehicles to the block. If they
do, not only is there the high potential for legal liability and regulatory
problems, but you (as a foreman) may also have to deal with annoying problems
such as helping them when their vehicles inevitably break down.
Spill kit for each truck –
The basic vehicle spill kit required under most EMS (Environmental Management
System) regulations contains items used to mitigate the effects of small spills
of hazardous substances, such as jerry cans of gas or containers of oil. This is normally provided by your company,
and I have yet to see one put to use.
Fire extinguisher for each truck – This is pretty basic, and good practice. I had to use fire extinguishers on vehicles a
couple of times, for instance when our suburban tire fell off on the Bobtail
logging road, and the oil and grease residue on the bottom of the gas tank was
burning, and then again later the same season when the suburban engine caught
on fire. We have also had a bus and an
ETV catch on fire in my camp, so you can see that the fire extinguishers can
come in quite handy. Double check to
make sure that your extinguisher is charged.
This is usually provided by the company that you work for.
Oil for trucks and quads –
You can never have too much motor oil in camp.
Diesel trucks should use 15w40 grade oil. Gas trucks can use 15w40 or 10w30. Smaller engines, such as quads and generators,
should use 10w40 or 5w30. Remember it
this way – big engines, big numbers.
Little engines, little numbers.
Your company will usually be glad to provide you with a case of oil,
because prevention goes a long way.
Remember too that in an emergency, any oil is far better than low oil or
no oil, so just use whatever kind of motor oil is handy if your machine is
low. And well I’m on the topic, I cannot
stress enough the importance of checking the oil in your quad EVERY DAY, and in
your truck and the generators, once a shift.
A seized quad engine will cost you about $2000 in repairs. Trust me, I’ve done it. More than once. For many foreman, your quad is your financial
life-line. Planters without trees cannot
make money, and therefore you would not make money (I’ve always worked for
companies that pay foremen a commission rather than a salary or day-rate). You absolutely MUST ensure that your quad is
in top running order, externally and internally.
Jack-all - A
jack-all is a very useful tool for raising things and changing a tire, as
long as it isn’t on a motor vehicle!
The jack-all is really only suitable for changing trailer tires, and
also more commonly used for lifting the trailer hitch of a heavily loaded
trailer off the ground, so that a truck can be backed under it (and of course,
also for removing the trailer from the truck).
One thing of note however – if you are hauling a single-axle trailer,
you may not necessarily have to use a jack-all.
A pair of people should be able to lift a properly balanced and loaded
trailer, even if it is not empty, because most trailers are designed to
facilitate a “tongue weight” (the weight of the trailer arm on the hitch of the
truck) of a maximum of two hundred pounds (double-axle trailers may be a
slightly different story, although the concept is the same). So in other words, make sure your trailer
load is properly balanced at all times, so that the trailer is not
front-heavy. Anyway, back to the
jacks. If you are trying to change a
tire on a vehicle, you can NOT use a jack-all to lift the vehicle. If you try using it on the side of the truck,
you will crush the bodywork. If you try
on the bumper, you can lift the truck several feet high but the suspension will
remain on the ground, ruining your plans.
See the axle jack information below for more details about this
problem. A word of caution about
jack-alls: many of them have an annoying
tendency to slip at times. When this
happens, the handle lever sometimes goes flying up and down. Make sure you never put your body parts in
between the handle and the tower of the jack, in case it snaps shut. One of our female supervisors did this once
years ago, and the handle snapped up and broke her jaw.
Axle Jack - The only easy way
to change a truck tire is to use a proper axle jack under the axle beside the
tire to be changed. Make sure the truck
is in park (or in gear with the engine off for a standard transmission) and the
emergency brake is on AND the other three wheels are blocked very
securely before you do this. I’ve seen
trucks shift and drop off their jacks several times – a huge safety issue. As a last resort, if you find you have to
change a tire and you don’t have a jack, drive onto a soft (but not too soft,
or you’ll get stuck!) road and park and block the wheels. Find a solid log somewhere in the woods
nearby that you can lay under (perpendicular to) the axle. The bigger the better; get something that you
can barely fit. Once it is in place, dig
a big hole under the tire and change it.
Once it is changed, try to fill in the hole as much as possible. The only problem now is that you’ll still
have to “drive off” the log, so make sure it is a smooth one, especially if
you’ve only got a two-wheel drive vehicle and one of the drive wheels was the
one changed (and therefore not entirely resting on solid ground anymore). This piece of equipment is usually provided by
the company that you are working for, or if you are using a rental vehicle, it
should come with the vehicle.
Two spare keys for each truck –
This is an often-overlooked stroke of brilliance. At the beginning of each season, I ask each
truck driver in camp to cut two spare keys for their vehicle. I keep one spare on a master set that stays
in the checker’s truck (which is usually traveling between blocks regularly
during the day). The other spare key
gets taped securely with duct tape to the undercarriage of the vehicle, in some
sort of position where it cannot become dislodged or torn off by dirt under the
truck. The best place is taped to a pipe
or beam high in the truck, but NOT to a hot exhaust pipe. Make sure the truck is turned off and in park,
and the emergency brake is on before you start crawling around underneath
it. Every year, at least one foreman
locks his keys in his truck, and thanks me for forcing him to tape a spare
under the truck where he could get at it.
I locked my keys in my truck once years ago (before I started cutting
spare keys), at breakfast with the engine running. We couldn’t break into it quickly, so I ended
up having to leave it in camp all day after removing the distributor cap (to
kill the engine) and disconnecting the battery cables (so the battery wouldn’t
drain during the day). A problem with
some newer leased vehicles is that keys cannot be cut cheaply – you need to
order a special type of key with a chip inside it (for about $100) because of
anti-theft devices in the vehicle that check for the proper chip before the
ignition can be turned over. In a
vehicle that has this feature, all you can do is cut a spare door key in case
you lock the regular keys inside the truck, but then you’re still in big
trouble if you have actually lost the original ignition key.
Lengths of rope – Some foremen do
not like to use rope to hold boxes on their quads, and prefer either bungee
cords or nylon “come-along” strapping.
After lengthy discussions with dozens of foremen, the consensus seems to
be that rope is the cheapest, fastest, and most versatile alternative –
although it would be hard to get consensus on this topic. You probably don’t need to buy a spool – if
your company doesn’t provide a spool for camp setup, you can buy a hundred feet
of 3/8” yellow nylon rope at Canadian Tire for about eight dollars.
