As Jon Kammerer, CTSP, puts it, he “dragged a lot of brush” in his early years of working with trees. The owner of Arbor+, an eight-year TCIA member company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, says he started working summers with a small family-owned company when he was 18 years old. “I was pursuing a degree in engineering from the University of Utah, and was about half-way through the program when I realized it didn’t fit,” he says. “I wanted to be working outside.”
That led to Kammerer heading back to tree care and learning some things the wrong way. “I learned from previous employers what not to do,” he explains. “I’m lucky to be alive today,” he adds with a sardonic chuckle.
Eventually, Kammerer joined up with a friend he had worked with in tree care before, who was starting his own business. Kammerer became a climber/crew leader. “I was spurring in the beginning, which pretty much beat up my body. My friend, Kris Weber, was kind of a mentor to me and taught me climbing. I knew from the get-go I wanted to do things the right way when I went off on my own.”
Getting started
That happened in 2012, when he bought his grandfather’s 1981 diesel VW Rabbit pickup and his friend’s 5-foot-by-5-foot trailer. Kammerer notes that he still has that pickup to this day. “I’ll never get rid of it,” he says emphatically.
Arbor+ has 13 full-time employees on staff and serves Salt Lake and the surrounding counties. A third of the staff are ISA Certified Arborists, including Kammerer. Approximately 80% of the company’s business is residential and 20% commercial. Kammerer says he started out totally solo, and he had a couple of solid commercial accounts that really helped in the beginning. “Early on, I trimmed the trees at every Home Depot in the state of Utah, which was 12 locations at the time,” he says. “But my roots are residential, it’s what I know.”
Kammerer, who also is a Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP), says his company has a great reputation in the Salt Lake area. “We have a passion for trees and for providing quality work. We’re kind of recognized in the area for that kind of quality. We have a lot of repeat customers and referrals, and I have a lot of long-time employees.
“Anything that is growing (residentially) in this area is planted (not naturally growing), and needs to be watered and cared for,” he maintains. “We do pruning, planting, removals and plant health care (PHC). I started doing trunk injections to begin with, nothing crazy. Then I went on to spraying and got a skid sprayer.”
The road to Accreditation
Kammerer attended his first TCI EXPO in 2013, in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I was anxious to go and dive in and see what top-notch companies in the industry were doing,” he says. “I remember, maybe it was the next year, they had a knuckle-boom crane on the floor, and I saw that and said, ‘That’s what I want!’” And he says he got it in 2019.
Planting that seed for company growth was what moved Kammerer in the direction of Accreditation, which Arbor+ earned in December 2022. “Originally I started my business because I saw room for growth and improvement (in local tree care),” he notes. “Going for Accreditation was motivated by me wanting to put our company up to the test, to be the best we can be and to raise the standard in our area.
“When I first got the materials and looked at them, I thought, ‘What did I sign myself up for?’ I did the work all by myself – probably the hardest part was finding the time to do it while operating a full-service tree company,” he says. “Thankfully, I had a business plan and employee handbook already, and then TCIA had enormous resources available to help me.”
His biggest challenge
His biggest challenge, says Kammerer, was having to create a career path for his employees. “That was huge, and I’m still tweaking and refining it. It’s definitely a work in progress. In fact, I find this is an area we need improvement in right now. My employees are rock stars, and we wouldn’t be accredited without them and all their hard work.”
Arbor+ displays the Accreditation logo on its website home page and on all its trucks, and Kammerer says they use the logo on the proposals they send out. “We let clients know what Accreditation is and what it took for us to get the credential. It distinguishes us from others in the business – we’re the only locally owned company with Accreditation. My hope is that other companies will get accredited and improve the overall perception of tree care in the Salt Lake area.”
And where does he hope to see Arbor+ in five years? Kammerer says that even though it sounds like a cliché, he likens his company’s growth to that of a tree. “I’ve always pictured my business as a tree,” he explains. “A slow-growing tree is stronger and will be around for a long time, with proper maintenance and pruning. A fast-growing tree is more susceptible to disease and other issues. So I’m looking for slow, sustainable growth. And I think PHC is a good thing to focus on over the next five years.”
Patricia Chaudoin has been a freelance writer/editor for more than four decades, in areas as disparate as tree care, golf, weddings, luxury travel and international non-profit NGOs. She has been writing for TCI Magazine since July 2016.
