A few tidbits of worthless info concerning pole saws and there use. We use them for many, many hours each fall clearing ski trails, in fact we bring a regular saw with us but rarely use it. If we could only bring one saw along, it would be a pole saw. We work from a UTV and could not bring with us a telescoping type of pole saw because of the short bed this machine has. On the type of saws we have, they break into a power head and saw end, each is only about 4ft long and fits into our cargo box very well. While out working, we also need string heads and steel brush cutters heads and this allows us to take care of whatever we find out there. Having separate power heads also allows us redundancy in case we have a failure of shorts. So we have three power heads, 2 saws ends, multiple string heads, steel heads, etc, etc. Of course we don't being all those extra heads with us every day.
As others have mentioned, pole sawing for hours on end is quite strenuous, so we trade out sawyers.
I know the the poster did ask about Stihl machines. Our Echo's run out of fuel, long before the bar oil is gone.
On these we have bend stems, bars, broke chains etc etc. And the tank will lose oil now and then. I thought the bar oil tank has crack but that wasn't the case. Nonetheless, we use these tools hard and found them quite good. We also have a good dealer here. That IS SO important...
Maybe this info will help someone!