Lighter – A lighter is much
better than a knife for cutting nylon rope.
By using the lighter, you can melt the end of the rope so that it sticks
together, and will not fray. Be very
careful with your lighter if you have hired any smokers – it will
disappear! I’m not a big fan of using
knives. Some people insist on carrying
pocket knives or utility knives for cutting boxtops off boxes. I once had to take a large hunting knife away
from a large African planter who was chasing another planter and threatening to
kill him with the knife. The incident
certainly added a bit of excitement to breakfast that morning. Stick with lighters.
Duct tape – Duct tape is
“nature’s greatest miracle.” By the way,
it is spelled D-U-C-T as in ventilation duct work, not D-U-C-K, as in the
bird. Many planters who resist the use
of gloves will religiously put tape on the fingers of their planting hand every
morning to prevent injuries. Duct tape
allows greater freedom than a glove. I
have also seen duct tape (and a permanent marker) being used to label
belongings, and to hold a few older vehicles together. There is not really any important special use
that a foreman will find for the stuff, except to give to planters who run
out.
Flagging tape (aka.flagging ribbon) – Many experienced planters will not use flagging tape
very often. The only serious exception
that comes to mind is a few times that we’ve planted extremely green jungle blocks
in August. If the block is just covered
with grass, you can usually follow the planted trees by looking for the beaten
down grass, but with other types of vegetation, it can sometimes be very
difficult to find trees. In such cases,
and when the ground is slow and higher-priced, I have seen crews lay down a
piece of tape by each tree to help the next planter find it. This isn’t a very common occurrence
though. More often, as a foreman, you’ll
need ribbon to identify where a planter’s section started, or sometimes you’ll
want to run a ribbon line through the middle of a block (if you have access for
caches from both sides), to give planters a specific point to plant to, or
to demarcate sections of the block for
individuals or groups of planters. Checkers
use ribbon extensively. If you’re giving
ribbon to your crew, try not to give them the colours that your checkers are
using. To differentiate my “foreman”
ribbon from the colours that the crew is using, I sometimes buy special rare
colours such as yellow or orange “tiger-stripe” (ribbon with large black
stripes every couple inches).
Sponges/Foamie – Many contracts
require planters to carry sponges in each silvicool insert bag, to help keep
the plugs moist in your bags. Of course,
this is one area in which planters are invariably lazy, because they feel,
possibly correctly, that it doesn’t really make a big difference to the
long-term survival of the seedlings.
Nonetheless, we aren’t always here to do things because it is “the right
thing” to do as far as silviculture is concerned – we are here to please the
client. If they ask for us to use
sponges, then we use sponges, simple as that.
However, rather than trying to convince planters to buy sponges for
their inserts (which is probably as effective as trying to herd cats), your
best bet is to buy a foamie and have it available at the truck, and cut it up
and tell them to put pieces into their inserts.
If you want an even cheaper alternative, be the person who does the
first garbage run to the dump in the spring, and find an old couch or
chesterfield, and rip the sponges out of the cushions. There is always
a good set of cushions that you can raid for foam in any decent landfill worth
its name, and you probably don’t have to worry about sponges in inserts too
much for the first week anyway, since the temperatures are lower. In an emergency, you can probably make your
planters use moss, but you’re better off with sponges since it looks like you
are actually trying to respect what the contract specifies.
Briefcase – Essential to hold
your paperwork, and office supplies.
Don’t feel ashamed when you open it partway through the season and see
it filled with important maps, and other assorted goodies such as drill bits, stale
sticks of gum, guitar picks, and bottles of Tylenol. It will become a carrying case for all of
your “important stuff.” Don’t buy one
new – go to a flea market, or “dollar store.”
Pens/Markers – You can never have
too many pens. They will disappear
quickly, so guard them with your life.
Black permanent markers can also come in useful in a number of
situations. Don’t get water-based or dry
erase markers – they are absolutely useless in the rain. Some people will also get a set of colored
pencils or crayons for drawing out seedlot maps, unless you’ve moved past the
dark ages and are using laptops with PhotoShop, and are scanning and coloring
your maps digitally.
Calculator and Stapler –
These items are pretty self-explanatory.
Solar powered calculators will last longer than battery-powered
versions, but they are quite frustrating when trying to do paperwork at night
in dimly lit areas. Buy a simple
calculator from Radio Shack (twelve dollars or so) with big, fat buttons, for
best results. You don’t need a fancy
calculator with dozens of scientific functions – just get one that can add and
subtract, multiply and divide. To go
along with your stapler, don’t forget to buy a pack of staples. On the subject of staplers, it’s a good idea
to also have a staple-gun and pack of staples for it. The staple-gun, however, is another item to
guard zealously, as it will migrate quickly.
Elastics – Believe it or not,
the most important use I find for elastics is to keep a couple handy for the
quad (and I mean thick rubber bands, not the little thin elastics you’d find in
an office). Sometimes, when you are by
yourself, you get the quad stuck. And
when you’re in this position, you sometimes wish there was a second person to
work the throttle while you use all your strength to life the rear end of the
quad up in the air and forward. Well, if
you’ve got an elastic (either a rubber band OR a hair elastic) you can stick it
on the throttle temporarily to give you that extra advantage. The only tricky part is to get the elastic on
just enough to rev the engine without running it full-tilt, which usually just
digs the wheels in deeper and is thus counter-productive. In an emergency, you can always use a
bundle-wrapper or rip a strip off your t-shirt to tie around the throttle. Necessity breeds invention.
Tow rope – Get the best rope
possible. A one-inch rope is better than
three-quarter inch, which you will inevitably break on the first moderately
buried truck. A chain is stronger, but
is a lot harder on the vehicles when it suddenly catches. Make sure you attach the tow rope to the
frames of each truck, not to the bumpers or spring mounts or anything flimsy
like that. I have even seen cases where
tow hooks were accidentally mounted onto the bumper of the truck rather than
securely bolted and welded to the frame, and the first pull on them bent the
bumper significantly out of shape, or pulled it right off the truck. Remember that tow ropes aren’t that long – if
you get stuck, a rope won’t do any good if another truck can’t reach you. My best advice, which cannot be
over-emphasized, is NOT to drive into spots where you might get stuck. If you have a choice of either making the
crew walk the last 200 metres to the block or trying to force the truck
through, you should tell them to walk and then quad trees to them! You have to be mentally strong and resist
their comments about how “the truck could make it through that mud-hole
easily!” Remember, if you spend three
hours of your day trying to pull a truck out of the mud, you’re not making any
extra money for your effort, and you crew may be suffering if you can’t deliver
trees to them. Always be wary of driving
off the beaten track – especially on soft shoulders and on innocent looking
landings in Alberta.
