The old adage “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” couldn’t be truer for Scott Griffiths of Stanton, California. His company, Great Scott Tree Service, has been in business more than 40 years.
“I love nature and trees. I get paid to walk around a park or look at trees and educate people on how to better maintain them,” says Griffiths. “I love that part.”
With 100 employees, Great Scott is one of the largest tree care companies in Orange County. Griffiths never envisioned having a company this large.
“When I stopped trimming and had a foreman running three crews, I was able to focus on sales full time. That’s when the company grew and we started taking on commercial customers.”
Griffiths then made the decision to no longer focus the company growth on individual residential homeowners. Instead, he works with homeowner associations, commercial properties, universities and municipalities.
Integrity
“I remember my dad saying when I was a kid, ‘It takes your whole lifetime to build your character, but you can lose it overnight.’”
That advice has stuck with Griffiths all these years. He built his company — and success — on that belief. He says building a great service company takes time. You have to develop relationships and earn referrals to have your name become known in the industry. He believes building integrity from the beginning is crucial to long-term success.
“Don’t take shortcuts. Provide quality service, transparency and fair prices to your customers.”
GIS tree inventory
Great Scott developed its own geographic information system (GIS) called TrimIt. The system records the history of every tree inputted into the database. For example, Newport Beach, California, has 34,000 trees and each has its own record in TrimIt.
“We go out to every single tree to input the location, size, height and condition. TrimIt then pinpoints the location on Google Maps. We have a plotted inventory for every single tree in every city we maintain,” explains Griffiths.
Every municipality Great Scott works with uses TrimIt, and it’s becoming more popular with his commercial customers. It allows easy management of scheduling and performing work, as well as invoicing.
“We can send the customer a map with a dot for every tree we trimmed. It provides great transparency.”
Yellow equipment
Great Scott has another advantage over other tree care companies: a fleet of yellow equipment.
“I bought my first Vermeer brush chipper when I was 20 years old. It changed my life.”
Now, Great Scott runs 21 Vermeer brush chippers — BC1500s and BC1800s — and five Vermeer stump cutters — four SC372s and one SC802. Griffiths needs durable, reliable equipment that can handle the high volume of commercial and municipal work.
“We beat the heck out of the equipment,” says Griffiths. “We use our Vermeer brush chippers all day every day, five days a week. We generate 50 tons (45 tonnes) of green waste every day. Fifty tons (45 tonnes). Every single day. All processed by Vermeer brush chippers.”
That’s no chump change when it comes to chips. With thousands of trees to maintain, Griffiths also needs efficient equipment. He estimates his crews are 20 percent more productive with Vermeer brush chippers.
“We’ve tried other brush chippers, but I have never found a better machine that is as reliable and works as long,” he says. “The other chippers just can’t handle the volume of material we need to process.”
In his experience, the reputation of Vermeer equipment helps him gain new customers and employees.
“Our Vermeer equipment sends a message to our clients and workers that we have the best there is in the industry. It raises the standard of our company.”