In my experience in consulting, sales, and fieldwork, I’ve found the vast majority of homeowners want the best for their trees. When given the proper advice, homeowners save a ton of money and preserve their trees at the same time. Guiding them away from potentially poor decisions with their trees is part of being a professional. It’s part of the fun too.

It is easy for an ethical arborist to stand out from the industry guys and the good ol’ boys. However, most homeowners don’t have much of an option when selecting a tree care service. Sure, there are plenty of tree services to choose from. But both big box tree companies and good ol’ boy cheap tree companies offer the same services at the same quality.

Both types of tree companies are modeled identically as production companies. The production tree work model does not have the trees’ best interest or the homeowner’s best interest in mind; it is not designed to.

Those businesses thrive on the naivete of both their workers and their customers. Tree care companies seldom give clients the product they think they’re paying for. As someone who cares deeply about tree longevity, this is a flagrant and abhorrent issue.

The Irony of Big Arb

“Big Arb,” as I like to call the overall production-focused arboriculture industry, doesn’t make money doing what’s best for trees. It must at least claim to be for the health of trees, though it's not entirely true. In my experience, most anti-tree companies call themselves tree “care” companies. Ironic, isn’t it?

By natural progression, the Big Arb industry has cornered itself into the pure self-preservation habits all big industries eventually obtain. All of the big industry growth has come at the cost of conscientious tree care.

Kill ‘Em All

Big Arb includes chipper manufacturers; it includes portable-lift makers, bucket trucks, big production companies, and even industry governing bodies. Big Arb is an enormous, complexly interwoven industry, like most are.

Big Arb manufacturers generally have conflicting interests with tree preservation. Their products are designed to make killing and destroying trees easier, and in turn, incentivizes arborists and tree-cutting company owners to do that. They build and sell the biggest, most productive, most polluting chippers, perpetuating the production driven tree care model. Big Arb is the key contributor to why bad practice is the norm.

As the push for productivity takes precedence over real tree care; the advent of knuckle-boom cranes with built-in chainsaws is going to replace a lot of workers who only know how to kill trees. That’s just the way the industry works, man. We’ve got a quota to hit, and you’re just not as fast as these new industry machines.

Big Arb has striven to make killing trees as fast as possible. There will still be a need for individual tree killers, but significantly less of them. It might be wise to learn how to keep trees alive.

The Standard Model of Tree Care Business

Big Arb encourages tree companies to go into significant debt buying all of the expensive equipment: big chippers and big lifts, big chainsaws to make big bucks! You’re going to need a big chipper for all the big cuts you’re making! Gotta support all these Big Arb manufacturing companies!

Most tree care companies have been convinced they need massive equipment and high operating costs because that’s the only example they’ve ever seen. They each contain the same key ingredients. They each lack most of the same ingredients, too. The Big Arb industry manufactures everything they need, and supplements it all with flimsy science to support the excessive brutalizing of trees.

Part of the narrative Big Arb has strummed up says cutting trees is for their health. Tree companies then echo the industry dogma to homeowners, claiming trees need to be pruned; that water sprouts are bad, or that trees need us. It is all very absurd.

Not only have homeowners been convinced of this, so have the industry-bred arborists and tree cutters alike.

Short-Term Thinking

While this company installed a static cable into this tree (too low in the crown), they parked directly onto the roots of an endangered American Elm. Notice the metal caps? Yikes. Grosse Pointe, MI.

Regardless of who a homeowner hires—good ol’ boys or industry guys—the result is the same. Most companies offer one product to everyone. No consideration is given to the tree’s age, recent disturbances; there’s no context at all. Take out the epicormic growth, take out “diseased” limbs, dead wood, etc. Just reasons to make arbitrary cuts on trees to feed to the chipper. Beneficial work is seldom done in tree crowns.

Trees are often frivolously pruned because a majority of tree cutters and salespeople see pruning as inconsequential. “Easy money! A couple cuts here, remove this entire limb over there—perfect! Looks great! No big deal.” Those same workers are quick to condemn trees without any in-depth analysis.

This endangered white walnut is clearly compartmentalizing poorly. This “accredited” company made many large cuts on this plant with no mindfulness towards its health or rarity. Grosse Pointe, MI.

A long-term approach with trees doesn’t allow for unscrupulous pruning that may impact the tree much later on. I know how my cuts today might impact the tree in 25 years. I can prune a tree to make it look just how a homeowner wants it, and the problems might not be apparent for another two decades. By then, they’ll never suspect that it was my fault!