Pipe wrench – Used for attaching
or detaching propane bottles to propane hoses.
A pipe wrench is strongly recommended over an adjustable wrench or a
pair of vise-grips. The adjustable wrench
or the vise-grips will always strip the fitting eventually, whereas a pipe
wrench will remain useful. Wrenches tend
to disappear quickly too, so either let the cook keep them hidden in the
kitchen, or have one chained and locked to each appliance that uses propane.
Star wrench – A star wrench
(also known as a wheel wrench or an axle wrench) is needed for changing
tires. If you are driving a new leased
vehicle, the tire-changing kit probably has the proper tire wrench for your
tires, but the star wrench will be useful for a number of other applications,
such as changing wheels on quads, quad trailers, camper trailers, and personal
vehicles. These things are pretty cheap
at Canadian Tire. There are sometimes a
couple of models available, to fit different size ranges of lug-nuts, but
whatever you buy will hopefully have the standard sizes on it. It’s a wise idea to make sure your wrench
matches the lug-nut sizes on your vehicle at the start of the season, before you have to use it in the bush.
Multi-screwdriver – the
multi-screwdriver is of course one of the more useful tools in camp, and
therefore, it is an item that tends to disappear frequently. Guard this tool. While we’re on the subject of miscellaneous
light tools, just bring a whole tool kit and socket set and lots of
screwdrivers and wrenches and tie straps and random nuts and bolts and screws,
if you can.
Extra planting shovel and extra set of planting bags – Very, very useful, when one of your planters breaks
their gear in the middle of a shift, in the middle of nowhere. Not surprisingly, it can be pretty hard to
find planting gear for sale in a lot of places except for the major
cities. Now, here is the important
part. Your planter will expect that you
will give them your gear unconditionally, and will expect to be allowed to keep
it for the remainder of the season.
After all, why buy a new item in town, when your foreman has given you
one? If the foreman has let you use it
for one day already, he or she must not really need it, would they? Hah!
Incorrect! Silly, presumptuous
planter! I suggest carrying a brand new
shovel and brand new set of bags, hidden away where nobody can touch them. When the need arises, you can solve the
problem by providing a set of new gear to the planter, at cost. It is a favorable supply and demand
situation. They demand the item, and you
control the supply. I would NOT suggest
trying to profit from the situation, but by being very clear about the price up
front (keep the original receipt), you won’t find yourself subsidizing equipment
to your own detriment. Mind you, if you
have lots of money, you might not mind providing free equipment to your crew
(pretty rare, in my experience). One
thing I would suggest is to be around at the end of the season when all the
camps and vehicles go back to your company’s compound, and scavenge for useful
items that can be used the following spring.
You may find lots of useful things, such as tarps, inserts, water jugs,
and sets of abandoned planting bags.
Don’t be quick to throw away ripped planting bags! Always tear off all the buckles first, so you
have a collection in your tool kit.
Often, another set of bags may be useless except for just one simple
missing belt or shoulder buckle – I probably replace a dozen sets of buckles
for planters in my camp every season.
Booster cables (aka. jumper cables) – Self-explanatory.
The only drawback with booster cables is that you need a second truck to
boost with. I have yet to see a foreman
so cautious as to carry an extra battery with them if they don’t have two
vehicles. If you’re buying booster
cables, the longer the better. I’d
recommend investing some money and getting a pair specially made (or do it
yourself) – with extra, extra heavy guage wire, about twenty-five feet long, so
you can get at truck batteries when you can’t move around the truck. By the way, you might be surprised to know
that you can also boost a quad, if you are really desperate. It’s not easy – and if you have a pull or
kick starter, you shouldn’t need to. But
if your pull starter cord breaks, with some patience, you can actually strip
the insulation off a pair of plot cords (or use your jumper cables) and use
them to boost the battery with another quad.
Do NOT try to boost a quad with a truck battery – they use different voltages. It may also be interesting to note (if you
are curious) that a quad, like a vehicle with a standard transmission, can
actually be push-started (despite the semi-automatic transmission) and then you
can let the alternator slowly recharge the battery. However, the process of push-starting a quad
on a dirt road is extremely, extremely difficult (towing it behind a truck),
and not safe at all, and therefore not recommended. You are more likely to end up a WCB poster
child than be successful in boosting it.
Do not try this, and if you do try it and end up breaking your neck, I
assume no responsibility for your stupidity.
I’m just saying that it is possible, not recommended.
Anti-histamines – Carry a pack of
these. Even if you do not have allergies
or hay fever, one of your crew might, unexpectedly. The cost of giving them a couple Claritan or
Reactine tablets and getting them back to work is easily covered by the
commission you’ll make off them for the rest of the day, and even more
importantly, they’ll love you for alleviating their suffering. Try to find non-drowsy, extra-strength brands
if you can. Costco is a great place to
buy cheap anti-histamines and other drugs, if you can find someone with a
membership or have a membership of your own.
Tampons – If you are male, you may not think that tampons are
useful. However, if you have females on
your crew, it is smart to carry a backup supply of tampons in a clean and
sanitary storage container. Usually,
girls are pretty smart and have this area covered, but sometimes emergencies
arise. If you have tampons in such a
situation, the girls will love you forever for your thoughtfulness.
Squeegee – This item only
costs a couple dollars, but is a great tool to keep under the front seat,
especially in Alberta. The truck windows
and mirrors can get extremely dirty during the week, and it becomes very
frustrating and unsafe to be backing up and moving around without full
visibility. Buying (and using) the
squeegee will probably save you from a few crushed water bottles and knapsacks
over the course of a season, and is just safety-smart in general. At the end of the day, before you drive home
from the block, use it with some leftover fluid from someone’s water jug.
