RaginCaucasian
Active member
Bought my house back in October and now come spring time I am noticing that 2 of my trees could use some trimming. Previous owner did not take care of the property at all and the trees have probably never been treated in any way. Then a few weeks ago my neighbor who is an older woman living by herself also approached me asking if we could get the trees trimmed, as she would hate to lose them since they provide decent shade for the houses and yards. One grows on our property line between the houses, so I figured we could split that. I called a tree trimmer that has trimmed most of my families trees for years and he quoted me roughly $3,000 and then on top of that would need to look at having the Ash injected to prevent some shit that's going around killing them. I will note that this guy has a tendency to over cut trees though and would end up taking some massive branches down. After getting the quote, my neighbor then tells me that her best friends son's friend works for a tree trimming and lawn service company, so she had him come out and see what he could do.
He showed up last night and I would say he's probably in his young to mid 20's. Says he's got one other guy that will come out that climbs and trims trees daily. He looks the trees over and says he can trim up the Elm by clearing just the dead. (This is the one between the houses with some branches extending over the houses, but not majorly). Says that he can clear most of the dead with extension poles, but will definitely be climbing the tree, and will only charge $275. Then he looks at the very large Ash tree I have in my back that sits behind my shop up against power lines. Previous tree guy said that it likely has never been trimmed and is surprised that the 2ft snow storm we had didn't take it out. Its limbs are quite long and extend way out from the base. Again this kid will likely just be clearing most of the dead branches to hopefully lighten the weight on the large limbs. This one he quoted $350.
After all this and with the prices he quoted, I realized that they intended this to be a side job and not through the company he works for. Originally I was under the impression that the company he worked for would be managing it as a licensed insured tree trimmer. So immediately this now sends up a bunch of red flags and realize that he could possibly hurt himself and I'd the responsible party. I'm not going to lie, the cheap part of me wants to hire him to at least get the dead cleared up, but obviously the sirens are going off that in todays day and age this is not a good idea. So now I can't help but wonder if this is something people actually do for side work? Would home owners insurance even cover someone in the instance that they did get hurt or drop a limb onto a house?
He showed up last night and I would say he's probably in his young to mid 20's. Says he's got one other guy that will come out that climbs and trims trees daily. He looks the trees over and says he can trim up the Elm by clearing just the dead. (This is the one between the houses with some branches extending over the houses, but not majorly). Says that he can clear most of the dead with extension poles, but will definitely be climbing the tree, and will only charge $275. Then he looks at the very large Ash tree I have in my back that sits behind my shop up against power lines. Previous tree guy said that it likely has never been trimmed and is surprised that the 2ft snow storm we had didn't take it out. Its limbs are quite long and extend way out from the base. Again this kid will likely just be clearing most of the dead branches to hopefully lighten the weight on the large limbs. This one he quoted $350.
After all this and with the prices he quoted, I realized that they intended this to be a side job and not through the company he works for. Originally I was under the impression that the company he worked for would be managing it as a licensed insured tree trimmer. So immediately this now sends up a bunch of red flags and realize that he could possibly hurt himself and I'd the responsible party. I'm not going to lie, the cheap part of me wants to hire him to at least get the dead cleared up, but obviously the sirens are going off that in todays day and age this is not a good idea. So now I can't help but wonder if this is something people actually do for side work? Would home owners insurance even cover someone in the instance that they did get hurt or drop a limb onto a house?
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