History of G A Butler & Sons

'Family Tree' is a particularly apposite description of Graham Butler's lineage, as, courtesy of his forefathers, he has decades of sap and chainsaw oil running in his veins. ‘My parents used to say I cut my teeth on chainsaws,’ he told 'essentialARB’ and with both his sons Stephen and Luke joining him from an early age, there is no doubt that they did too. Those of us seeing the familiar green-liveried access platforms of their company G.A. Butler & Sons* at arb and forestry events the 90 footer is particularly hard to miss might think that the firm's business begins and ends off the ground with niche mobile elevated platform work. Nothing could be further from the truth.


After working in the family tree surgery/chainsaw business run by his father, mother, brother and sister for 30 years Graham decided to ‘branch out’ on his own forming the eponymous partnership with his two sons in 1996.

Given the wealth of experience he (having left school at 14 to join the business) and latterly his sons, had gleaned with all aspects of treework, chainsaw repair and running training courses, G.A. Butler & Sons' remit is all-embracing. For the Butlers, saying 'no job is too big or too small' means exactly that: though the bigger the better. 'Nothing would scare us', said Graham. 'We specialise in really large trees the sort that other people have walked away from'.

Graham's grandfather Harry and father Raymond were sawmen of particular repute in Berkshire undertaking only specialist tree work in Newbury and surrounding areas. Times and modus operandii were rather different then as reminisced wistfully but vividly by the likes of Raymond and evoked through black and white photographs of the day which usually include at least one of a very dapper gent with huge saw in hand standing beside a massive, just-felled butt.

Bicycles were the pick-ups of the day over-loaded with axes, handsaws, ropes and a cross-cut, tied along the bar for good measure. Father and grandfather and their ilk thought nothing of biking 30 miles in a day and doing a full-day's work in between. However, with the first whiff of chainsaw oil in the air, a revolution was in the offing and the helping hand of mechanisation just around the corner.

Raymond toiled with hand tools alongside his father until the day he saw an advertisement for a Danarm 'Fury'. This was the first British-made chainsaw, produced at a factory in Stroud, Glos and the brainchild of a certain Mr Daniels and a Mr Armstrong. As 'grandad wouldn't have that noisy thing in the woods father went at it alone on piece-work', said Graham, and after a short while the productivity and potential, not to say noise, of this new-fangled gizmo attracted considerable attention from other tree men.

Rather than tells his fellow contractors from whence it came, Raymond offered to get one for them and thus he became a chainsaw dealer setting up a retail and repair outlet (R.A. & M. D. – for wife Muriel – Butler) that still thrives today a few feet from where it first began at Ashford Hill.

Raymond incidentally went to Sweden in the early '60's and was one of the first Husqvarna dealers in the country. In 1965, when he won a trip to the Scandinavian home of the saws' manufacturer for selling the most Husky's that year, a 14-year-old Graham was given the opportunity of a lifetime to spend a week out there. T he shop is now in the capable hands of Graham's brother Clifford whose background, suprisingly, is not in timber and trees but in engineering (overseen by the ever-present Raymond who lives on-site).

Sadly, as regards the Danarm chainsaw, while this initially flourished thanks to its prowess and innovative features, its potential was not exploited to the full and it was ultimately overtaken by the Scandinavian and German imports that are today's market leaders and disappeared like many ‘great British success stories’. Graham decided to go it alone with his sons Stephen and Luke as partners in 1996 when he felt there was too much competition on the retail side particularly from bigger name companies and he didn't want to become entangled in a 'price war'.

He also saw that there was an opening to take tree surgery forward and he and his sons were perfectly qualified to seize such an opportunity with their years of experience on the tree and training-provision front, not to mention repairing saws. Apart from their invaluable grounding, however, they started with 'nothing', according to Graham, just him, the boys and their saws, working their way up from scratch using home as base with Graham's wife Doris on 'office' duties.

Having five boys and one girl, the 'family car' was a mini-bus. This was quickly sold to be replaced by an ex-demo Hilux for the business. Fortunately Graham had some training pre-booked and a few contracts in-hand which slowly grew on a regular basis as word spread of their service, the standards they worked to and the clean site they left as a matter of routine in their wake. It would seem that their customers are not only keen to pay them, but many take the time to compliment them on a job well done. 'Over 90% of our customers come through recommendation', Graham said. 'A lot of this has to do with customer perception particularly if they see a well-equipped and well-turned-out team. They say the biggest compliment someone can pay is to copy you. We've seen other arborists follow our lead, even down to the personalised number plates on all our vehicles'. All Butler registrations include the word 'LOP'.

