Sometimes doing the right thing is just, well, the right thing to do. And for Mark Stephens, owner of Eager Beaver Tree Service in Floyds Knobs, Indiana – and a Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP), a Board Certified Master Arborist (BCMA), Tree Risk Assessment Qualified (TRAQ), pesticide applicator licensed and a New Albany (Indiana) city arborist – it’s the only way to do business. “We do the right thing, treat the customer right and give the right advice,” he says. “We may not get the sale, but it usually pays off in the long run.

Some of Eager Beaver Tree Service’s 14 full-time employees. All photos courtesy of Eager Beaver Tree Service.

“People really appreciate honesty,” he adds. “You’ve heard of the Golden Rule? Well, we live by the Platinum Rule – always treat people a little bit better than you expect to be treated. If there’s a mistake, my crews know they need to make it right, to the customer’s satisfaction.”

Though Stephens earned a business degree from Indiana University, he says the office atmosphere was not for him. “I just could not wear that tie around my neck. It triggered a gag reflex,” he says with a laugh. “But I’d always been a really good tree climber since I was a kid, so I thought, ‘I’m gonna start a tree care company!’ Everyone thought I was crazy, but here I am, 30 years later.”

Stephens and his 14 full-time employees are coming off a very busy spring season of doing storm cleanup after a spate of tornadoes hit his company’s southern Indiana and northern Kentucky (Louisville) service area. According to Stephens, they recently purchased a 40-ton crane and have been keeping the crane crew busy. “We have a lot of big trees in Louisville,” he notes. “Our bread and butter is general tree work – removals, pruning, stump grinding, storm damage and tree health care.”

Eager Beaver Tree Service, a TCIA member company since 1997, also owns and operates a sawmill and recycles trees into firewood and even live-edge slabs. “We like to think we’re pretty earth friendly,” Stephens notes.

Mark Stephens

Education and training
What sets Eager Beaver Tree Service apart in its service area, according to Stephens, are the credentials his employees have earned. The company has five ISA Certified Arborists, two ISA BCMAs (himself and safety leader Jeffery Sutton), four CTSPs, four crew members who are TRAQ certified and two Certified Crane Specialists, along with a number of other specialized credentials. “I take a lot of pride in our crew members’ education and training,” he says. “We try to catch TCI EXPO most years – I sent four people to Baltimore this past fall, and I’ll probably take the entire company to St. Louis (Missouri) this year.”

At 53 years old, Stephens says he’s rarely in the field anymore, and instead is focused on sales and growing the business. “I’ll still go out and put the spurs on every once in a while, though, just to show the guys I’ve still got it.”

Forward thinking
In 2022, Stephens says he knew it was time to pursue TCIA Accreditation. “As the visionary for the company, I’ve always believed in looking forward,” he notes. “I had micromanaged things for so long, I finally realized doing everything myself wasn’t sustainable. So I stepped out of my comfort zone and delegated. I knew I had to get the right people in the right positions, and that has drastically increased morale and given us the culture we needed. The structure from TCIA through the Accreditation process offered everything we needed to elevate to that next level. Now everyone feels like they’re really part of something.

“It (Accreditation) really was a team effort from start to finish. My wife, Angeli Hall, was instrumental in the process. She runs the office and is our amazing sales closer.” Stephens explains, “She became a Certified Arborist just over a month ago. And Jeffery Sutton, our safety leader, is a brilliant arborist and an integral part of our organization.”

Keegan Price, on the tree, and Ralph Koons on a large removal.

The safety perspective
As Eager Beaver’s safety leader, Sutton has streamlined processes and documentation as a result of going through Accreditation.
“Going through the process was not simply a matter of filling out some paperwork and sending it in,” says Sutton. “It involved system-wide changes of our day-to-day routine. We were already moderately consistent with basic safety routines, such as job briefings and vehicle and equipment inspections, but Accreditation requires documentation; it requires recordkeeping. And with proper documentation comes the ability to be accountable, by both the company and its employees.”

He continues, “What works for one company may not work for another. For whatever reason, using papers and clipboards to do job briefings, safety-
meeting documentation and truck and equipment inspections did not work for us. So I found an app. I actually had heard of this particular app in an episode of the TCIA podcast, during an interview with a tree-service owner who used it. With some effort and time on the front end to customize the app for what we needed, we were able to create easy forms for crew members to complete on their phones.

“The inventory function allows our company to have every chain saw, every piece of equipment and every truck listed on the app,” notes Sutton, “with pertinent information included, making it incredibly easy to document any repairs or maintenance, and even daily and weekly maintenance checks and pre-trip inspections.”

But the convenience of the app doesn’t stop there. “Every form completed is time stamped and recorded, and can be downloaded or printed at any time,” he says. “This is merely one small part of our whole experience, but it was the area in which I had the most involvement. Safety is a culture, and it needs to be taken seriously from the very top, otherwise it becomes basic and perfunctory to everyone below.”

The benefits
Stephens says being an accredited tree care business definitely has helped grow Eager Beaver and hang on to good employees. “That’s really what you’re looking for, to retain life-long employees. It also has helped to enforce mandatory PPE, especially when it came to wearing chaps (which some guys pushed back from on occasion), so I invested in chain-saw pants for everyone. It was the solution to a problem.

“We take pride in being the best – at least within our own space,” he says. “As I reviewed our business plan in preparation for our three-year re-accreditation, I was proud to see that we met nine out of 10 of our ambitious goals. Together, we’ve now outlined a new set of 10 more goals, focusing on areas like team development and maintaining our identity as a family-oriented company. Supporting and caring for one another remains at the heart of everything we do.”

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 2016.