As a tree care company owner, ask yourself this simple question. What percentage of your crews’ time is actually billable?
The Hours You Don't Bill The Hidden Economics of Tree Care Operations By Joy Gomez
industry, owners obsess over production rates, equipment utilization, and jobsite efficiency. But most still measure produc- tivity the way previous generations did: by what happens after the trucks arrive.
Last fall, I was standing in a suburban Minneapolis yard with the owner of a tree care company who had just bought his second bucket truck. He was proud of it — and he should have been. The truck represented growth, demand, and years of hard work. Then I asked a simple question: “What percentage of your crews’ time is actually billable?”
That’s a mistake.
The next five points of gross margin in your tree care business probably aren’t
He didn’t know.
So, we pulled six weeks of GPS data from his fleet and did the math. On a typical 10-hour day, his two-truck operation was losing nearly four hours per crew to driv- ing, idling in staging areas, waiting for job confirmations, and moving between sites. Almost 40% of the workday disap- peared before a saw ever touched a tree. The surprising part was that his opera- tion wasn’t an outlier. Across the tree care
After pulling the GPS data on a typical 10-hour day, his two-truck operation was losing nearly four hours per crew to driving, idling in staging areas, waiting for job confirmations, and moving between sites.
ArborTIMES ™ Summer 2026 | 49
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