How to Price Tree Work: Crew Day Rates, Removals, Stump Grinding and Storm Jobs

Most pricing advice for tree work is either a national price chart for homeowners or a rule of thumb passed around a forum, like a dollar figure per foot of height. Neither is any use to a small tree service with one or two crews, a bucket truck or a climber, a chipper and a stump grinder. A chart tells you what other people charged somewhere else. A rule of thumb treats a sixty foot pine in an open yard the same as a sixty foot oak over a garage.

This guide gives you a method built from your own costs, so the number it produces is one the business can survive on. It is the pricing side of tree service marketing for a small-town company.

Step one: know what a crew day costs

Tree work is sold by the job but paid for by the day. Every morning the crew rolls out, the business is spending money, so the first number you need is what one crew day actually costs.

Add up a full year of:

• People. Every wage on the crew, plus payroll taxes, workers' compensation and anything else that comes with each hour. Include a fair wage for yourself, whether you climb, run the saw or spend the day estimating.
• Equipment. Payments or depreciation on the truck, chipper, stump grinder, lift and saws, spread over the years you expect to keep them. Add fuel, repairs, bar oil, chains, teeth, rope and rigging, which wear out fast in this trade.
• Insurance. Tree work carries some of the highest liability and workers' compensation costs of any trade. Use the real premium, not the one you hope to get at renewal.
• Overhead. The office, the phone, the accountant, estimating time, the website and the days lost to weather.

Divide that total by the days the crew was actually billed last year, not the days it could have worked. A crew that bills three days a week costs far more per billed day than one that bills five. The result is your break even crew day rate. Add the margin the business needs to replace a chipper, carry a slow winter and grow, and you have your target day rate. Customers never see it. You build every quote from it.

Step two: estimate the job in crew hours

On the site visit, the question is not how big the tree is. It is how long your crew will spend on it, and with what. Look at:

• Height and spread, and how much wood will come down.
• What is underneath. Open lawn lets you fell or drop big pieces. A roof, a fence, a garden, power lines or the neighbour's car means climbing, rigging and lowering every piece, which can take several times as long.
• Access. Can the truck and chipper get close, or does every log and brush pile get carried or dragged? Is there a gate the chipper will not fit through?
• The tree's condition. Dead, hollow or split trees cannot be trusted to hold a climber or a rigging point the way a healthy one can.
• Equipment you will rent. A crane, a larger lift or a log loader for a single job is a real cost and belongs in that job's price.

Turn that into crew hours, multiply by the target rate (as an hourly share of the day rate), and add disposal and rentals. As a made-up illustration (use your own figures): a removal that needs half a crew day to climb and rig over a roof, an hour of chipping and two loads of wood hauled is priced as that time at your rate plus the haul and the dump fee, not as a figure per foot that happened to fit the last tree.

Then set a minimum charge. A small job still costs the truck roll, the setup and the travel.

Removals, trimming and stump grinding are priced differently

Removals are the biggest jobs and the riskiest. Price them from crew time, state what is included, and be clear about the wood: chipped and hauled, logs left in rounds, or cut to firewood length. Customers compare quotes without noticing these differences, so name them.

Trimming and pruning is quicker to underestimate than removal, because it looks like less work. Price it by the hours it will take to climb or lift into the tree and clean up properly. Say what you will do in plain words (deadwood out, clearance over the roof, raised over the driveway) rather than a percentage of the canopy nobody can check.

Stump grinding is often where small companies lose money quietly. A grinder has to be loaded, hauled and set up for a single stump, so many companies price by diameter with a minimum, or bundle grinding into the removal and say so. Always state what happens to the grindings and the hole. If you do not, the customer will assume topsoil and seed.

Write the risk into the quote

Trees hide things too: rot inside a sound looking trunk, metal grown into the wood, a root plate wrapped around a sewer line. You can pad every quote to cover what might happen, or you can write the assumptions down. A quote that says what you will do, what you will haul, what you will leave, and what changes the price if you find something unexpected protects you without making the honest job more expensive.

Say plainly that you are insured and that you will send the certificate on request. A careful customer wants to know before they let you near the house, and the uninsured outfit that underbids you cannot say it.

Storm work

Storms bring the busiest days of the year and the hardest pricing decisions. A tree on a roof, a split trunk hung up in another tree or a limb across a power line is slower and more dangerous than a planned removal, and pricing that extra time and risk is fair. Price it from the same crew day rate, with the extra hours and the reason stated.

What does not hold up in a small town is charging far more simply because people are desperate. The neighbours compare notes, and the name you built over years goes with it. Some states also limit price increases after a declared emergency, so know the rules where you work before the next storm. Insurance work adds its own paperwork: give the homeowner an itemized invoice they can submit, and be careful about promising what their insurer will pay.

Check against the local market, last

Once the number is built, compare it with what tree work goes for in your area. Homeowners will often show you another quote, and other tree companies, property managers and landscapers will usually tell you roughly where the market sits.

• If you are far below the market, you are leaving money behind, or someone is quoting without insurance, disposal or cleanup.
• If you are far above it, look at how many days the crew sits idle before you cut the rate. A crew that bills more days costs less per job, and the fix for that is steady work, which is what the tree service marketing guide is for.

Check the quote against what the job took

The most useful pricing tool a small tree service has is its own records. After each job, write down the crew hours it actually took next to the hours you quoted. Within a season you will see which jobs you underestimate (usually trimming, tight backyards and anything rigged over a structure) and you can correct the next quote instead of the next year.

When and how to raise your prices

Review your crew day rate every winter with last year's real costs and billed days. Signs you are too cheap:

• The crew is booked weeks out, outside of storm season.
• You win almost every quote you give.
• Insurance, fuel, repairs or wages went up and your rate did not.

Tell repeat customers and property managers the new rates before spring, in writing, with the reason in one sentence. Our post on raising prices in a small-town business covers how to word it, and the five numbers every service business should know covers the records that tell you when.

Prices on your website

Tree work cannot honestly be priced from a form, so do not pretend it can. What the website can do is explain how you quote: that estimates are free (if they are), what a quote includes, how cleanup, wood and stumps are handled, and that you are insured. That answers most of the questions a customer has before they call. The general question is covered in should I put prices on my website. If you also mow or do yard work, the lawn care pricing guide uses the same method for recurring work.