As the work increased so the business grew. Today the three original partners work alongside four other arborists (with another on the way). Work takes them to Oxford, Southampton, London - 'wherever we can do a good day's work', said Graham. 'Although we do prefer to work locally as travelling can be horrendous and time-wasting'. Previously the Butlers had hired-in numerous mobile elevated work platforms (MEWPS) in the 80's and early 90's for their contracts ensuring that they could capitalise on it with a number of jobs lined up to be done in one day.

Graham bought his first platform specifically to carry out a major deadwooding contract involving a number of large roadside trees. In retrospect he admits he probably would not even have considered the contract without the platform at his disposal. This was an 85ft Simons S85, with a safe working load of 250kg, mounted onto a Bedford truck. He was offered finance through the bank over three years but insisted he could pay back the loan in a scant three-month period, which is exactly what he did. With new access capability at his disposal on a daily basis the workload increased accordingly.

'The beauty of having your own machine is that you can afford to use it more', said Graham. 'There will always be a need for climbers, most definitely, but you can soon wear a good one out. I look at a job and think "will the platform make it easier?" And when one of the lads uses the platform rather than climbing I know he will be in first thing in the morning raring to go'.

The company added another lorry- mounted work platform to the fleet and then, finding they were limiting themselves to jobs with fairly good access, looked around for a second-hand tracked machine. Second-hand lost out to new, however, following a trip to manufacturer 'Oil and Steel' in Italy. Machine chosen was an 'Octopussy 2714, the numbers denoting height (27m) and side reach (14m) allowing access right into the canopy.

Current hire line-up includes this machine, the Simon S263, Octopussy 1465 (14m reach, 3ft minimum access) and Afron HA500 (7m self-propelled from the platform. The latter is ideal for hedge cutting and roadside crown raising. Necessity and practicality, not to mention health and safety, has led Butler's to change its MEWP hire options. The two largest are only available for hire with an operator. Options are: MEWP and operator; MEWP and operator/arborist; and MEWP and operator/arborist and job management (including Public Liability Insurance).

'The problem we found when doing a big job for another tree surgeon was that we ended up doing the whole job instead of just hiring the machine', said Graham. So now we offer the various options, particularly as we also found that some hirers were not even properly insured'. Completing the equipment line-up are two 9in Bearcat chippers and a 6in Timberwolf and a couple of stumpgrinders. Firewood is done as a sideline when time allows, woodchips are sold into local markets and any large, decent butts are taken back to base and sold to nearby sawmills.

Insurance for the Butlers is a headache as it is for everyone else. It has increased from around two-and-a-half thousand pounds to seven thousand and they are still waiting for a quote for this year. Aiding their audit, Clifford's son Stuart has done a health and safety package on the whole operation - an invaluable service which is also on offer to others. 'It's no longer just a case of sharpening up your chainsaw and off to work', said Graham, 'you have to sharpen up the paperwork too'.

Training has played a huge part in the evolution of the Butler business, from first of all ensuring that everyone in the team is fully qualified and certificated to the necessary degree to undertake all aspects of the tree work they are daily involved in, to providing this as a service to others. Graham with 30 years behind him is a registered NPTC instructor/assessor and before this ran courses under the ATB umbrella. Sons Luke (27) and Stephen (25) along with Stuart Butler, Rob Fox and Lee Collins all hold NPTC certificates of competence in both tree felling and tree surgery. Both Luke and Stephen are experienced climbers and Stephen is recognised as one of the fastest pole climbers in the country.

Rob is the full-time climber of the group. Lee works mainly as a groundsman and occasionally climbs and operates the stumpgrinder. Stuart is a recent addition to the team and works as a general groundsman, climber and machine operator. Julie Ruddle fulfils the equally vital role of dealing with office and admin chores. Training provision is carried out by Graham either at their own premises or at the trainees' worksite to all the recognised standards; courses can also be tailored to particular requirements.

While Graham obviously swears by the training process it is never a substitute for on-the-job experience. It's rather like being able to pass your driving test without ever having set wheel on a motorway. 'A guy can go on a course get his ticket and off he goes with no experience whatsoever', he said. 'If he comes across something untoward he has no idea what to do.

'We've just had a mature student with us from Sparshot on work experience and he's proved his worth in 10 days', he continued. 'These guys are few and far between so we've now offered him a full-time job. He'll stay with us for two to three years then go off on his own'. And so the cycle continues.