Behind the Bark
Most tree service owners are addicted to volume. You want the phone to ring off the hook.
But let me ask you this: Is a lead that wastes two hours of your estimator’s time actually a lead?
A guy who drags you an hour across town and never books isn’t a “lead.” He’s a bill you paid.
Three estimates, 90 minutes of driving, zero booked jobs - that’s what we’re trying to kill.
Most tree services don’t have a sales problem. You have a pricing math problem.
The trouble usually starts when you estimate based on gut feel or a flat “per tree” rate. You look at a removal and think, “That’s a $1,500 job.”
Why?
Because it feels right?
Because that’s what the other guy charges?
If you don’t know your exact numbers, you’re not estimating, you’re gambling.
To price correctly, you have to stop guessing and start recovering overhead on purpose. Every billable hour has to pay for the hours you can’t bill:
Time spent quoting
Time stuck in traffic
Down time while equipment is in the shop
Insurance and admin that run 24/7
Hard question:
When you quote a job, do you know how much of that price is actually covering overhead or are you just hoping there’s enough left after payroll?
Limb of the Week
Stop Paying to Run Your Gear
Equipment makes you faster. A bucket truck, mini-skid, or grapple saw lets you finish a job in four hours that used to take eight.
Here’s the trap:
If you only bid based on crew hours, your price drops when you get faster.
You just punished yourself for investing in better gear.
Your equipment needs its own hourly rate. It has to pay for:
Purchase or lease payments
Maintenance and repairs
Fuel
Insurance
Depreciation and replacement
If you’re not billing for the chipper, bucket, or mini, you’re donating that wear and tear to the customer.
The Simple Overhead Math
Two numbers you need this week:
Overhead rate (per field hour)
Add up last month’s overhead: rent, insurance, office staff, software, phones, utilities, etc.
Divide by total field labor hours for the month.
Result = overhead dollars you must recover per billable hour.
Equipment rate (for your big iron)
Take your 2–3 most expensive pieces of gear.
Figure out what they cost you per year (payment + maintenance + insurance).
Divide by the realistic number of hours you’ll actually use them.
Result = hourly equipment rate.
Now, when you price a job, the structure looks like:
Crew hours × (labor rate + overhead rate)
Equipment hours × equipment rate
Profit
Not: “Eh… feels like $1,500.”
The Advanced Move (If You’re Running Paid Ads)
If you’re spending real money on Google or Facebook ads, here’s where it gets powerful.
Right now, your ad platform probably counts every form fill as a “win.” But a tire-kicker and a $4,000 emergency removal look exactly the same to the algorithm.
The fix: create a separate conversion for qualified leads only. These are people you’d happily drive to. High-urgency work you actually want, in your service area.
Then feed that back to the platform. You’re telling Google or Facebook:
“This person was worth my time. Go find me more like them.”
If you don’t close that loop, the algorithm just sends you random people. You’re training it to bring you gold or letting it dump trash on your doorstep.
This Week
Open your website form editor.
Add a dropdown field: “Timeline for service?”
Options: Emergency / This Week / This Month / Just BudgetingReview your last 10 estimates.
Check how many of the “Just Budgeting” folks actually booked. If almost none of them converted, that’s your sign to stop treating them like urgent leads.Update your tracking.
If you’re running ads, check whether you’re tracking “Qualified Leads” as a conversion or just generic form fills. If your ad account counts every submission as a win, you’re lying to yourself.
Sawdust
Here’s a simple way to explain your pricing to homeowners when they ask why you’re “so expensive”:
“We’re not charging you just to cut a tree down. You’re paying for the risk, the training, the specialized equipment, and the insurance that keeps everyone covered if something goes wrong.”
You’re not selling chainsaw time.
You’re selling safely removing thousands of pounds of wood next to their house without crushing anything and with full coverage if it all goes sideways.
That’s what your overhead and equipment rates are there to protect.
Kickback
Minimums aren’t greed. They’re survival.
Stop apologizing for your minimum:
“Oh, sorry, we have to charge a $300 minimum…”
A truck roll always costs money:
Travel time
Dispatch and scheduling
Fuel
Setup and teardown
The opportunity cost of where that crew could have been
If you drive 30 minutes for a $150 trim, you’re probably losing money once you add all that up.
Ask yourself:
Does your minimum actually cover the cost of sending a crew plus a margin?
Or is it just a number you picked that “sounds fair”?
If a job doesn’t cover the truck roll and a real profit, let the guy with the uninsured pickup have it. Protect your calendar for work that moves the needle.
Busy is optional. Broke is not.
Want Help Fixing the Math?
If you’re looking at this and realizing you’ve been guessing instead of estimating, we should talk.
Your marketing might be bringing in plenty of leads, but if your pricing model is broken, those leads are just keeping you busy, not profitable.
On a quick call, we can:
Run through your current pricing approach
Spot where overhead and equipment aren’t getting covered
Show you a simple way to bake real profit into every job
How did you like today's issue?
Written by Jacob Hastings
Head of Growth & Client Strategy at Growth Ring Media