Air
pump – The air pump can be
useful in many circumstances. The first
would be in pumping up a quad tire with a slow leak – inevitable if you run a
quad all season. Next on the list would
be the same thing with a truck tire.
Planters with personal vehicles will end up borrowing your pump at some
point, but make sure you get it back!
These little units plug into the cigarette lighter, and can be bought
for under $20 at Canadian Tire. Often,
the cords on them are NOT designed to stretch from the cigarette lighter to the
back wheel of a long-box truck, so it might be wise to cut the lead and add an
extra ten to twenty feet of cord so you can really stretch it. Also, if you know anything about tires, you
will have heard the phrase “the bead is broken.” This means that the seal (between the inside
air in the tire and the outside air) has been compromised. Once the bead has been broken on a tire, no
amount of air pumping will fill it up again, unless you can temporarily re-seal
things so that the air being pumped inside the tire has to stay there until the
tire is fully inflated again. You may
lose the bead on a tire either when a slow leak that has let out so much air
that the tire eventually becomes flat, or when something like a stick pokes the
tire hard enough to dislodge it temporarily from the rim of the wheel. Note:
the battery powered air pump is not your only option. I learned (in 2004) that there are advantages
to buying a hand pump instead. The hand
pump is far faster than using the battery powered pump, and it has the
advantage that it is more portable, since it can be used when there is no truck
nearby. If you have a faster “slow leak”
in your quad tire, and it needs to be pumped up constantly, you can strap the
hand pump to your quad and carry it around with you all day, to make sure that
you always keep it full and it is never to the point of possibly losing the
bead on the tire.
Bottle
of Puncture Seal – This item is of
debatable use. It will not fill a flat
truck tire. It will sometimes fill a
partly deflated small car tire. It is sometimes
quite useful in filling a low quad tire.
It cannot be used on items with high air pressure. For example, if you have a truck tire with a
slow leak, and the air pressure in it is still up around 60 psi, putting the
bottle of puncture seal on that tire will result in a back-flow of pressure
from the tire to the bottle, which is absolutely useless and potentially quite
dangerous. However, if you have a quad
tire, or an almost flat truck tire, you can use the puncture seal on it. The point is not so much to inflate the tire,
but because the puncture seal has a fluid that disperses through the inside of
the tire, and possibly will seal the small hole causing the slow leak. Thus, the best approach is to make sure the
tire has low pressure (don’t flatten it too much yourself and break the bead)
then use the puncture seal on it, then pump it back up to normal pressure with
your portable air pump.
Gloves – Possibly the very coldest thing I have ever
experienced in life is delivering trees on the quad all day in the rain at the
beginning of a season. Your fingers will
freeze and become absolutely useless. It
is not uncommon when delivering trees in rain and snow in the early spring to
need to stop and warm your hands every two or three minutes, so you can
continue to move your fingers to work the throttle. For this reason, your gloves will be quite
essential, especially in early parts of the summer. If you get stuck without gloves in an
emergency, my suggestion is to get off the quad every couple minutes and cup
your hands behind the exhaust pipe. Just
be careful not to get frostbite in the meantime. Also, be careful that you don’t put your numb
hands just a couple inches away from the hot exhaust, and burn them before you
realize that the skin is burning.
Watch – Useful for many purposes. Planters should use them to time runs, and to
meet goals. Foremen can use them in
pressure situations, if you know your planters’ speeds very well, to help plan
logistical situations in knowing how soon certain planters on your block will
need that next critical delivery of boxes to their cache. More importantly, some planters don’t wear
watches, and like to keep an idea whenever you drive by of exactly what time it
is, so they can be ready to meet the trucks at quitting time and not hold the
rest of the crew up. Of course, with a
good waterproof watch costing $5-10, there is no reason why they shouldn’t
carry one of their own.
Tally
Book or Tally Sheets – Every foreman
seems to have their own system of recording numbers. I have seen and heard dozens of horror
stories of foreman outside my own camp who really had NO CLUE about what they
were doing with their planters’ tallies.
This is especially frustrating to me, with my accounting
background. I would suggest making a
tally sheet at the beginning of the season with columns to input information
about each planter, the day/date, pricing information, and all stock-type
information. Go to http://www.replant.ca/tally.html to
see an example, or right-click on http://www.replant.ca/tally.xls
to download the MicroSoft Excel spreadsheet version of that page. Once you have it set up, make about 100
photocopies, so you have sheets for the entire season.
Magnifying
Glass – This is something few
people think of. Identifying shovels is
always an issue. The planters usually
know exactly which shovel is theirs (except the rookies) but it is hard for you
to tell what belongs to each person when you drop them off and they say,
“Sorry, I left my gear back at the landing – can you bring it down to me? It’s a set of bags with blue shoulder straps,
and the shovel has a red D-handle.” What
I do is make all of the planters write their names in big block letters on
their planting bags with a black permanent marker. For the shovels, I wait until the first sunny
day, then get them to write their names on their wooden shovel handles with
black marker, and then trace the letters with the magnifying glass, burning
their name right into the handle. This
will remain visible for years if done properly, no matter how dirty or beat up
the shovel gets. Another wise idea is to
buy a couple cans of some unique color of spray paint, and spray a few patches
on every set of bags, ever insert, and every tarp belonging to anyone in your
crew, so it is easy to identify. If all
the foremen in camp do this, with a different color for each crew, it is easy
to sort out gear when it is all piled all over the landing at the start of a
contract. Of course, a wise foreman will
make sure the crew’s gear stays far away from gear belonging to other crews, so
essential planting equipment doesn’t mysteriously.
Cell
Phone – In recent years, I have started
to recommend that all my foremen now get cell phones. First and foremost, it is a huge benefit with
respect to safety. Sometimes, radio
communication doesn’t work on the blocks or in the areas you may be
planting. By the same token, cells might
not either, but the two types of communication do have different active
footprint areas and transmissions characteristics, so everything you can do to
improve communication is important.
Above and beyond safety concerns, cell phones are very critical in getting
errands done efficiently on days off, and also in organizing logistics for the
following shift. I can think of several
occasions where a major development beyond our control happened on the day off,
and the next morning at the start of the new shift, all foremen with cell
phones had been contacted and had compensated for the problem so that their
crews were working normally at breakfast, while other foremen in camp lost
several hours of planting.
