1. Before you get out of the truck
Note the drive time from your yard and whether the street allows a chip truck and chipper to park. A job with no street parking can add an hour of dragging brush. Write both down before you say hello; they are easy to forget once you are talking about the tree.
2. Walk the tree, not the customer's description
- Size: estimate height and trunk diameter at chest height. You do not need precision; you need the right bracket (under 30 ft, 30–60, over 60).
- Condition: dead wood is brittle and cannot be climbed the same way. Look for cavities, fungus, and lean.
- Drop zone: can pieces fall, or must every section be rigged and lowered? This is the biggest single driver of hours.
- Targets: house, garage, fence, power service drop, landscaping, septic lid. Each one moves the difficulty up a level.
- Access: gate width, slope, soft ground. A 36-inch gate means no skid steer and everything carried by hand.
3. Ask four questions
- Do you want the wood hauled or left in rounds?
- Stumps ground, and how deep?
- Are there sprinklers, invisible fence or buried lines in the yard?
- Any date constraints, HOA rules or permits you know about?
Every answer changes the price. Asking now is cheaper than a change order later.
4. Turn it into hours by task
Do not guess a total. Break the job down for your crew, then add it up.
| Task: two dead oaks by a driveway | Crew hours on site |
|---|---|
| Setup, cones, tie-ins | 0.5 |
| Climb and rig sections over the fence | 3.5 |
| Lower, drag and chip | 1.5 |
| Rake, blow, load logs | 0.5 |
| On-site hours per person | 6.0 |
With a three-person crew that is 18 crew hours on site, plus 1.5 hours of round-trip driving for all three: 22.5 crew hours. Add 10% to 15% on anything you could not see from the ground. The crew-hours guide goes deeper.
5. List the equipment and disposal
Chipper four hours, stump grinder two, chip truck six. Eight yards of chips, one dump run. Write the machine hours down the same way as crew hours; the equipment guide gives realistic hourly costs.
6. Price it, then write it
Enter the hours, equipment, disposal, difficulty and overhead into the free tree service pricing calculator. On default rates this job costs $2,299 and quotes at $3,300 for a 30% margin. Then write the estimate by line: removal, cleanup, haul, stump grinding, each priced, with the exclusions listed. The estimate template guide covers what goes on the page.
Take photos
Two photos per tree: one of the whole tree with the targets in frame, one of the base. They settle arguments about which tree, show the next crew what they are walking into, and let you compare your estimate against actual hours later.
