You could triple your marketing budget tomorrow. Fill the phone with $4,000 removal calls. If you don’t have the crew to run those jobs, the calls just become frustration.

92% of green industry companies report difficulty finding qualified applicants. 54% of tree service owners named finding reliable help as their single biggest challenge.

Not weather. Not equipment. Not customers. People.

So who are the other 8%?

They are not paying double. They are not poaching every weekend. They run a system. A pipeline. The same way you run a pipeline for leads, except this one fills crew trucks.

Without a pipeline, every open position is an emergency. You hire someone out of desperation in April and fire them in July.

You are fixing the crew problem. This is huge.

But hiring more climbers when your best customers cannot find you is like building capacity with no one to use it.

Google and ChatGPT are answering your customers' questions before they ever see your website. AI search traffic grew 527% last year. It is still a small slice of total traffic.

But the businesses that show up first in AI results will own those positions for years. Right now, your competitors are as invisible as you are.

Not for long.

Four channels that fill crews. None of them are Indeed.

First, some math. Replacing a trained crew member costs $15,000 to $22,000 when you add up recruiting, training, lost productivity, and 90 days of rookie mistakes. For a climber or crew lead, it can be higher.

Every quit is a five-figure hit. Retention is cheaper than recruiting. Every single time.

Now. The four channels.

1. Referral bonuses that are big enough to matter.

Your guys know other good workers. The problem is, most referral bonuses are $100 to $200, and nobody bothers.

Pay $500 to $1,000 per hire. Split it: half when they start, half at 90 days. The split keeps your employee invested in whether the referral works out.

Make the process dead simple. A text to the office manager with a name and number. If it requires a login, nobody will use it.

$1,000 bonus versus $15,000 replacement cost. That is not an expense.

Have you told your crew about your referral program in the last 30 days? If not, it does not exist.

2. Trade school relationships.

Vocational enrollment jumped nearly 20% since 2020. Close to 871,000 students in vocational community colleges as of spring 2025. Most tree services are not talking to any of them.

Call the program coordinator for forestry, landscape, or general trades. Offer a demo day. Let students ride along on a job. Bring donuts and your business card once a quarter.

This is a long game. You will not get a hire next week. But 6 to 12 months from now, you will have a flow of trainable people who chose this work on purpose. Very different from someone who "just needs a job."

Are there vocational programs within 30 miles of your shop?

3. Working interviews.

A desk interview for a groundsman is nearly useless. Someone can say they are a hard worker. You learn nothing.

A paid half-day tells you everything. Can they take direction? Do they hustle? Are they safe around equipment? Do the other crew members tolerate them?

Run a 10-minute phone screen first. Ask what attracted them to tree work. If the answer is "I just need a job," that tells you something. Ask if 7am starts in any weather are a problem. Hesitation there predicts attendance issues.

Then bring them out. You will know within two hours.

When was the last time you had a candidate work alongside a crew before making a decision?

4. The "always interviewing" system.

Most owners only recruit when they have an open position. By then, you are already behind. So you lower your standards and hire the first person who can fog a mirror.

Instead, accept applications and run working interviews even when fully staffed. Keep a short list of 3 to 5 people you have already screened. When someone quits, you call the list.

This takes about 2 hours per month. One afternoon where you bring in a candidate or two, even if you do not have an opening.

If you lost a crew member tomorrow, could you call someone you trust by Friday? If not, you do not have a pipeline. You have a prayer.

BLS reports a 23% shortage of skilled tree workers nationally. Two out of three tree care companies say hiring is their number one growth constraint.

Median pay for tree trimmers sits around $49,000. Experienced climbers with certs push $60,000 to $85,000. If your climbers are below the median, you are not competing. You are donating training hours to whoever pays them market rate next season.

The tree trimming industry is projected to hit $43.7 billion by 2030. But IBISWorld notes labor shortages, made worse by stricter immigration enforcement, will eat into profitability. The companies that figure out hiring will take shares from the ones that do not.

One thing worth watching: construction needed 454,000 extra workers in 2025 alone. You are competing for the same labor pool as roofers, electricians, and plumbers. If your job posting does not explain why tree work beats swinging a hammer in a crawlspace, you lose candidates before they apply.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" is not a hiring strategy.

I’ve heard it from owners running $4M to $8M companies who have never written down what their hiring process actually is. No referral program. No trade school relationships. No working interviews. No short list of pre-screened candidates. Same worn-out Indeed ad for nine months.

Meanwhile, the company across town stays fully staffed. Same market, same wages, same labor pool.

Mike Rowe shared a stat about Ford. In a single year, Ford hired 37,000 technicians but lost 76,000 to retirement. Net loss of 39,000. He said the construction trades have it worse: five retirements for every two new hires.

Tree care is not immune. But the upside is real. Vocational enrollment is climbing. Younger people are choosing trades over college debt. The companies that show up early and treat their people well will own the next decade. The ones still complaining about the labor market will wonder what happened.

The labor market is tight. It is going to stay tight. Build a system or keep hoping next spring is different.

If you are short-staffed, or you have been burned by a bad hire recently, you are not alone.

Reply and tell me: what is your biggest hiring challenge right now? Finding people, keeping them, or both?

I read every reply. If I have seen a company your size solve the problem you are describing, I will point you in the right direction.

Talk next week.

-Jacob Hastings
The Backcut