How to get tree work

In this article

Tree work has an unusual demand curve. Most of the year it is discretionary — a homeowner has been meaning to deal with that limb for two years. Then a storm arrives and for three weeks you cannot answer the phone fast enough. Building a business on the second half alone is why so many tree companies are three years old.

Where tree work comes from

Source	What it is like	What it is worth
The job site itself	Free, immediate, and specific to this trade.	A crew in a tree is the most watchable work in any of these guides. Neighbours come out. See below.
Storm response	Feast, then nothing. Often routed through insurance companies and networks.	The highest margins you will ever earn, and the hardest weeks you will ever work.
Property managers and HOAs	Slow to win, then repeating and budgeted.	The backbone. Target HOAs with 100+ homes and managers with 10+ properties.
Municipal contracts	Formal procurement, insurance requirements, annual budgets.	Steady work between storms, and a reference that opens every other door.
Utility line clearance	Its own qualifications and its own safety regime.	Large, ongoing, and not entry‑level. Worth knowing it exists as a direction.
Referral chains	Arborists, landscapers, roofers, agents.	High trust, low price sensitivity, and free.

The job site is your best advertising

No other trade in this catalogue gets this. A crew rigging a large tree down is genuinely interesting to watch, it takes hours, and every neighbour with a tree they have been worrying about will walk over.

• Give the crew something to hand out. A magnet or a card, in a pocket, before the day starts. The conversation happens whether you planned for it or not.
• Put a sign on the truck and one at the kerb. People photograph it.
• Leave the site immaculate. Raked, blown, chips gone. The neighbours are grading you on the clean‑up, not the cut — and they are the ones who will ring.
• Photograph before, during and after. The mid‑rig shot is the one that sells; it shows skill a finished stump cannot.
• Knock on the two nearest doors when you finish — not a pitch, just “we’re here all week if you want a look at anything”.

Storm work, honestly

Storm response pays for the year and it is worth being ready for, but it deserves a clearer description than it usually gets.

• It is genuinely emergency work. Hazardous trees, damaged structures, tired crews, long days. The accident rate in this trade goes up after a storm for obvious reasons.
• Much of it routes through insurance companies and response networks, so being on those lists before the weather matters is the whole preparation.
• Price it as emergency work, not as a favour, and publish the rate. Somebody with a tree on their conservatory is not shopping — but they will remember afterwards how they were treated, and so will their neighbours.
• Do not take work you cannot do safely because it is available. Storm weeks are exactly when that decision gets made badly.
• Have the certificate, the capacity and the crew sorted in advance. You cannot arrange any of it in the week itself.

The accounts worth chasing between storms

This is the work that turns a tree crew into a company, and it is won by being boring and reliable rather than cheap.

• Target size deliberately: HOAs of 100+ homes, property managers with 10+ properties, municipalities with an urban forestry programme.
• Lead with insured, certified and available. In that order. They assume you can cut.
• Attach the certificate to the first email. Half your competitors will not, and some of them cannot.
• Offer an inspection, not a quote. Walking a site and handing over a hazard list gets you in the door and shows judgement, which is what an ISA credential is for.
• Ask what went wrong with the last contractor. The most useful question in this trade and almost nobody asks it.
• Expect a slow yes. Months. Then years of renewal.
• Never let one account become a quarter of your revenue without knowing that is what you have done.

Build the referral chain

Tree work sits next to several trades that meet the customer before you do:

• Landscapers hit their ceiling at anything above head height, and would rather refer than turn work away. Be the person they call.
• Roofers and gutter companies are looking at overhanging limbs all day.
• Estate agents need a hazard tree gone before a sale closes, and they need it this week.
• Consulting arborists write reports recommending work they do not perform.
• Reciprocate. Send work back. A referral chain that only runs one way stops running.

Your listing does the between‑storm work

98% of consumers read online reviews and review signals drive roughly 15–17% of local pack rankings. In a trade where somebody is deciding who to let put a rope in a tree over their house, that is not a marketing detail — it is the whole first impression. Moving from 3.8 to 4.5 stars is worth about $24,500 a year to a $500,000 business.

Ask for the review while the chips are still on the ground and the customer is standing there relieved. That is the moment, and it does not come back.

What to stop doing

• Relying on storms. One quiet year is survivable; two is not.
• Competing on price against uninsured operators. You cannot, and the customers who choose on price are the ones who dispute the invoice.
• Quoting from photographs because it is faster. It is faster right up until it is not.
• Ignoring the small pruning jobs. They are how you meet the customer who later needs the $2,000 removal, and how you fill a week in February.

Sources

Every figure above comes from one of these, checked in August 2026.

• Tree Care Industry Magazine, storm response considerations — from the industry association, and the most honest writing available on what storm work is actually like.
• Choosing a qualified arborist — written for homeowners, which makes it a precise list of what your prospects are checking.
• Google Business Profile statistics and what Google reviews are worth — review weight in local rankings and the revenue effect of star ratings.
• The account‑targeting thresholds and the storm‑versus‑contract revenue argument are drawn from tree care trade reporting across several independent sources. Treat them as shapes, and measure your own close rate by source.