When Urbana, Illinois, arborist Mike Poor first rolled onto a job site with a remote-controlled knuckleboom crane in the late 1990s, the reactions were a mix of awe and head scratching. “That is the oddest-looking crane I’ve ever seen,” one colleague quipped.

Image/Mark Moeske

The odd crane in the yard
Traditional boom cranes had long been the industry’s standard for heavy picks, and bucket trucks were the go-to for pruning. But Poor’s bright-red Effer, with its folding joints and hydraulic reach, looked more like a piece of military hardware than an arborist’s tool. He wasted no time proving its worth.

On a honey-locust pruning job, the knuckleboom’s multiple knuckles and extensions slipped branches out from tight canopies that would have tied up a bucket truck. In storm cleanup, it hoisted massive cottonwoods off homes, sparing crews the dangerous climb.

“Not often is the climber the crane operator and the climber.”

That idea, equal parts practical and provocative, kicked off a forum thread on TreeBuzz in 2006 that would run 27 pages and span years. What began as one arborist sharing his unusual rig evolved into a rolling case study of how knucklebooms could change tree care.

Remote control and raised stakes
Remote control was the hook. Forum members were fascinated – and a little unsettled – by the notion of a climber wearing the controls on his belt while also directing cuts aloft. “Is OSHA even OK with that?” asked one poster. The answer: There wasn’t much in the standards either way.

Poor argued that in many cases, the remote improved safety. “There’s no better place to see what’s going on than from the top of the tree,” he wrote. Traditional operators at ground level often had their sight lines blocked by foliage or structures. A climber-operator, on the other hand, could reposition in real time.

But the risks were clear, too. “Cranes raise the stakes of safety,” Poor cautioned. “An unsafe attitude with a crane equals catastrophe.”

Geometry wars: Bridges, wires and impossible picks
As the thread grew, so did the gallery of jobs where knucklebooms outshone their straight-boom cousins. One Siberian elm sprawled across three properties and into a thicket of service wires. With a standard crane, the job would have meant tedious, piecemeal rigging. With the knuckleboom, Poor tucked in tight, sliced short sections to stay within load charts and flew them out with surgical precision.
In another story, a drainage ditch was choked with Celtis trees hemmed in by primaries on two sides, water on the third and a pedestrian bridge on the fourth. A boom crane couldn’t reach. Poor’s knuckleboom reached under the bridge, felled stems into the creek and dragged them out. Forum members marveled at the photos: Log tops emerging from beneath a concrete span, guided by a fly jib that articulated 30 degrees past horizontal.

“It’s like a bucket truck with 100 feet of side reach and a log truck, all in one.”

Grapples, gadgets and growing pains
By the mid-2000s, the TreeBuzz thread had shifted from proving the crane’s legitimacy to pushing its limits. Members debated grapple attachments, wondering whether a knuckleboom could act like a feller-buncher. Poor dumped cold water on the fantasy: “The torsion forces would destroy your crane. Maybe OK for non-critical lifts, but not for tree work.”

Still, the dream didn’t die. He later added a Rig’em & Roll (R&R) grapple, which allowed him to “hold the pick at a certain angle” and pluck limbs without spider legs or taglines. The R&R proved to be both reliable and time saving, especially when dismantling cabled hackberries or leaning maples.

“I tie into it (my crane) and fly almost every day.”

There were growing pains, too. Forum user JonB admitted his toggle-switch remote was so twitchy he once “nutted a guy with the hook” (head butted) while loading logs.

These side stories underscored that adoption wasn’t always smooth. But the trajectory was clear; what started as one man’s oddball setup was becoming a platform others were experimenting with in their own fleets.

The heavyweights arrive
The final chapters of the thread read like an arms race. Poor shared photos of the world’s largest knucklebooms – 160 feet of side reach, lifting 100,000 pounds at close quarters. He announced he had purchased a 175-ton-meter model himself. Forum members gawked. “Holy smokes,” wrote one. “I wanna own.”

By then, the conversation had matured. It wasn’t just about reach and lifts anymore, but about DOT regulations, payload limits and outrigger math. Poor shared tricks for spreading weight across driveways, noting that in 500 residential pull-ins, he had cracked only a handful. He fielded questions about models, sections, fly jibs and costs (“about $350–400k for my 55-ton-meter, $600k for the 220”).

“The right equipment pays for itself if you’re careful and keep it busy.”

What had begun with skepticism – “That is the oddest-looking crane I’ve ever seen!” – ended with colleagues asking for specs, training offers and used-equipment listings. By the late 2000s, knucklebooms were no longer novelties. They were tools arborists were budgeting for, arguing over and, in some cases, buying outright.

The legacy of a forum thread
Looking back, the 27-page TreeBuzz thread is more than a photo album of cranes and cuts. It’s a record of how innovation spreads in the tree care world – not through glossy brochures, but through gritty stories, problem-solving and peer critique.

Knucklebooms offered a new way to think about tree removals – combining the lifting power of cranes with the finesse of articulated joints and the autonomy of remote control. They showed arborists how to fly logs out from backyards hemmed in by wires, or to dismantle storm-battered pines without sending climbers into widowmakers.

The thread’s final lesson wasn’t just technical, but cultural; arborists, like their machines, are adaptable. Given the chance, they’ll test, tweak and sometimes nut their co-workers – but ultimately, they’ll redefine what’s possible.