Mike Downer: Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Sawdust Sessions, brought to you by Central Tree Pros. I am your host, Mike Downer. I’m joined once again by Zach Miller, owner and CEO, and Jack Wadden, his operations manager. How are we doing today, gentlemen?
Zach Miller: Pretty good.
Jack Wadden: Not too bad.
Mike Downer: We’ve had some storms around Iowa lately, so I figured today would be a good time to discuss emergency tree removal and who the best tree removal company is in Des Moines. If you guys are good with covering some of this with me.
Zach Miller: Couldn’t think of a better time.
Jack Wadden: Absolutely.
Mike Downer: This is getting into that stormy season, and people are going to be needing you. You guys are going to get busy.
What we’re going to be covering today is how a professional emergency tree service actually operates when a call comes in, from triage to equipment to pricing. We’re going to go over all of that.
So, guys, let’s get this thing kicked off. When someone calls you in a true emergency, what’s the very first thing Central Tree Pros does?
Zach Miller: Our office lady, Jamie, will take the call and make sure it is an actual emergency. Then we get an estimator dispatched immediately. They’ll go out and take a look. They’re looking for utility lines, structures in the way, whether the tree is stable or unstable, and what equipment needs to be brought in.
If we need to bring cranes or loaders, and how many guys need to come in, we evaluate the whole job from that perspective. Then we go over our contract and rates with the homeowner. If they decide to go with it, we dispatch equipment immediately.
Jack Wadden: Then I step in and get my guys ready. If there’s a storm coming, I let them all know they’re on call. They’re pretty quick to get to the shop, or they’ll be at home waiting for it. They get to the shop as quickly as they can, and we get everything out the door and onto that job site.
Mike Downer: So you have to assess the situation. I guess you guys are probably weather nuts, too. You’re watching the weather all the time.
Jack Wadden: Oh, yeah. I’m always on my phone with the radars, seeing what’s coming in.
Mike Downer: Do you have the weather app and the whole works?
Jack Wadden: Oh, yeah. Two or three of them.
Zach Miller: Yeah, we’ve got a nice one.
Mike Downer: Two or three of them. That’s awesome. I should probably introduce you guys to some of the local meteorologists. They can just give me a call before they do their broadcast.
Zach Miller: We can let them know when storms are coming in.
Mike Downer: Hey, there you go. Maybe you can help them actually be a little more accurate.
Jack Wadden: Hopefully.
Mike Downer: So, guys, what actually counts as a true emergency versus something that can wait?
Jack Wadden: If it’s on any structure, especially because most likely it’s going to be raining that whole night, we want to get it off the structure so no more damage happens. If the tree is on the house, a barn, or a garage, we get it off so they can start patching and nothing more happens to the place.
Zach Miller: Anything that’s compromised counts, too. A tree in saturated ground that’s uprooting, major splits, cracks, or potential hazards. If it starts leaning, or anything along those lines, anything that compromises safety is an emergency.
Mike Downer: That makes complete sense because, as a homeowner, the common man thinks everything is an emergency. That’s kind of why I wanted to go over what a tree professional considers an actual emergency. As you’re going through your call flow and assessing these situations, which ones take top priority?
Zach Miller: Like Jack was talking about, anything on a structure takes priority because that’s mitigation work. Homeowners have a due diligence with their insurance contract to mitigate damages immediately. Additional water damage can occur, and the tree can shift, keep falling through the house, and cause more damage.
Anything on a structure takes priority. Second priority is anything leaning, uprooting, split, cracked, compromised, or rotted.
I got a call last week where a tree fell right on top of someone’s house. I could almost see into their living room. I had to take down the rest of the tree just in case it fell onto the neighbor’s side because half the tree was already compromised. They wanted it off so they could tarp it as fast as they could before the next rainstorm came in two hours.
Mike Downer: My goodness. So you guys are quick. Zach, you just led me right into my next question.
Let’s say I have one of these two emergencies. I’ve actually listened to you, and I realize my hanging branch isn’t a true emergency. How fast can a crew actually get on site in the Des Moines area versus the outer metro?
Zach Miller: That’s a little bit of a tough one. We run three crews, so we’re usually pretty on top of it. For a true emergency, two hours is slow. We’re usually there pretty quick.
