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With its strong focus on the customer, safety and training, BIK Boom Trucks has become a household name for trucks and knuckle-boom cranes in the tree care industry.

Founded in 1990, its original business was servicing hydraulic equipment. But a shift to manufacturing boom trucks came at the urging of their customers, according to Jeff Stutt, vice president of marketing and sales. “Back in those days, BIK started off as a service-first company, and then we dealt in used trucks, but more and more customers pushed us for new boom trucks,” Stutt says.

“So by the mid-1990s, we started providing truck-mounted knuckle booms, and one thing led to the next. In 2005, we moved into our large state-of-the-art assembly facility in Toronto, and we’ve continued to expand both in Canada and the United States.”

Headquartered in Toronto with locations in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Boston, Massachusetts, the company continues to grow. “We’re in the process of building an additional assembly facility in the Southeast,” says Stutt.

Finding its niche
Elemer Ivan, BIK’s founder and owner, relates what makes his company’s approach different. “With more than 3,000 knuckle booms sold, we have a rich history in the knuckle-boom business. We had our hand in the tree care space maybe 1% of our time up to 2015. However, since 2016, with the advent of the grapple saw, we’ve increased our penetration in a very large way,” says Ivan. “A lot of people are still learning about grapple saws and how they apply to the tree care business, but this tool is making companies safer and more efficient and is revolutionizing the industry.

“We have specialized in producing large knuckle booms for New York City since the late 1990s,” Ivan continues. “With a very short and compact wheelbase and length, they’re ideal for very tight spaces such as the streets of Manhattan.

“We have a common saying, ‘Access mitigates reach,’” says Ivan. “For instance, we have the shortest and most compact 100-ton knuckle boom you will find in North America. The BIK Grapple-Saw Series TC-126 ‘Super-Short Edition,’ with a 204-inch wheelbase, achieves full load-chart capacity throughout 360 degrees of rotation.”

It’s all about the customer
Despite its change to manufacturing, BIK still prides itself on its service, according to Ivan.

“We’re really interested in not only beginning a relationship with a customer by selling them the truck, but also in helping maintain the relationship in terms of maintenance, service and maximizing return on investment,” Ivan says.

Stutt goes a step further. “The strength of BIK is the family-owned and -operated
business strategy. We’re a big company, but maintain small-business core values, and in doing so we have flexibility. We’ve always had the philosophy to build spectacularly engineered units for our customers that our competition can’t really match.”

Training
All companies provide some sort of training to review features on a product after a sale, but BIK goes beyond that by providing what they call “operator familiarization and orientation.”

“Today, more than 90% of tree care companies have never owned a crane or a piece of equipment at this level of complexity,” Ivan explains. “When we sell a new grapple-saw boom truck, the customer receives complimentary delivery of the truck and a three-day
‘operator-development program,’ which is provided by NJ Crane Expert. It’s about ensuring our customers are successful out of the gate. It goes over proper setup, watching out for hazards, how to properly approach taking down a tree and how to set up your job site in the most efficient way possible to maximize success.

“After three days, the operator will be competent enough to operate the boom in a safe manner,” says Ivan.

Responding to a need
Every tree care company knows the damage a natural disaster like a tornado or hurricane can bring and what comforts are lacking for those in the rescue effort. BIK manufactures a line of storm-ready, grapple-saw knuckle-boom trucks and debris cranes designed specifically for such work.

“During Hurricane Helene, our customers were talking about sleeping under their trucks, not having any creature comforts,” says Kyle Biancardi, director of grapple-saw boom-truck sales. “They couldn’t get a meal warmed up, they had no extra fuel. So we set up a truck specifically designed to cover everything a customer could possibly need in the storm environment. Our ‘Super Storm Edition’ TC-126 model is like a home on wheels and features a sleeper cab, security cameras and a mini kitchen with a refrigerator and microwave. It has spare diesel-fuel tanks with nozzles so customers can fuel their trucks. It has Wi-Fi and even a gun safe, among other things.

“We had about 20 of our customer trucks working that (North Carolina) area for (Helene) cleanup,” says Biancardi. “BIK supplied three of our own full-service trucks to help support our customers, and even customers with competitor crane brands. Uptime is crucial during a storm, and you’re talking about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars if your equipment is down during a cleanup. It comes back to how we position ourselves with our partners, and we’re shoulder to shoulder with them at ground zero.”

Partnering on safety
Ivan says BIK joined TCIA in an effort to work together on increased safety protocols. “We have been members of TCIA since 2015, and we’re very interested in working with them to develop safety practices and to standardize the industry with methodologies and processes that currently are not in existence in the tree care world,” says Ivan.

“BIK, with our experience and knowledge from other industries, can help establish safe standards and practices, such as mandatory annual inspections of knuckle booms. Right now, there is a very loose annual inspection OSHA requires, but we believe the industry should X-ray the boom annually as opposed to once every 10 years, to prevent a failure or catastrophe.”

TCI EXPO giveaway
The BIK collaboration with TCIA will go beyond just focusing on safety at TCI EXPO ’25, November 6-8 in St. Louis, Missouri, with a one-of-a-kind giveaway at its booth. By placing an order for a new BIK Series grapple truck, you’ll have the chance to win one of three prizes. The grand prize, a 1969 classic Pontiac, and the second prize, a mini skid steer, will be on display at BIK’s booth, #2313. Third prize is airfare to and accommodations at the 2026 TCIA Winter Management Conference, to be held February 2-6, 2026, in Costa Rica. To enter, place orders September 1 through noon Friday, Nov. 7. The giveaway will be announced at 2:30 p.m. Friday during TCI EXPO.

“We’ll also be debuting a new, large-model boom truck that is in between a TC-126 and a TC-170 size,” says Ivan.

Conclusion
With its dedicated efforts related to outstanding engineering and worker training to ensure safe operation, BIK has clearly made its mark lifting the bar for the tree care industry.

Tim Bartelt is a freelance writer based in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and has more than 20 years of work experience in the
outdoor-power-equipment industry.

TCI Magazine’s Corporate Member Spotlight is a paid feature. References to products and services do not represent an endorsement by TCIA. This article is sponsored by BIK Boom Trucks. Contact advertising@tcia.org for more information.