Tree Care Providers Kept Busy in Buffalo

If you own a tree service company in the Buffalo, N.Y. area, like Rex Webber, you haven't had a lot of down time.

"We've been working sunup to sundown and driving home in the dark," said Webber, owner of Bradley Tree and Landscaping in Holland, N.Y.

If you have need for a tree service - and haven't been a regular customer of one - it may be a long time before you'll have one in your yard, unless there's an imminent safety hazard, due to the record snowfall that covered the area Oct. 13.

"We're trying to prioritize, and first are dangerous limbs hanging from trees," said Ed Gruber, district manager for Davey Tree and Lawn Care in Lancaster. "We're also prioritizing toward our customers. If they're calling . . . we're going to take care of them."

Buffalo's Yellow Pages lists nearly 70 such companies, a fact many area residents have come to realize as they run down the list trying to get somebody to remove downed or soon-to-be-down tree limbs in their yards.

At the other end of the line, there's a good chance they heard a busy signal or a voice mailbox that already may be overstuffed.

How long is Jeff Tomaro's waiting list?

"Pages and pages," said Tomaro, owner of A.J.'s Tree Service of East Amherst.

"I've taken hundreds of calls," he said. "I hate to scare any customers away, so we try to tell them if they can wait, we can give an estimate. We have a week's worth of work we're obligated to already."

Webber's waiting list is longer. "We're at least a good six weeks backlogged," he said.

Gruber said he's really not sure how much work he has yet.

"We're trying to put our arms around it because the calls have been so steady," he said as he and two other workers handled phones that rang nonstop at the company's Lancaster office. "Right now, we can't measure it. We're guessing."

Normally, Davey operates two crews. Gruber said he already has added another one and is calling for help from the company's offices in other cities, including Rochester, Cleveland and Philadelphia.

Webber said that, initially, it was tough for crews to get to homes on their list because once they got to one home, neighbors would come up and ask for help with theirs. "We started with our customers because they are our top priority," he said. "In the midst of all that, people were just walking over [and asking] "Can you please help me?' Some couldn't get out of their houses."

Eventually, he said, "We had to drive away from some. We had to get our customers taken care of."

What will it cost you to have tree work done? It depends on what the work is, how accessible it is, and how many men and pieces of equipment will be needed.

"It's a $300 charge to get us to the house, then we start talking about tree prices," said Tomaro, who added that the $300 is deducted from the price of any service that his company does for a homeowner. Before the storm, he said, prices could range anywhere from $175 to $4,200 for removing a tree and grinding the stump.

"You pretty much can't get anything done for less than $200," Webber said, adding that he has had tree removal and pruning jobs in the past that have cost as much as $18,500.

Gruber pointed to a 60-foot-tall silver maple on Davey's lot. It lost at least one major limb, and several smaller limbs near the top of the tree were sheared off.

Were he to take down the tree, which was in an open area, the cost would be in the $1,000 range, he said, plus the cost of grinding the stump. It could double if the tree is hard to get at, like so many in Buffalo yards.

But, he added, there will be no need to take that silver maple tree on Davey's property down because it has a good chance to survive.