Compass/GPS
Unit – The checker will find
more use for a compass. The GPS unit is
useful for a foreman or supervisor when trying to find blocks, if the map you
have been given is poor (a very, very common occurrence for some licenses and
the Ministry of Forests). In theory, you
should have visited the blocks at least
a couple days before you take the crew out to them, to assess potential access
and logistical problems, and so you can prepare by doing any necessary
road-building and/or bridge-building and snag-falling in advance. Of course, once you’ve done the job for a
while, you’ll realize that this isn’t always possible. Of course, a GPS unit is pretty useless if
the maps do not have GPS coordinates. I
would strongly suggest that your supervisor or company contact the licensee
well before the contract starts, to ensure that latitudes and longitudes are
available for all potential blocks. You
will need these anyway for emergency information in case you need to deal with
WCB, or perform an evacuation or emergency rescue. The latitudes and longitudes should be
available and posted in every vehicle beside the radios and cell/satellite
phones. You can get a simple handheld
“sports” or “camping” GPS unit that does the trick for under $200. Garmon is one well-known name in the
industry. There is nothing worse than
driving around aimlessly looking for a block with a couple truckloads of
anxious planters behind you, and seeing the coordinates on the map, but not
having a GPS unit in the truck.
Laptop
computer – You probably can’t afford
this on your own. Some companies are
starting to provide these to their supervisors.
Some advanced foremen like to bring them out to the bush for
organizational use, or for personal reasons.
Laptops are not as cheap as desktop stations, and are easy to lose or
have stolen. If you bring one out, don’t
bring out a brand-new top-of-the-line machine, and make absolutely sure that
you have a very sturdy and durable case for it, not just a leather or vinyl
carry-bag. Keep this someplace very
safe, so it doesn’t get dirty. A suggestion
would be a cabinet in the cook’s trailer or supervisor’s trailer with a very
sturdy lock. If you don’t like the
built-in mouse or cursor movement devices, my suggestion would be to get an
optical mouse for about $25, which doesn’t get affected by dirt as easily. Due to the prevalence of email these days (I
highly recommend that all the employees in my camps have an email account that
they access at least once per week, and that foremen check their email daily),
it can be nice to have a laptop for letter writing, if you like doing that sort
of thing. You can write all your letters
at night in your tent during the shift, on the laptop, and then when you get
into a hotel on the day off, hook up quickly and fire off all the emails that
you wrote during the week. It’s often
expensive and difficult to hook up to the internet in hotels, but can save you
enormous costs in telephone bills if you do it right.
Axe/Chain
Saw – I wouldn’t recommend a
chain saw for a foreman until probably they are in their third or fourth year,
and running a big crew, AND have a use for the saw other than because they are
a foreman. I also wouldn’t recommend
buying or using a saw unless you go through some proper training (courses are
available), and find an opportunity to practice with the saw for a week or so,
maybe by helping someone clear a woodlot.
Not only are chain saws extremely dangerous for persons who are
inexperienced at using them, they also need to be maintained by someone who
cares about the machine, or the saw will soon need repairs. If you decide that a chain saw is not
necessary, or not within your budget, the sensible alternative is to buy a
proper axe. I would definitely recommend
that all foremen, even first year foremen, considering getting a decent axe,
which is extremely portable and obviously needs practically no maintenance
work, although it isn’t as quick as a saw.
The main reason why you will need the axe (or saw) is because you will
sometimes find trees that have fallen across roads on the way into your
block. I even got blocked into a block
once by a very large snag that fell on the main road during the day. The crew ended up cutting it up and off the
road with the fire tools, but it took quite a while. If you are trying to cut quad roads into
blocks, or build bridges for the quads, the axe is again quite useful. You may only use it half a dozen times during
the season, but on those days, it will probably repay itself quite easily. As a side note, every supervisor should
always have a chain saw, which is another reason why a saw isn’t a high
priority for a foreman. Any supervisor
who gets fully involved in working with his foremen probably uses his saw
several days each week to cut access or do snag-falling around the camp and on
blocks. Also, it is very, very
important to make sure that if you use a chain saw, you use chaps or other CSA-
certified chainsaw pants, to minimize the chance that you will cut your leg
open. You will need a fair amount of
gear if you use a saw – chaps, hard hat, safety glasses, chain-saw boots,
hearing protection, gloves, and maybe even a mesh face-shield. It is also good to have a bin in the truck to
carry your fuel and tools: chain saw
wrench, bar oil, 2-stroke (mix) oil, gas, and portable powder fire extinguisher.
Suggestions for Foremen:
Once you become a foreman or crew
boss, you will suddenly realize that using your time efficiently (time
management) is the most important part of your job. There are a lot of little tricks that you
will learn (with experience) that improve your efficiency in the field. Some of these tricks are basic common sense,
while others may not be so obvious. You
will learn from your mistakes, just as I did – and hopefully faster than I did
in some cases. However, sometimes you
don’t learn these tricks on your own until you have done the job for a while,
and have the basics mastered. As your
experience grows, you should start to realize that there are situations where
short-term sacrifices can lead to long-term efficiency gains.
I need to start by talking about one
topic that is the single most important golden rule for a foreman to
remember. The rule is simple: never,
ever, ever let your planters run out of trees.
There is no excuse for doing so, and no exceptions to this rule. Failure to follow this rule is considered to
be the “cardinal sin” of tree planting.
If your planters do not have trees at their caches, they are not making
money. If you are on commission, this also means that you are not making
money. Even if you’re working for a
company that pays you, the foreman, a day-rate, you should still remember this
golden rule. If your planters aren’t
making money, they will not be happy. In
the long term, you want to keep planters working for you, instead of having
them try to switch to a different crew.
Planters who are not happy with your management style are not likely to
work for you again the following season.
In some extreme cases, they may even ask to be transferred to a
different crew in the middle of the season.
If you have a fast crew and/or tough
access on a block, you may need to run trees at night, so you can keep ahead of
your crew the next day. Equally
important, if you arrive at their cache and they have no trees but don’t say
anything to you, don’t believe that they aren’t frustrated. If you ever arrive at a cache and there is a
planter sitting there waiting for trees, assume that they are frustrated, and apologize.
