A young tree lopper has gone viral overnight after sharing his wild tradie stories during a streetside interview.
In typical TikTok fashion, popular jobseeking app Getahead stopped the Brisbane man in the street last week in the hopes of recreating one of their now infamous ‘outrageous tradie pay’ viral videos.
But when asked what he did for a living and how much he made, the lovable larrikins personality stole the show.
@getahead.app
How much can you make as a Tree Lopper in Brisbane, Australia📍🌳
When asked how he got started in the business, the man recounted how getting “revenge” after a childhood accident led him to once earn 26k for his boss in a single week.
“I had a bit of a hate for em, so I just used to love cutting them down,” he told Getahead.
“When I was a kid I bloody fell out of a tree and broke my back in four places… I should’ve been paralysed.”
He continued saying the injury also meant he shrunk due to the compression fracture.
“My mate come to the hospital and said, ‘bro I heard you broke your back you alright?’ and I sort of waddled out of bed and I stood up and he goes ‘how have you lost so much height’.”
The man said it was ironic he was now making a lucrative career out of chopping down the towering timber, claiming he had a bit of “hate” for the trees at the start.
“One week there, I made 26k cash for one of me bosses, and he was spinning out. He’s like, I’ve never made this money in my life,” he told the interviewer.
But the tradie tales didn’t stop there, with the man recounting one wild story of an upset Aussie trying got interfere with the job.
“We had this tree hugger and he chained himself to this tree,” the tree lopper said.
“Old mate ended up just knocking him out and dragging him on the street.
“And I was just like. . . I love this trade.”
Amassing almost half a million views in a few short weeks, Aussies were unsurprisingly quick to embrace the ‘legend’ on social media, with many calling for more content from the ‘king’.
“Give this bloke a TV show,” one wrote.
“I could listen to this man recite the phone book,” another Aussie said.
“Best Getahead interview so far.”
Are TikTok tradie pays legit?
The tree loppers hilarious antics are only just the latest in a long line of videos (mostly by Getahead) going viral around Australia, with some sparking backlash over the eye watering figures tradies claim they are raking in every week on the tools.
In another viral TikTok video, a diesel fitter claimed to bring in $130 per hour – or $250,000 for a standard 38-hour work week.
A young scaffolder also said he was bringing home a whopping $3k a week – after tax!?
But Carpentry Australia chief executive Jake McArthur and its head of development Nathan Quinn recently went on Sunrise to squash any rumours, claiming that hard work, skills, education and a low starting wage were the reality for trade jobs.
‘There’s a bit of a hoo-ha about this particular TikTok,’ Mr McArthur said.
‘But we need to understand what’s behind those pay packets. It’s things like risk, [a variety] of different roles, of responsibilities, [and] skills.’
According to Trade Risk, a tradie’s average gross salary in 2023 was $90,940, which is an 11 per cent increase from their 2019 data.