The reality is my job is to maintain the well being of trees. I’ll know it’s my fault. Part of that job is to tell people that the giant limb they want to remove is a bad idea for both the tree’s longevity and long-term safety of those around it. Lack of long-term thinking from both arborists and homeowners alike contributes to the widespread bad tree work.

Real Arboriculture is Long-Term

One of Tree First’s vertical mulching projects. West Bloomfield, MI.

The thing is, real tree care doesn’t require all of the state-of-the-art equipment. Real arboriculture actually has higher profit margins because the thoughtful companies haven’t invested in all of the wood-hungry machines. Instead they invest in expertise, and as such, understand how far a Silky or an Air Spade will go in real tree care.

Real arboriculture is minimal and relatively inexpensive, for both business operators and homeowners, compared to its production counterpart. But if real arboriculture were the norm, then the Big Arb manufacturers would suffer or have to pivot their direction. And the industry won’t have that.

Instead of removing the entire trunk, Tree First retained this trunk for wildlife shelter. This environmentally mindful decision saves the homeowner a ton of money. Royal Oak, MI.

The notion that some of these tree care companies offer “complete tree care” while offering only pruning or removal is a bogus and incomplete claim. Frankly, if your company offers nothing below ground, you aren’t even close to “complete”. Plain and simple.

If the entire tree care industry converted to a modern, conservative approach, what would the industry look like? An industry where we didn’t sell unnecessary pruning, where we didn’t cut down every healthy and safe tree, where we actually climbed out to the tips to make small cuts, or where we walk away from malpractice instead of complying with it.

A lot of tree businesses would suffer. And that’s because they’ve modeled themselves off of this production framework encouraged by Big Arb. In fact, I know a company firsthand with the standard model who feels the strain of modern arboriculture becoming more popular. That company is rapidly losing arborists who are motivated for actual tree care. Every practicing Certified Arborist has left that company in the last two years.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that production arboriculture is not synonymous with tree care.

Who to believe?

Crown work can be dangerous, and as such, it can be challenging to find workers who are willing to take a risk. The workforce in the field includes the laborers who have nowhere else to go, the industry guys, and the few well-meaning arborists. The knowledge and skill gap between all these contenders is enormous. Yet we all exist on the same spectrum that is “tree care companies.”

This pruning cut was made by another “accredited” company. Completely ignoring the tree’s branch collar and damaging the trunk.

That makes finding a proper tree care company difficult for homeowners. All of us share the same arena, though our practices are vastly different. How do homeowners really know who to believe?

I should clarify here: I’ve known Certified Arborists who have horrendous practice. On the contrary, I’ve also met incredibly thoughtful arborists who have never been certified. There is no proper credential that truly shows an arborist’s (or tree cutter’s) quality.

Frankly, homeowners should be suspicious of our industry. It is easier to mess up trees than to keep them around, and that’s the norm. It is profoundly odd and unsettling to me that the tree care industry as a whole is mostly anti-tree.

Don’t get me wrong: of course, production tree work has its purpose. There is an almost infinite number of power lines to protect. Protecting our infrastructure has the utmost of importance, but making that model the industry standard is absurd and unnecessary.

Final Notes

Look, I’m not saying the real answers are being kept secret by the giant malign Big Arb. Nor am I saying that I am anti-industry or anti-business. I’m saying Big Arb has gotten itself into a crumby position, and us practicing arborists, good and bad, along with it.

Production tree work doesn’t give people the product that it claims. The factors that go into why we prune trees or remove trees are mostly industry bullshit, and most tree companies perpetuate the problem. The entire tree industry can do better if we’re ever going to improve the stigma against us. We know how the public sees us. We’re mostly responsible for that.

There is a ton of scientific information out there that’s easily accessible. The majority of arborists and business owners are only consuming enough of that information simply to put on their websites. When it comes to implementation though, forget about it; those companies are mostly just cutting and killing, as fast as possible.

I know climbing is awesome and challenging and rewarding, and rigging and cutting branches is fun. But truth be told we’ve lost sight of the entire point of tree care. I don’t know if it's even possible to right this mess.

I don’t have a solution for the industry.

What I do know is real arboriculture has a responsibility not to abuse the resilience of trees. We’ve all heard the “it’s what the customer wants” argument to justify bad practice. The customer really wants tree care, and most companies aren’t giving them that. The burgeoning of conscientious tree care is going to be hard to ignore.

It may be wise to get with it or get left behind.

Tree First