TreeBossPro Blog — Plant Health Care

Adding a PHC Division to a Removal and Pruning Company

Plenty of tree companies reach the same point: the climbers are busy, the removals pay well, but revenue swings wildly with the weather and the season. Plant health care looks like the obvious answer. You already have the customers, you already walk their properties, and many of them already ask about the sick tree in the back. Adding a PHC division is a real project, though, and it is worth doing in the right order.

Start With Licensing and Knowledge

Using the Plant Health Care Job Category to Separate PHC in Your Reports showed how to measure a PHC division once it exists. Before it exists, you need the people. Applying pesticides commercially typically requires licensing or certification, and the requirements vary by state and province. Contact your state's regulatory agency early to understand what your applicators will need, how long it takes and what continuing education is required.

Licensing is the minimum. Good PHC also requires knowing pests, diseases and tree biology in your region. Many companies build that knowledge around an experienced arborist who leads the program.

Insurance is part of the same conversation. Coverage for pesticide application work may differ from coverage for climbing and removals. Talk to your insurance provider before the first application, not after.

Build the Systems Before the First Spray

It is much easier to set up records correctly from day one than to fix them after a season. Before the first application, build your product list with EPA registration numbers, save your standard mixes, and store each applicator's license number. Decide how applicators will record product, rate and amount used on every service.

TreeBossPro puts all of this in the same account as your removal and pruning work, under its own Plant Health Care job category. No second system to learn.

Set up tags for program types and properties with known problems from the start. A year from now you will want to find every property on a particular program or with a particular pest, and tags added from day one make that easy.

Design a Simple First Program

Do not launch with fifteen treatment options. Start with a simple program that covers the most common needs in your area, with a few rounds a year, plus targeted treatments for specific problems. A simple program is easier to sell, schedule and deliver well.

Set up each round as a recurring job so enrolled properties come back on schedule without manual tracking.

Pick the program's rounds based on what your customers' trees actually need in your region, not on what a supplier's brochure suggests. Your consulting arborist or lead applicator should own that decision and the reasoning behind it.

Sell to the Customers You Already Have

Your best first PHC customers are the people who already trust you with their trees. Your crews visit their properties for pruning and removals and see the problems firsthand. Train crews to note stressed trees and pest problems in the crew app, with photos, so the office can follow up with a consult and an estimate.

Estimates with online approval and automatic follow-up make it easy for those customers to say yes.

Expect the first season to bring more questions from customers than later seasons. Clear chemical instruction emails and quick answers through two-way texting set the tone early.

Plan the Equipment and Season

PHC needs its own equipment and storage, and product handling and storage rules vary by location. Plan your season around the timing windows for the treatments you offer, and make sure you have capacity for the spring crunch.

Use the job board and route map to see where your first programs cluster. Early density makes the first season much more efficient.

Keep PHC equipment and products separate from the rest of the operation where practical. It simplifies cleanup, inventory and record-keeping, and it keeps PHC from turning into a side project that gets squeezed out on busy removal days.

Grow Steadily

The first year of PHC is about doing it well, building records and learning your costs. The second year is about renewals and referrals. By the third year, a well-run PHC division can be a steady base under the rest of the business.

For the full set of tools a new PHC division needs, see plant health care software for tree companies. Next: turning pruning and removal visits into PHC program sign-ups.

Track the division's numbers separately from day one, using the Plant Health Care job category. You will want to know whether PHC is paying for its equipment, licensing and labor, and that answer is only possible with clean data.