Purdue Extension Service
Purdue Extension Service
Vanderburgh County, Indiana
Subject: HORT ALERT: Traveling tree cutters
Importance: High
2/1/09
Dear Friends,
I received an e-mail from a Hort Alert recipient, asking me to share an offer from a tree trimming company from Omaha Nebraska. They are coming to our area to help cut up trees that were damaged or destroyed by the ice storm. I don’t know this person or his company, so any of the following is not targeted at him directly.
My general advice is to NOT hire anyone from out of town. Several reasons:
1. Within the city limits of Evansville, it is ILLEGAL to trim trees without a tree trimmers license. Our city arborist is pretty busy with emergency cleanup of city streets, but he’ll gladly take a break to issue a couple of $1000 fines, per incident, to companies violating this ordinance.
2. During any and all disasters, fly-by-night “arborists” come out of the woodwork looking to make a quick buck. Many do not know a tree from a hole in the ground. These guys have been known to make a bad situation worse by toppling trees into houses, cars, streets, and people. These are usually the guys with a pickup truck and a ladder, with no company name or license printed on the truck.
3. Nearly NONE of these fly-by-night companies carry liability or workman’s compensation insurance. If they do damage to your house or your neighbor’s property, YOU will pay for the repairs. If they hurt themselves while mangling your trees, YOU will pay their doctor bills.
4. Some fly-by-night companies have been known to do a partial job, take your money, and leave you with the job unfinished. I’ve seen cases where the tree was left in an even MORE hazardous condition because of their efforts. Not all, but some of these guys are nothing but con artists and crooks, and since they aren’t local, they can’t be traced.
If you ignore my advice above, at least PLEASE have the common sense NOT to give them cash, or pay them before the job is finished.
Yes, I know we have a major disaster here in the Evansville area. I’ve got trees down, too. In fact, as I write this, I still don’t have power at home. So I understand your desperation.
But I urge you to have patience, and work with local companies that are licensed to do work in Evansville. These licensed people have been through a training that I’ve helped teach, so I know they know the safe way of working with these trees. And to get and keep this license, they must have insurance and workman’s comp, so you can rest assured that if an accident occurs, your financial security won’t be ruined.
For a list of licensed tree trimmers in Evansville, click this link to download the list from the Evansville Dept. of Urban Forestry: http://www.evansvillegov.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=2921 . I’ve also attached the file to this e-mail, just in case you have problems accessing their site.
We’ll get through this, folks. Just please, don’t get impatient and do something that will have long-term negative consequences.
By the way: DON’T TOP YOUR TREES!!!! Your only going to make the surviving trees more likely to fall apart (again) during the next round of summer storms!
[Hort Alert is a free service of the Purdue Extension Service of Vanderburgh County. Back issues of Hort Alert can be downloaded from this web page: [ http://www.extension.purdue.edu/Vanderburgh/horticulture/hortalerts/ ] Your name and address will never be shared with anyone. To be removed from this list, hit the "REPLY" button and type the phrase "UNSUBSCRIBE HORT ALERT" in the subject line.] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Larry Caplan, Extension Educator -- Horticulture Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service, Vanderburgh County 13301 Darmstadt Rd., Evansville, IN 47725 Ph: (812) 435-5287 Fax: (812) 867-4944 E-mail: LCaplan@purdue.edu http://www.extension.purdue.edu/vanderburgh/ Larry Caplan, The Magic Gardener Making Environmental Science Fun and Magical! http://www.extension.purdue.edu/vanderburgh/magic/ Purdue's Equal Opportunity Statement: http://www.extension.purdue.edu/eeo.htm