June 9, 2026 · Job Pilot Team

Adding Tree Care Services to Your Landscaping Business: What You Need to Know

Equipment, certifications, insurance, and pricing considerations for adding tree trimming and removal to your landscaping services.

The Call You Keep Turning Down

You’re finishing a fall cleanup at a long-time client’s property. The gutters are clear, the beds are blown out, and the lawn looks sharp. As you’re loading the trailer, the homeowner points up at the massive oak hanging over their roof. “Any chance you guys can take care of that dead limb up there? It’s been keeping me up at night every time the wind picks up.”

You look at the limb — it’s 30 feet up, four inches in diameter, and leaning right over the gutter line. You don’t have the equipment, the training, or the insurance to touch it. So you say what you always say: “That’s really a tree service job. I can give you a couple names.”

The homeowner nods, slightly disappointed. They’ll call someone else. And that someone else will collect $400 to $800 for a job that took 45 minutes. Meanwhile, you drove away from money that was literally hanging right above your head.

If this keeps happening — and for most landscapers, it does — it might be time to seriously consider adding tree care to your service menu.

Why Tree Care Is a Natural Expansion

Landscapers and tree service companies share the same client base, the same properties, and often the same season. Your mowing and maintenance clients already trust you. They already have you on their property every week or two. When a tree issue comes up, you’re the first person they think of.

The demand is consistent and largely recession-resistant. Trees don’t stop growing because the economy slows down. Dead limbs still need to come down. Storm damage still needs to be cleaned up. And unlike mowing — where price competition is intense and margins are thin — tree work commands premium pricing because most homeowners can’t do it themselves and they know it.

Adding tree care also smooths out your seasonal revenue. Trimming and pruning work fills the late fall and winter months when mowing revenue drops off. Storm damage cleanup is unpredictable but often urgent and high-ticket. If you can offer tree services, you give your crew year-round work instead of laying them off every November.

The Requirements: Certification, Insurance, and Training

This is where you need to be honest with yourself. Tree care isn’t just “landscaping but higher up.” It’s genuinely dangerous work with specific knowledge requirements. Cutting corners here can get someone killed, and it can get your business sued out of existence.

ISA Certification. The International Society of Arboriculture offers the ISA Certified Arborist credential. It’s not legally required in most states, but it’s the industry standard for credibility. The exam covers tree biology, pruning standards, safety, pest identification, and risk assessment. Having an ISA Certified Arborist on staff — even if it’s you — immediately separates your business from the guy with a chainsaw and a pickup truck. Clients trust it. Insurance companies respect it. Commercial property managers often require it.

Specialized insurance. Your general liability policy almost certainly doesn’t cover tree work. You’ll need to contact your insurance provider and add tree care coverage, which increases your premium. The increase varies depending on your state and the scope of work (trimming only vs. full removal), but expect a meaningful bump. Some carriers won’t cover tree work at all, so you may need a specialty insurer. Do not skip this step. A single accident without proper coverage could end your business.

Training and safety. Before anyone on your crew touches a chainsaw above ground level, they need formal training. OSHA has specific standards for tree care operations. Aerial rescue techniques, proper rigging, chainsaw safety, and hazard assessment are all non-negotiable. Many local arborist associations and community colleges offer tree care training programs. Budget for this upfront — it’s an investment in your crew’s safety and your company’s longevity.

Starting with Trimming Before Full Removal

You don’t have to offer the full spectrum of tree services on day one. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. Full tree removals — especially large trees near structures — require heavy equipment (cranes, stump grinders, large chippers), advanced rigging skills, and significant experience. The liability exposure is high and the margin for error is small.

A smarter path is to start with trimming and pruning. This work requires a quality chainsaw, a reliable bucket truck or a skilled climber, a chipper, and proper safety gear. The equipment investment is meaningful but manageable — a used bucket truck runs $25,000 to $60,000, and a commercial chipper is $15,000 to $40,000 new.

Trimming and pruning have excellent margins. A residential pruning job might take two to three hours and command $300 to $1,200 depending on the number of trees, access difficulty, and debris volume. Your materials cost is essentially fuel and saw maintenance. The work is lower risk than full removal, and it builds the experience your crew needs before taking on bigger jobs.

Once you’ve established a track record with trimming — and once your crew has the skills and confidence — you can expand into selective removals (smaller trees, trees with clear drop zones) and eventually full-scale removal work if the business case supports it.

Pricing Tree Work: Per Job vs. Per Hour

Tree work pricing varies widely, and there’s no single right approach. Most established tree services price per job rather than per hour, because the variables — tree height, diameter, species, proximity to structures, access difficulty, and disposal requirements — make hourly rates unreliable.

For trimming, assess the scope on site and provide a flat quote. Consider the number of cuts, whether you’ll need to climb or use a bucket, how much debris will be generated, and how long cleanup will take. A straightforward trim on a small maple in an open yard is a very different job from pruning a 60-foot oak that overhangs a pool deck.

For removals, factor in the tree’s size, the complexity of the takedown (can you fell it in one piece, or does it need to be dismantled in sections?), the stump grinding, and the haul-away. Get in the habit of over-estimating complexity on your first few jobs. It’s better to come in under budget than to realize mid-job that you underbid a difficult removal by $1,500.

As a general benchmark, tree trimming typically falls between $75 and $200 per man-hour when you back into the numbers. Full removals can range from $500 for a small tree to $5,000 or more for a large, complex takedown. Your local market, your overhead, and your equipment investment all affect where you land in these ranges.

Managing Tree Jobs Alongside Mowing Routes

The operational challenge of adding tree work is scheduling. Mowing routes are predictable and recurring — the same properties, the same days, the same crew. Tree jobs are project-based, variable in duration, and often require different equipment and personnel.

The key is to separate the two operationally. Don’t pull your mowing crew off a route to handle a tree job. Instead, build a dedicated tree crew (even if it starts as just two people) and schedule tree work independently. This keeps your recurring maintenance revenue stable while you build the tree division.

Use your job management system to keep both workflows visible. When tree jobs and mowing routes live in the same scheduling platform, you can see crew availability across the whole business, avoid double-booking, and make sure the tree crew’s schedule is full without disrupting maintenance operations. Job Pilot handles both recurring maintenance scheduling and one-off project jobs in the same system, which makes running parallel service lines straightforward.

Adding tree care to your landscaping business isn’t a casual decision. It requires real investment in equipment, training, and insurance. But for landscapers who are tired of turning down high-margin work that’s literally hanging over their clients’ properties, it’s one of the most natural and profitable expansion paths in the industry. Start with trimming, build your skills, and grow into it deliberately.