You might have seen trucks at various work sites that had an arm with a bucket attached to the top of it. This arm extends far above the truck, and people can ride up in it and stand in the bucket while working. As you may have guessed, these are called bucket trucks, or occasionally, cherry pickers. The original version was indeed used to pick cherries and other fruits in orchards at harvest time. It had a platform that could be moved up and down and a worker would stand on the platform. Not only did using a cherry picker provide more safety than using a ladder but it also eliminated damage to trees from ladders being placed against the trunks and branches. Today the modern cherry picker, the bucket truck, is used in many industries. Particularly, electrical companies like to use them. There are a couple of reasons that an electrical company would prefer to use bucket trucks instead of making their electricians shimmy up poles or ladders to do the job.