In rare instances, an apology can defuse their frustration. However, if you have to apologize very often,
you’re doing something wrong. I have
known several good foremen who have managed to go through an entire summer
without any of their crew ever having to wait for trees. Not once.
It is rare, but possible.
If you are a planting foreman (a
foreman with a small crew, who plants trees on the side to supplement your
foreman commission), you should NEVER be planting when someone on your crew is
not. This even applies at the end of the
day – your crew shouldn’t have to wait for you to bag out. Instead, you should time your runs so that
you finish about half an hour before everyone else, which gives you time to
collect garbage, tidy caches, give last-minute instructions to planters, and
hide and lock your quad in the woods. In
fact, try to be so organized that when your crew walks off the block at the end
of the day, they can jump right into the truck and drive home for supper,
rather than waiting for you to pick up garbage or deal with other tasks. Being a planting foreman can be very
difficult. You probably do not make a
whole lot of money for running the crew, and your own planting probably
contributes to the majority of your earnings.
However, you have to make sure you don’t get bitter about this, and let
your crew suffer because of it. A mark
of a good foreman is one who always puts the interests of his or her crew above
personal interests. If you can do this
consistently, you will probably find yourself rewarded with a larger crew in
subsequent seasons, if that is your goal.
A problem is that many foremen, especially those with small crews, know
that they could make more money as a planter than they do as a foreman,
especially in their first year. Be
patient though. Treat your first year as
a crew boss as being a learning experience.
When the going gets tough, and you wish you were still a planter,
remember another fact: even though you might be able to make more money on a
day-to-day basis as a planter, you can’t do that forever. Eventually, your body will wear out from
years of planting. You can always go
back to planting if you need to, for the short term, but you can’t plant
indefinitely. Your body won’t let you,
so accept the fact that you are a foreman now, and try to do the job well.
So, once again, never let your
planters run out of trees, and try hard to make sure that they don’t have to
wait for you at the end of the day, while you do small clean-up jobs that you
should have done earlier. I cannot
emphasize these points enough – it will mean the difference between you getting
a reputation as a good foreman versus a reputation for not being on the
ball. In the end, that is the most
crucial factor which determines whether or not veteran planters will come back
and work for you again the following summer, and that translates directly to
money in your pocket.
Ok, now that we have the most
important points drilled into your head, let’s move on. I have put together a list of about forty
suggestions – if you can follow this list of suggestions, your season will go a
lot more smoothly. Of course, not all
foremen will agree with everything on this list, but at least it will give you
food for thought.
1. Safety should always be your number one
concern. Do it for the sake of safety,
not just to meet paperwork requirements.
If you see someone doing something that doesn’t look safe, take the
initiative to step in and stop them, rather than think to yourself, “I hope
that something bad doesn’t happen here.”
A proper emphasis on safety may slow your crew down or decrease
production occasionally, but it is far better to be safe than sorry. The trees will still get planted by the end
of the season.
2.
Try to finish the back of the block first and work towards the front. Only plant the front first if you are 100%
sure that you will end up doing the whole block yourself, without any help from
other crews, and even then, only if access to the back is so bad that you need
to keep the crew busy while you are trying to figure out how to get trees into
the back.
3. Recognize and accept the fact that you will
be putting in extremely long hours to keep your crew working efficiently during
their normal working day. You will often
have to go out and find/build access, run trees, check trees, and clean up
garbage in the evenings and on days off.
It is almost impossible to run a large crew without downtime unless you
are spending practically every daylight hour stayed prepared and keeping ahead
of your crew.
4. Keep a couple extra pieces of nylon rope
(three to four meters long) behind the back seat of your truck, for
emergencies, so that you can always tie boxes of trees to your quad.
5. Despite the above, learn to use a
“come-along” or ratchet strap. It works
much better than rope or bungie cords.
Of course, you might need to wash it in water occasionally to keep it
from binding up if you are working in muddy conditions. And don’t let your ratchet strap or rope or
bungies drag along behind the quad when you are driving around, even if you
don’t have boxes on the quad.
Inevitably, they will either tangle up in the axles or break, which
means that you either have an unnecessary safety hazard, or you’re ruining your
equipment. It is often tempting to let
them drag for “quick trips” to the next cache, but you should stay away from
that bad habit right from the start.
6. Take a proactive (not reactive) approach to
block management. Rather than reacting
to problems that happen (the lazy approach), try to anticipate where problems
could likely occur and prevent them before they happen (the smart
approach). You know the old saying, “an
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
It almost always takes far less effort to prevent a problem than to fix
it.
7. Use your numbers and check all blocks for
potential stashing. Never trust your
crew completely. It’s your ass on the
line. Most of the time, there will not
be problems. However, once in a while,
people that you trust will do bad things.
Over the years, I’ve known four foremen who got fired because people on
their crews were stashing. Be the one to
discover problems (with the help of the rest of your crew), rather than finding
out the problems the hard way from your supervisor.
8. Try to make sure you never have to leave your
block while you have planters on it. Run
trees at night, and reconnoiter your upcoming blocks at night, whenever
possible. Assume, right from day one,
that you will have to do several hours of work at night after supper, every
night.
9. Density plots are more important than quality
plots. It is easier to fix bad trees
than to rearrange trees. Besides, if you
quickly do a large set of density plots, any obvious quality problems will jump
out at you naturally.
10. Emphasize the need for planting high quality,
from day one. Don’t be scared to make
people replant, or worry about lower production affecting your earnings. If you’re not happy with the job that your
planters are doing, or you think that they are not doing the replanting
properly, force them to flag every single tree in their piece as they replant,
to ensure that they aren’t rushing through the job. Nobody on your crew, no matter how many trees
they put in, or how helpful they are around camp, should ever be allowed to get
away with marginal quality while the rest of the crew is expected to plant
top-notch quality. Also, be aware that
some types of faults are “not allowed” to be fixed, usually including any work
that would require digging up the seedling and replanting it. This is because checkers sometimes feel that
the additional stress is too hard on the tree, and you should have gotten it
right the first time. Ascertain whether
or not digging up trees which replanting is permitted, but do it discretely. Depth problems, and leaning trees, can be
fixed without actually replanting the tree, since you can either push dirt up
on the plug, or scrape dirt away from the plug.
11. Put your best quality planters at the front
of the block. When external
(licensee/forestry) checkers come to visit you, it gives them a good first
impression when they walk onto the block.
