One Look at How to Grow a Business

A Fisher’s crew performs a technical tree removal at Moss Lake, in Shelby, North Carolina. All photos courtesy of Fisher’s Tree & Crane Service Inc.
This is a story about how to get ahead in life while doing the right thing. Too often we read about how someone got rich or built a business, but they were actually jerks. It makes good press, but the reality is, most of us go through life with dreams and a desire to create something good while filling a need. Stephen Fisher of Fisher’s Tree & Crane Service Inc., a 10-year TCIA member company based in Shelby, North Carolina, is one such person.
Fisher graduated from Appalachian State University in 2004 with a degree in industrial design and engineering and started working at Southco Industries, a 43-year TCIA corporate member company based in Shelby, North Carolina. Yes, that Southco, manufacturer of forestry truck bodies and steel fabricator. While working there, Fisher bought a house on nearby Moss Lake, and says, “I started trimming and cutting off a deer stand and doing everything about as dangerously as possible. A friend came over and showed me how to cut safely.”
Jumping off
At the time, he was working in drafting and design at Southco, drawing new boxes and hinges. After seeing how cool tree work was at his lake property, Fisher gave his two weeks’ notice to Southco. “I went to work for the city of Shelby for the tree crew on the street trees. They had a bucket truck and did everything – like pruning and street clearance and power lines.”
While doing that for about three years, Fisher also started taking on side work, which was frequently generated by people who saw him working for the city. Pretty soon he had more work than he could keep up with.
“While working for the city, I would do work at night with a couple of helpers, then work the next day for the city while the helpers cleaned up,” says Fisher. Then they would meet him that evening to do more side jobs. Within a year, he had a truck and chipper.
By 2007, he had two crews and seven people working for him and had left the city of Shelby. In a typical day, he would get a tree on the ground, leave that job, check on other crews and then see customers in the afternoon. It meant that Fisher had to rely on good people, even from the beginning, but he acknowledges, “It’s never been easy finding good help.”
With plenty of competition in the Shelby area, Fisher distinguished himself by being able to do tree removals others could not. Long-time, established tree services were actually telling customers to call Fisher for the most technical work.

Fisher and Tucker after Cleveland County’s Best of the Best Awards in 2024, their ninth consecutive year winning with Fisher’s Tree & Crane Service.
Branching out
But with those large removal jobs came a new headache – getting rid of all the debris.
“We would go to the landfill and get sent away, because they were full or we were told we had to cut big logs in half lengthwise,” says Fisher. He was also burning brush on his shop property and was told to stop because of smoke. With too much debris, Fisher’s hand was forced, so he got his shop property rezoned from farm/ag to industrial. This allowed him, in 2015, to set up Fisher’s Environmental, a licensed waste-management facility to make compost.
When the recycling yard opened, Fisher started processing debris from other tree companies and municipalities as well as his own. He sold the chips to landscape-supply companies or to farmers to use on their fields.
Building a tree-service company was a learning curve on its own, and now Fisher had to teach himself how to build a recycling division as well.
“We now process and recycle 100% of the material from our green-waste management facility. This includes debris from our tree service, other tree services and the local municipality’s leaf pick-up program,” he says.
By starting the compost operation, Fisher solved the issue of getting rid of his tree debris, but it’s all bulk wholesale and it’s a break-even business. His next dream is to get a bagging operation going so he can sell retail compost in smaller volumes.
While all of this is going on, Fisher’s parter, Savannah Tucker, is working in the scale house doing the company’s books and running the scale that weighs the trucks delivering chips.
The Fishers both work with government officials, as the composting operation is heavily regulated. “We must send out a similar amount of material as taken in or the environment quality commission (EQ) will shut us down,” says Fisher as an example.

A group of “our incredible employees,” says Savannah Tucker, shown here in the pink shirt. Stephen Fisher is in the gray shirt and knit hat to the right of the cornhole board.
A new opportunity
As if running a multi-crew tree operation and a compost business wasn’t enough, Fisher now has expanded into water management. He bought a barge with a loader on it to get storm-damaged trees out of lakes, and perhaps to dredge areas that are filling in. The barge then pulls up to a dock or landing, where a truck is waiting. The loader fills the truck with lake debris, and the truck hauls it away.

The company’s barge being employed to remove trees and debris from Moss Lake.
The local lake has become a place where Fisher dredges out debris and then utilizes that sand for his composting operation. His water-management team also places boulders along lakefront properties to halt erosion, and can do hazardous tree removals from the lake with the barge. “It’s just one more tool to help the overall operation and adapt. It works for Shelby, North Carolina,” says Fisher.

A Fisher’s truck hauling an excavator.
Fisher now has 30 people working for him. Four tree crews go in four directions, and crews with heavy equipment for a forestry mulching operation go in two directions each day. The forestry mulching machines are on big excavators for rights of way or housing developments. Some areas get cleared and cleaned up completely, and some get forestry mulched. The bigger machines cost thousands of dollars to move, so those machines are mostly on jobs that last weeks or even a couple of months. Amazingly, the company has just one salesperson in addition to Fisher himself.
When asked if there was much competition, Fisher says, “Lots, and many of them used to work for me.” That part of the business, dealing with employees and hoping they treat him fairly in the future, like he treated them, is something that clearly wears on him.
Still, it is all good
But Fisher, at 44 years old, obviously is doing something right. This 10-year TCIA member started from scratch and, in 20 years, has two thriving businesses. He has a lot to be proud of.
Michael Roche, now retired, is the former owner of Vermont Arborists, an accredited, long-time TCIA member company based in Stowe, Vermont, now a SavATree company. He is still a Certified Arborist and a Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP), and now lives in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire.