Why hours matter more than the rate
On a three-person crew at about $300 per crew hour, a one-hour miss on a single person is $100. A one-hour miss for the whole crew is $300. The hourly rate calculator gets the rate right; this guide is about the hours it gets multiplied by.
Estimate by task, not by tree
"That's a four-hour tree" is a guess. Breaking the job into steps makes the guess checkable:
- Setup: parking, cones, gear out, tie-in. Usually 0.25 to 0.5 hours.
- Climb or bucket work: the core cutting time. Scales with size and whether pieces fall or are lowered.
- Rigging and lowering: double or triple free-fall time near targets.
- Chipping and dragging: depends on drag distance to the chipper.
- Log handling: cut to rounds, load or stack.
- Cleanup: rake, blow, final walk. 0.5 hours minimum on a residential lawn.
- Drive: round trip for the whole crew.
Add padding for what you cannot see
Add 10% on a clear site, 15% where there are targets or hidden conditions, and 20% or more on dead or hazard trees, which break unpredictably. Padding is not profit; it is the cost of the things you honestly cannot know from the ground.
Log estimated vs. actual on every job
| Job | Estimated crew hrs | Actual | Miss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two oaks, rigging over fence | 22.5 | 24.0 | +7% |
| Pine removal, open yard | 9.0 | 8.5 | −6% |
| Maple over garage | 15.0 | 19.5 | +30% |
After ten jobs a pattern appears: most crews are close on open-yard work and consistently short on rigging-heavy jobs. That tells you exactly which difficulty multiplier to raise. The full spreadsheet's job log does this automatically; a notebook works too.
Turn the hours into a price
With hours by task and equipment by the hour, the free tree service pricing calculator gives you the cost and a quote. For the site walkthrough that feeds the task list, see how to quote a tree removal job.