It also rewards planters who concentrate on quality in the long term,
because they don’t have to walk into back pieces as often.
12. Don’t allow your planters to plant the
wood-lines when they are planting the block.
Save a little bit at the edges for a buffer, so they can bag out once
the block is “finished.” This way, you
don’t have planters transferring partial boxes from one block to another, which
simplifies paperwork.
13. After you think that a completed block has
been cleaned of all garbage, do one more run-through on the quad, checking
every single area where there used to be a cache, and where planters walked on
the block roads. Look more for any
garbage (ie. bundle wrappers) that planters left behind, rather than your own
mess, since it is the planters’ garbage that you probably missed when first
cleaning up. Foresters are usually very
unhappy to see plastic and garbage remaining on the block after the crew has
moved on.
14. If you want to emphasize production, don’t
allow a half-day on the last day of the shift.
Tell this to your crew right at the start of the season, and get them
into the habit of expecting a full day on the last day. If you work five days on and one day off,
planting a half day on the last day will reduce your overall production by
about ten percent each week. For a crew
planting a million trees, that means over 100,000 less trees planted during a
season, which costs you a lot of money if you are on commission. Once the crew gets used to working a full day
on the last day of the shift, they will quickly come to realize that it
benefits them significantly over the course of the summer, especially if they
are planting for the money, not because they want to party all summer.
15. Makes sure that your planters write their
names on bags, inserts, tarps, and shovel at the start of the season (use a
magnifying glass to burn their name into the shovel handle). Have a meeting right at the start of the season,
emphasizing the importance of not grabbing somebody else’s gear in the morning.
16. Keep your feet and especially toes up in the
footrests when quadding across a block or in an area with sticks. Sticks can easily come up and pin or twist
your foot or ankle. Always be ready to
jump off the quad in rolling terrain, as it can flip quite easily.
17. No matter how busy you are, take the time to
walk around with the licensee/forestry checkers, if they show up on your
block. A little PR goes a long way. Don’t try to hide mistakes or planting faults
– admit that you are aware of them and are working on resolving the
problems. At the same time, try to look
calm and in control, but without taking it to the extreme that the checker
thinks you are not worried about the problem.
18. First impressions are everything, from the
straight trees at the front of the block, to the beautiful cache you’ve
constructed that the checker sees when driving up to your block.
19. Teach your crew to plant perfectly straight
trees.
20. Teach your crew not to plant trees on your
quad roads.
21. The worst thing that you can do
(mechanically) is to operate your truck or quad when it is low on oil. It is unfortunately very easy to seize the
engine in a quad, if the oil is too low.
Pay attention to the oil temperature light, but to be safe, don’t trust
that it works. Check the oil levels
every morning, or several times a day if there is a lot of oily smoke coming
out of the exhaust. Oily smoke coming
out of the exhaust means that the quad is burning oil quickly. Of course, there is a good side to this – if
your quad is burning oil, at least that means there is still some in it. When it suddenly stops emitting heavy exhaust
after smoking for a period of time, you’re probably in deep trouble, because it
is probably out of oil.
22. Cut spare keys for your truck. Tape one on the underbody somewhere for
emergencies. Put other spares on the key
chains of trucks that frequently work in the same area.
23. The one hazard that repeatedly kills planters
is motor vehicles. Teach your crew about
vehicle safety as the number one priority.
24. Try to always take garbage out of the block,
if possible, on the return trips while quadding trees into the block.
25. Learn to tell the direction from the sun and
from maps. This is useful almost every
day, whether you are working with helicopters, or are trying to figure out how
sunshine will affect a cache as the day progresses, or are simply trying to
give people directions on the block.
Teach your crew how to tell directions too.
26. Learn to read contour lines on a map (if your
maps have them) by looking for streams and trying to visualize the
3-dimensional lay of the land in your head.
Once you know where the streams are, you can tell whether terrain is
rising or falling. If you have a circle
on a contour map, and it is not a lake or pond, it more often than not means
that it is a high point, not a low depression, since water would possibly
collect in it if it were a depression.
27. Rookies will make or break your crew, in
terms of production for the season.
Spend every possible minute working with them in the first several
weeks, and teaching them how to plant high quality trees quickly. The time you invest in them will pay itself
off many times over. It may be more
tempting at the time to go and plant a box or two, to put some money in your
pocket right away, but in the long run that is not the way to build a strong
crew.
28. Vets cause the most quality problems in the
first three shifts. Even though the
rookies may not know what they are doing, the vets put in far more trees, which
will drop the quality more quickly if their trees are not planted properly.
29. Teach your crew to always fully fuel up any
company vehicles whenever leaving town to return to the camp. Otherwise, you may end up making an extra
trip into town for more fuel, when you could be doing more productive things
that will earn you money in the long run.
30. When using a helicopter, put flagging tape on
your handhelds and nets. It is very easy
to lose these items in the confusion of a helicopter block, and they are very
expensive to replace. Dark nets are
easier to spot lying in ditches and off landings if they have some brightly
colored ribbon attached.
31. Helicopter time is expensive. For starters, if you are working on the same
block for several days, you should usually try to fly trees into the block at
night as planters come out, and fly garbage out in the morning as you fly
planters in, so there are less “empty” trips.
32. Driving a group of planters around town on a
day off can be one of the worst parts of the job. You will probably need to do errands assigned
by your supervisor, such as picking up fuel or water or food or dumping
garbage. You may even need to go out to
the blocks to keep ahead of your crew – doing quality checks, running trees,
walking areas to ensure that they were completed, cleaning up garbage, and
checking out upcoming blocks for access problems. Let your crew know up front, at the start of
the season, that if they expect you to take proper care of them, you may have
to do a lot of work on days off. This
means that you might need to drop them off at a convenient location in the
morning, and make arrangements to pick them up again at the same spot at a
predetermined time that night to drive them back out to camp. Make sure that they don’t expect you to taxi
them around all day every day off.
33. On days off, let your planters know that they
should hit the laundromat early in the morning, before it gets busy, so the
whole crew isn’t waiting for one person to finish their laundry after supper
when they should be on the road back out to camp.