For something that’s non-emergency, if it’s scheduled work, we’ll let them know the time and day we’ll be there. But if you have something that we agree is an emergency, a couple of hours or same-day service is usually pretty accurate.
Mike Downer: Very good. Does that count for the outer metro as well? I’m talking about places like Ankeny and anything within thirty-five miles of Des Moines.
Zach Miller: Yes. Ankeny, Waukee, Pleasant Hill, Altoona, Carlisle, Norwalk. Same-day service is very, very common for us.
Mike Downer: Very cool. That’s nice for me to know, being out in Ankeny, that I get the same treatment as the Des Moines people.
Zach Miller: We’re actually closer to Ankeny, so you might get priority.
Mike Downer: Awesome. Let’s hope I don’t have a tree emergency because I really don’t want to deal with it. But if I do, I know who I’m calling.
Walk me through your after-hours and weekend call process. Let’s say it’s ten o’clock on a Friday night, we have a storm, a derecho comes through, and my tree hits my house. What happens?
Jack Wadden: All of our office people have phones with the ringers always on. We accept calls twenty-four-seven, so they’re always waiting for a call if it’s storming out and always ready for it.
Zach Miller: Like we discussed previously, the office lady will take the call twenty-four-seven. On the chance she doesn’t answer because she’s on the phone with somebody else, she calls back immediately and starts the process. She gets information and may ask for a couple of pictures so we can start vetting the situation and see what we’re showing up to. Then we get the estimator out there immediately.
Mike Downer: So if it’s three in the morning on a Saturday night, by five a.m. I’m going to have somebody looking at my tree?
Zach Miller: By five a.m., you probably have a crane sitting in your driveway.
Jack Wadden: We have light bars for a reason on all of our stuff.
Mike Downer: That is amazing. So it doesn’t matter. Christmas Eve, you’re there?
Zach Miller: Yep. That’s the industry we’re in.
Jack Wadden: I’ve been on a job site from two a.m. to seven before. When the job needs to get done, we’re there.
Zach Miller: Got that call at one-thirty, and we were on the job site by two.
Mike Downer: Wow. That’s good to know. A lot of tree services are not like that, and I’m sure you’re very well aware of that.
Zach Miller: You don’t always get an answer after five o’clock.
Mike Downer: Yeah, it’s tough. That’s awesome. There’s one reason to call these guys right there.
What equipment do you keep ready specifically for emergency response?
Jack Wadden: The obvious one is our crane. We keep that fueled up and everything stocked on it so we can start it and take it out of the shop to wherever it needs to go.
We keep all the hauling trucks empty so we can mitigate debris right away. If a storm’s coming in, usually the day before, the guys stay late and we do extra maintenance. We do an extra walk-through on everything to make sure everything is 110 percent ready to go.
Zach Miller: It’s kind of all of the equipment because you never know what you’re getting into. I don’t think our guys want to do maintenance at two a.m. getting ready for a job. We just want to get the trucks and go where we need to be.
Mike Downer: That makes complete sense. So basically, the answer is that all of the emergency equipment is ready.
Zach Miller: Yeah, everything needs to be done on it.
Jack Wadden: Right down to the estimator pickup trucks. They have a full tank.
Zach Miller: Gassed up and ready to go.
Mike Downer: I love it. I love everything about it.
Now we get into a little bit of story time. This one is a little shorter because it’s just emergencies, but you guys can think about this for a second. What is the most dangerous emergency call you guys have ever handled?
Zach Miller: I mean, they all have risks.
Mike Downer: Why don’t you each give me a story?
Jack Wadden: A real dangerous one?
Zach Miller: Probably that job we did down in St. Louis.
Jack Wadden: The one where the tree shifted?
Zach Miller: Yeah. It was going right toward the house. The butt end of the tree was sitting on the trunk.
Mike Downer: Start from the beginning. Tell me what happened.
Zach Miller: We showed up at the job and saw the tree on the house. We stopped and tried to talk to the homeowner. They were standing there negotiating with another tree company, and that company was telling them they’d be there in three days to get it off.
