If you want to offer full-service property maintenance for your commercial clients, you want to add tree services to your landscaping company.
What Are the Benefits of Starting a Tree Care Company?
You'll be benefitting your commercial properties by adding tree care services. Since many older commercial properties want to preserve their existing trees, you can offer plant health care services to help the trees battle drought and heat stresses.
Also, if new commercial properties are being built, you may get calls to do the landscape maintenance, including planting trees. You can follow up with property managers by providing tree care to young trees.
Finally, you're on your customers' properties at least once a week. Your crews can keep an eye out for any trees that aren't doing well. You'll save the property manager money by removing trees before they become storm hazards.
How to Start a Tree Service Business
It's easier to buy an existing tree service with an established customer base, trained technicians, and all the equipment needed to do tree work.
According to an article in Landscape Management, landscaping company owners who bought existing tree service businesses found it easier to transition than starting a tree care company from scratch.
Learn more: Your Trimmer Line Buying Guide
Think about it. If you start a tree service, you need to buy additional equipment and train tree technicians to climb trees and prune them. You also want to add plant health care to your tree services.
While this service may not be in demand, commercial properties that have older trees will appreciate that you can send an arborist out to diagnose diseases and insect infestation.
Plus, an arborist knows how to perform plant health care on trees with root injections, disease, insect controls, and helping an established tree weather a dry summer.
However, don't advertise that you have an arborist on staff unless you have a certified arborist.
An International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) Certified Arborist® has knowledge about tree science in the following areas:
- Disease and insect diagnosis
- Safety practices
- Tree biology
- Tree care maintenance
- And practical experience working under another certified arborist.
A trustworthy tree service should have at least one certified arborist on staff with trained technicians working for them.
You will also have to invest in extra insurance covering the arborist, tree technicians, and specialized equipment. For example, you'll need to ensure you have enough insurance for a tree worker who falls out of a tree, one of the main reasons injuries happen on the job.
Read more: Download That App! How Field Service Apps Save You Time and Money
Equipment Needed to Start a Tree Business
If you decided to start your tree service division from scratch, you'd need to invest in tree care equipment and tools, such as rigging, cutting, trimming, and climbing equipment.
You should have first aid kits and emergency numbers at the ready in case someone gets hurt on the job.
Here is a list of the most common pieces of equipment and tools needed to outfit your tree service business:
For rigging equipment, you'll need:
- Cable hoists
- Carabiners
- Friction brakes
- Heavy duty and light slings
- Power pullers
- Pulleys and blocks
- Rigging plates
- Rigging thimbles
- Rope
- Swivels
- Winches.
You'll also need to invest in cutting equipment:
- Axe and wedges
- Chainsaws
- Hand saws
- Hatchets
- Pole saws
- Pruners
- Tree loppers
- Wood chippers.
For trimming equipment, you'll need:
- Chainsaws
- Hatchets
- Hydraulic tools
- Landscaping tools
- Pruners
- Saw scabbards
- Tree loppers.
You'll need the following climbing equipment:
- Ascenders and descenders
- Carabiners, pulleys, and ropes
- Eye slings
- Hard hats or helmets
- Protective clothing or chaps
- Radios
- Saddles
- Spurs
- Straps
- Tails
- Work gloves with grips.
As you grow, you'll want to invest in trucks that have cherry pickers to take the tree worker up the tree without having to climb it.
How MowMore Can Help You
At MowMore.com, we sell a selection of chaps that will completely cover your technician's body found on our website's Safety and Apparel tab. We also have pruners under the Landscapers Tools and Accessories tab.
As we grow, we'll be adding more tree service equipment. In the meantime, if you don't see what you need, we can get it for you. All you need to do is find your OEM part# and chat with MowMore.
At MowMore, we're your one-stop online shop for all of your commercial landscape maintenance equipment needs. If you have any questions about your landscape equipment and replacement parts, call our customer service today at 1-800-866-9667 or fill out our contact form.
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Sources:
AmericanArborists.net, What Kind of Equipment Do Tree Pros Use?
BalsigerInsurance.com, Tree Removal Equipment.
LandscapeManagement.net, Making Profits with Tree Services.
TreesAreGood.org, Why Hire an Arborist?