Paul Ginty has been a serious student of the economics and efficiencies of the tree care business for the dozen years he has operated Paul’s Tree Service in Delran, N.J.
“I didn’t have anyone to teach me the tree service business,” he says, “so I had to figure things out as I went along, and I made mistakes. I purchased equipment that turned out to be too small, but I just didn’t know. I’ve learned a lot since I started.”
The lessons he’s learned
Early in my career I got a big job and had to hire two extra guys for two days at a cost of $400,” says Ginty. “Later I purchased a front-end loader for $398 a month. So I got a loader for the entire month for the same price as two workers for two days. That made me a big believer in investing in the right equipment.”
You will see some people in the tree care business using an axe to take out small stumps or they tie the stumps to their pickup and try ripping them out. They are not working efficiently.
“Neither are the guys taking down branches, stacking them on a truck and hauling them to the dump. While that’s going on, four or five employees will be sitting on the lawn waiting for the truck to return,” says Ginty. “With two employees going to and from the dump a couple of times a day, you easily could waste $75 to $100 a day on people being nonproductive. Multiply that times 20 days a month — that’s a lot of money.”
Ginty goes on to say that if he knew back then what he knows now, he would have purchased equipment a little differently and would have made more money. Even though when you buy tree service equipment it might seem like a big investment in the beginning, it pays off over time. You can really make money with the right equipment.
“My first chipper couldn’t handle the volume of work. Instead of doing three jobs a day,” says Ginty, “I was doing two and risking the chance of a competitor taking that third job because I couldn’t get to it, or having a customer change his mind. Once I settled on the correct-size brush chipper (three Vermeer® BC1800XL brush chippers) to match my workload, I became very efficient. Matching equipment to the type of tree care jobs is vitally important.”
At one time Ginty thought a monthly brush chipper payment would be too much, but when he added up the savings of having fewer employees — “The workman’s comp, trips to the dump, stopping work to get to the dump before it closes, less wear and tear on trucks, gas — it was a good business decision for my company to own a chipper.”
“A few years ago I had a $2,000 job removing about 20 trees from a very large property,” he says. “We had a crew of about a half dozen, as I recall, along with a BC1800XL chipper and a SC252 stump cutter (he also has an SC352 and an SC1102A stump cutter). Because we had the right equipment, the job was completed in less than seven hours. I was not paying anyone to stand around and watch. Over the years Ginty has learned the value of working with landscapers. A landscaper can throw 50 jobs a year your way since most would prefer not to bother with tree care work. And because that’s all Ginty does, they don’t worry about him stealing their customers. If you show up on time, do a good job and don’t damage any property, the landscaper looks good to his customer.
“I think people have respect for a tree care professional who pulls up in a clean-looking truck and nice equipment. A lot of my customers are amazed at what I can do with a chipper,” says Ginty. “On one job I cut down 20 25-foot-tall evergreen trees that were about a foot thick. I picked them up with my forklift, took them right up to the chipper. An entire tree was mulched in four minutes, and the homeowner couldn’t believe what he was watching.”