BY JARED BAXTER

“How much does it cost to cut down a tree?”

Well, that is a “million-dollar question.” To help answer the question, let’s go through a hypothetical scenario.

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BY RYFE GREENWOOD

On a cold February day, “Derek,” my groundie, stopped working and began complaining of stomach pains. The other climber and I were aloft pruning a massive pin oak. I told him he would be able to drive himself home in about 10 minutes, after I hit the ground. 

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By TCIA Staff

If you’re in the tree care world, ticks are more than a seasonal nuisance – they’re an occupational hazard. On TreeBuzz, a forum where arborists swap war stories and wisdom, a recent thread dug into ticks, Lyme disease and the oddball allergy known as alpha-gal. The conversation was frank, sometimes funny and loaded with lessons for anyone who spends their workdays in the woods.

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BY DAVID M. ANDERSON, CTSP

What are the key ingredients for making a great arboricultural salesperson?

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BY ANDREAS ALUIA, CTSP, AND DYLAN PENKETHMAN

It was a perfect summer Saturday in Medford, Massachusetts, a small suburb just west of Boston. Steve Mauras, fire department district chief of neighboring Somerville, was driving by a municipal park while running errands. He glanced at the impressive oak tree that towers over the athletic fields and noticed several people suspended from ropes high up in the canopy.

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BY CHRIS GIRARD

It goes without saying that the tree care industry is filled with many people who are unsung heroes in the field of arboriculture. Robert Phillips most certainly is one of them.

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BY BRIAN KANE, PH.D.

Decay is a common defect that occurs in all parts of a tree. Decayed wood has very little strength and often leads to hollows, cavities or both. When decay or a hollow is present in a tree part, its load-bearing capacity is reduced. The amount of reduction depends on the extent of decay – how much is present and where it’s located in the cross section.

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By TCIA Staff

When a woman calling herself GoldenLarch logged into the TreeBuzz arborist forum in late 2020, she wasn’t looking for applause – she was looking for honesty. At 28, after leaving a customer-service career and earning a horticulture certificate, she’d fallen hard for trees and the art of climbing them. “The allure of climbing is so strong for me,” she wrote, though she worried whether her body – and perhaps the industry – would hold up for her.

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By TCIA Staff

Every industry breeds its own folklore. In tree work, cutting, hinging and rigging theories might make for some of the loudest campfire stories of all. On a TreeBuzz thread dealing with these topics, a post about “rip cuts” lit up the board – veteran climbers, would-be physicists and wisecracking pirates all weighing in. The premise was that a controlled tear could turn a brutal stop into a soft hand-off.

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By TCIA Staff

When Urbana, Illinois, arborist Mike Poor first rolled onto a job site with a remote-controlled knuckleboom crane in the late 1990s, the reactions were a mix of awe and head scratching. “That is the oddest-looking crane I’ve ever seen,” one colleague quipped. 

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