Like many, I got into the tree care and landscape business by accident. Forty-nine years ago, fresh out of high school and with no clear career path in sight, I went looking for a job. After working a few part-time, short-lived jobs, I found steady employment with another young man new to the business. The year was 1974.
My first taste of the tree business was dragging brush up a 30-foot embankment for nine hours a day on a 22-acre clearing site. My employer had just graduated from college with a degree in horticulture. He was a good tree climber who had a knack for tree removal. The pay was low and the hours long. Most of the year we worked a mandatory 60-hour week with no overtime pay. I worked for him for about three years.
Getting some education
In the meantime, I applied for and was accepted to Penn State University for a two-year program in horticulture. While in school, I worked for another landscaper who taught me a lot in a short time. In 1978, I started my own business.
I did not come from money and worked my way through school. When I graduated, I was tapped out, to say the least. Five days after graduation I declared I was in business for myself. Needless to say, I had to beg and borrow, but no, I didn’t steal.
Times were tough and money was tight, but somehow I managed. The jobs came. I worked by day and repaired equipment by night to be able to keep working. The jobs got better, the business got bigger and I moved more into tree work.
The equipment and gear were not fancy and, other than rope, were purchased used. I bought my saddle from my original employer. My first bucket truck was an old telephone-company aerial ladder truck. I finally bought my first chipper 10 years into the business, a 1948 Fitchburg drum-type chipper. It was crude, but it did the job. I kept that chipper until I sold half of the business in 2020.
Doing it the right way
Having the benefit of good teaching while at Penn State, I always did tree work the way it was intended to be done. I disappointed many a customer because I would not top a tree or perform certain other pruning requests, because they weren’t proper work practices. Sometimes I would drive past a tree I had pruned two or three years earlier only to find it had been hacked because the client didn’t think I had done a proper job. Apparently, I hadn’t chopped enough off.
That never bothered me, because I always believed in doing the best work possible. Yes, I lost some clientele, but I thought doing proper work was better than doing more work. In the great scheme of things, I never made a lot of money. But I built some things along the way that money couldn’t buy – friendships and a good reputation. Having customers call you back time and time again for additional work and being able to have meaningful conversations with them to me is priceless.
Today, being semi-retired and collecting Social Security, I still work for a few of my old-time clients. I don’t try to do large-scale tree work anymore. I leave that for the younger generation. In the meantime, I consult and do small jobs – not for clients, but for friends.
Friends, the unexpected riches. The result after 49 years. No, I didn’t strike oil like Jed Clampett (Google “Beverly Hillbillies”). I found something better.
Jim Brunner is owner of Brunner Landscaping & Supply in Homer City, Pennsylvania, and a longtime TCI Magazine subscriber. He is semi-retired, and no longer does “any of the big stuff.”