We said, “Well, that’s not really mitigation work. Our truck is sitting down the street. We can do it right now.” So we talked them through it. They vetted their options and decided we were the best option for them.
We assessed the situation. The tree had fallen in a really strange way. The butt end of it was balanced on the trunk, and all the brush was up on the roof, so it kind of bridged itself. You could see it shifting throughout the day, slowly sliding off and wanting to go more onto the house.
Jack Wadden: We brought in one crane, set it up, got it stabilized, and realized this might be a job for more than one crane. So we brought in a second crane. Four hours later, we had a crane come from another state. That’s how fast we mobilize.
We got it brought in, got it set up, and worked the tree with one crane while stabilizing it with the other. If one thing had gone wrong on that job, the homeowner could have lost their house. We had the privilege of saving it.
Mike Downer: How did it come out when it was all said and done? Tell me a little bit about where it fell on the house and how you guys ended up getting rid of all the stuff.
Zach Miller: It was in the backyard, deeper in the backyard. It fell right on top of the house. The whole tree had fallen on it, and the whole house was kind of covered.
Jack Wadden: It was so unstable that we hooked straps up to all of it and took it off in one piece. That made it more dangerous, but it was the safest way to do it. If we had cut one branch, the rest of it could have fallen through or slid around on the house.
By the time we were done, we didn’t even add one more nick to a gutter.
Mike Downer: Really?
Zach Miller: It was a very, very professional job. It was a very touchy situation, too. Everybody made it out without a scratch, and the house didn’t get another scratch. It could have been a major catastrophe.
Mike Downer: How bad was the house when you got it off? I know that doesn’t have anything to do with you, but how bad was the house?
Zach Miller: It really wasn’t too bad because the brush fell and kind of broke the fall, and the heavy part of the tree was sitting on the trunk.
Jack Wadden: That’s what made the job so complicated. Nothing was stable. It was balanced between what was left of a standing tree and the house. Most of the time, a tree will fall through the house and kind of stabilize itself on the house, but this was just sitting on it, waiting to cause more damage and go through it more.
Mike Downer: So you saved this homeowner tens of thousands of dollars.
Zach Miller: Hundreds of thousands, probably.
Mike Downer: Hundreds of thousands. I know it’s never fortunate, but they were fortunate enough that the tree didn’t smash the house. They got lucky, and you kept them lucky.
Zach Miller: Very much so.
Mike Downer: If that other company wouldn’t have been able to be there for three days, they were probably looking at it and thinking, “The house wasn’t that bad, luckily.” But in three days, things could have shifted, moved, and crashed.
Zach Miller: That’s the importance of mitigating damages immediately. All it takes is a little more wind, a little more rain, or for everything to get slippery and start sliding around. If one limb decides to give, and it’s not stable, it can slide off. You could potentially lose your entire home.
Mike Downer: And if you looked at it and thought, “It’s not that bad,” and decided to sleep there, there are stubborn people out there. You could lose your life, too.
Zach Miller: Yeah, for sure.
Jack Wadden: We made them get a hotel just in case anything was wrong with it. We had insurance get them a hotel so they weren’t inside the house or anywhere near it.
Mike Downer: Very cool. I’m sure they’re very, very grateful to you guys. They’re probably still telling the story to this day.
Zach Miller: That’s one you don’t forget.
Mike Downer: You answered my question exactly how I wanted it. That’s awesome, guys.
If there is an emergency situation, like I said, I know around central Iowa there are going to be lots of storms coming up. This is storm season, guys. We all know it. It’s going to happen. Winds are supposed to increase tonight, just for an example. I don’t know if you guys knew that, but I’m sure you did.
Zach Miller: I knew that last week.
Mike Downer: Guys, thanks for walking us through those situations. Now people know what a real emergency is compared to something that just looks horrible. Again, I know some homeowners think everything is an emergency, but now we know what it is.
Thanks for walking us through your process. You’ve got to trust these guys at Central Tree Pros. They’re actual professionals.
Guys, once again, thanks for teaching me stuff. I always love having conversations with you.
Zach Miller: Yeah, we appreciate the opportunity.
Mike Downer: All right, guys. Thanks a lot, and I look forward to our next talk.
Zach Miller: Thank you.