34. This tip is useful if you are trying to use a
calling card in a hotel room phone that requires you to dial out first, and if
you need to do it through a computer with a windows operating system. Sometimes there is a pause before the hotel
patches you to an outside line, and then subsequently there is a pause before
the phone system lets you start to enter your calling card number. There are a couple of commands for these
“dialing properties” that can make your life easier. For example, a comma inserts a brief pause
(one second, I think) in the dialing sequence, and a “$t” inserts a pause of
variable length that only continues the dialing sequence once the “bong” from
the calling-card system prompt comes through.
Therefore, if I was trying to call an ISP with a number of 250-999-1212 and
my calling card number was 250-555-1212-3434, and the hotel required me to dial
an 8 before getting an outside line, I would probably use the following
sequence as the “number” that the laptop should dial:
8,,,02509991212$t25055512123434
It
sounds confusing, and it is. Dialing out
from hotel rooms can be very difficult at times. In some towns, I have found that it can only
be done from certain hotels which have higher quality internal phone networks.
36. Always double-check garbage boxes for missed
bundles or culled trees that your crew has left behind. It does happen occasionally, accidentally,
and it would be better for you to find them than a forestry checker.
37. Before your rookies go out to buy equipment
at the start of the season, make sure that they know not to buy jerry cans
(usually used to carry fuel) to use as water jugs.
38. Learn how to drain water from the fuel line
at the start of the season, if you are driving a diesel vehicle. Do not ever drive the vehicle if the “water
in fuel” light comes on.
39. Once you have signed out a vehicle, the very
first thing you should do before driving away from the office is try to change
the tire. That way, you’ll know if the
spare fits, and whether or not there is a proper jack, and whether or not the
wheel wrench is the right size. These
little problems are quick to solve when you’re still at the office, but a
disaster if you discover them in the field when you already have a flat.
40. If you have someone who is thinking about quitting,
you need to be aware of the fact that some planters can be made to change their
minds and stick around, while others are going to leave no matter what you
do. Try to assess which category you
think they fit in, before you waste a great deal of energy trying to convince
them to stay. Sometimes, it’s easier
just to shake hands and say, “Thanks for coming out.”
41. The very worst thing that can hurt your
crew’s productivity (other than having a 7-11 on the drive to the block) is to have
to move from one block to another in mid-day.
Unless the blocks are right beside each other, so you can move people
individually as they finish up pieces, you can lose a huge amount of production
due to a couple hours of downtime. Do
everything possible to ensure that if a block can possibly finished in one more
full day, it is. This may mean planting
a few boxes on it after supper the night before, if the block is just a tiny
bit too big for one day of planting and you have a small crew. It may mean asking another foreman to borrow
a planter or two for the day, and looking after them for free. It may mean asking your crew to stay an extra
hour or so at supper, to wrap things up.
Finally, if all else fails and the block has to be finished in a part
day the following day, do everything you can to make sure that the transition
from block to block is absolutely as fast as possible, like an Indy pit
stop. Be organized enough to have the
garbage cleaned and the trucks loaded as the planters are closing up the last
hole, so they can just walk back to the truck, jump in, and drive away to the
next block. Of course, you sometimes
also need to be able to watch over your flock as they are closing things up, so
being prepared ahead of time is critical.
It is a very tough balancing act.
42. A good habit to get into when filling your
quad with gas is to always check the oil at the same time, and also make sure
that your gas source switch is not set to the reserve tank. People who run with their quad on reserve all
the time never have a fall-back when they run out of fuel.
43. The quad is one of the most dangerous tools
you have as a foreman. Two things in
specific are dangerous, but you can minimize these dangers. First, hold the handlebars in such a manner
that your arms are above the grips, so that your hands are tilted
downwards. That way, if your wheel
catches a stump and the handlebars snap to the left or right, you are more
likely to break your thumb and less likely to break your wrist. It is a very real danger – one of my foremen
broke his wrist that way, the second day of the season. The other thing is to make sure that you
always ride with your feet on the footrests, and with your toes pointed up
instead of down (which is the tendency).
That way, if a stick comes up through the footrests (another common
event), it will just knock your foot back, instead of crushing your foot and/or
breaking your ankle.
44. Be patient with your crew. They will often frustrate you. You will want to pull your hair out as you
are trying to teach your rookies how to plant.
You will want to scream as vets do things that they know they shouldn’t
do. Be calm, and don’t yell at them. A patient and logical approach to resolving
dilemmas and telling people that they have done something “wrong” is the best
way to run the crew. However, be firm,
and don’t let the planters tell you what to do, or do what they want. If you are sure that you are correct, insist
that they do things your way, but be prepared to make concessions sometimes
based upon group consensus – be prepared for some give and take. Remember that as the season progresses, you
need to work on building loyalty, not relying on it.
45. Don’t ask your planters to do anything that
you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself.
When the going gets tough, be prepared to lead by example.
46. Put your crew’s best interests ahead of your
own. This can be hard. Not only do you have to do this, you also
have to make sure that they don’t think you are looking after your own
interests first. You should never be
planting when you could be training a rookie how to plant better, or running
trees. If you are a planting foreman,
and you happen to have a very good day, don’t brag to your planters about your
tallies. I have seen foremen do this
while their planters are standing there listening in disbelief, because they
ran out of trees for twenty minutes during the day. If you are planting, try to work in the
sections that need it most because you can fill a small hole, or because the
ground is bad, instead of heading right for the best ground on the block. It can be very hard to do this, knowing that
you personally will make less money while planting, but if you are a foreman
the planting has to come second. If you
can’t put the interests of the crew as your first priority, you shouldn’t be a
foreman. If you don’t put the interests
of your crew first, your planters won’t want to work for you again in future
seasons.
47. Always do what is “right,” even when you
think nobody is watching.
Conclusions
If
you are looking for suggestions that will help you in the interview process,
check out the Supervisor’s chapter, which contains some fairly detailed
information and a list of suggested questions to get the interview started. If you have any suggestions or additions to
the above information, please send an email to djbolivia@gmail.com or post feedback in the
appropriate thread of the training forum on the Replant Message Boards at www.replant.ca/board
Also,
please feel free to print this page and pass the information along to other
potential planters, and let them know the link to www.replant.ca
Special
thanks to Chris Stolz, whose website provided some material used in the writing
of this page, and also to the original Tawa planter’s training manual.
-
Jonathan Clark
(Scooter), author.