arborist

landscape technician

tree trimmer

utility worker

forester

Davey Tree

This position requires a 100% commitment to travel for work. You will be provided with subpar equipment and be responsible for fixing things that are the result of poor planning, structural and management related issues. The structure and business model ensures this will almost always be the case. "Things constantly come up" and scheduled work projects will always change, so be prepared for that.  As the inventory arborists in the field, you will have to figure out everything as you are probably the only employees who have met the client in person, or see in real time what exactly is needed for the project. Management and client expectations will often clash and you will be stuck in the middle. Clients may often expect more and substanial changes to projects than what is orginally outlined. You will be asked to work weekends often. Pay will vary, as you are not guaranteed 40 hours a week. In the winter, (as well as any time of the year) except that you may not have work for several days in between projects. When work is slow you will be thrown around to different tasks to get you more hours, which almost feels "charitable". This makes budgeting and finances difficult, especially if you live in an expensive high tax state and city. The employee health benefits and the pay itself is unacceptable for the reality of this position and working conditions. You are given a gas card, and provided with a borderline acceptable economy style sedan. Work vehicle will require maintenance often, as vehicles provided are borderline acceptable in terms of quality, cleanliness, and safety. Budgeting is atrocious. You will be expected to have a high level of quality with broken equipment, as you will hear often, "there is no room in the budget." Management will set unrealistic expectations to obtain contracts and win the bid for a project, but as the arborist in the field, you will realize expectations will be unrealistic atleast 50-75% of the time. You often will be asked to pay for things out of pocket, and then be reimbursed in your paycheck. Many aspects of your hours paid will also be subject to guestimation. Per Diem for travel is unacceptable as this will afford perhaps one meal and one snack day. 10 hour work days are common, even in the winter when there is not even 10 hours of daylight. On the positive side, you can make this position work if you know how to just "go with the flow" and someone who is not easily bothered. You can gain the opportunity to obtain professional certifications and learn a lot about trees and municipal forestry. You may have the opportunity to travel to an exciting, or fun city for work that will be about 1 in 100, as most of the travel will be in very boring places. With this in mind, this position has a very high turn over rate and that is clearly in the calculus of the business model, as you will be overworked, underpaid and not a valued member of the Davey family unless you obtain a management level position. This is of no fault to project, or area managers, but clearly a trickle down from corporate. There can be a steep learning curve navigating this company, and everyone below corporate is clearly just trying to figure everything out and do their best. The main issues here is truly within the Davey Tree corporation itself. As a field based employee, navigating your entitlements, options, rules and obligations are opaque and unnecessarily difficult. This will have been my second field work based job with Davey and the issues and problems are almost identical. Being a true "outdoorsy" type is an absolute necessity if you are going to make this job work. Despite all this, if this is the start of your career in forestry this job can be great. But keep in mind this position itself is a job and not a career. Good management, and personable co-workers can make the job bearable, (especially when it can be incredibly easy for morale to be low within these circumstances) but at the end of the day long term employment at this position is impossible if you have any semblance of intellect, or self worth. 

Davey Tree is one of the largest arbor culture companies in the United States. Each office falls under the same rules and regulations as the parent company, and grouped into regions. The mangers I worked with had limited in the field experience and were rather disconnected from what the field personnel dealt with on a daily basis and xommication was poor across the board. The hiring process is straightforward with a drug screening and training is limited other than learning in the field. When I began working for Davey, I had experienceas a climber and working outside hoping to become a certified arborist, as stated in all of their job posting "you get to climb trees everyday for a living!" This however is far from the truth. 95% of the work is hauling brush to the chipper from trees that we cut down and trimmed. This was done usually by hand. Sometimes light duty equipment was operated by other employees who would refuse to train new hires. Typically only one or two more experienced climbers go up on ropes or in a bucket truck and throw/rope down limbs for the "groundies" to retrieve and pull away. Do not expect to get any time in the bucket or climbing. Despite my consistent initiative asking for more training to work in the trees, the "pro" climbers and management ignored my requests and I eventually left due to lack of investment into me. Let me warn you this is extremely physically demanding work hauling huge logs, long limbs, and raking brush into piles to be fed to the chipper or truck. Some days you're working 12+ hour days outside in whatever weather is. Be that in excess of 100 degrees, below freezing, or in heavy rain with "ignored" lightning strikes. Some weeks there wasn't enough work and they sent us home after a few hours because the managers couldn't seem to schedule properly. Equipment such as trucks and chainsaws at our office were old and, safe working procedures were disregarded of not completely ignored. The pay/benefits are not very good or competitive compared to other companies with unions and the turnover rate is high while morale is low. Supposedly if you stick around long enough they'll pay for your CDL and send you to the new training facility in Kent to become certified, but I wouldn't plan on it. They'll make promises such as buying you climbing gear and a new chainsaw, but they won't and even if they do it is legally Davey property and they will take it back when you leave. The company and offices refuse to truly invest in their employees and upper management is so disconnected that they can't understand why nobody lasts. Additionally, communication between the office manager, the salesman (who goes out to quote the jobs), the customers, and the field employees is non existent. We frequently cut down wrong trees or did not know what to do because the manager, salesman, and customer all had different understandings of what was agreed upon. If you choose to work there, keep your head down, learn what you can, and then move to a better company.

If you are applying for the Owen Project in northern Kentucky you should know a couple of things from someone who just got fired from there: They didn't have a proper training program to train us, our project coordinator is not a good coordinator and an awful trainer/ communicator, the Project Manager manages several nationwide projects and rarely made an appearance-- when he did it was usually just for a couple of hours on one, maybe two days-- , there's A LOT of extra work involving personal time that I didn't get compensated for but most importantly:

Just like any other firm the Upper Management is only concerned with the numbers and maintaining the budget. It is not feasible the way they have the production team set up to produce top quality work and still reach the weekly quota primarily because of the harsh terrain that you have to travel through to collect data-- that in combination with the inconsistencies of the data in their GIS and what's in the field makes it REAL hard to achieve a high level of data accuracy and completion AND also achieve a high quota.

The amount of data collection is ENORMOUS and they only have one Project Coordinator who is responsible for supervising up to 6 guys and backing up their field work with follow up QC. There was hardly any real planning when this project began in June. Once we were "trained" we were independently assigned Feeders and expected to do about 6 to 7 poles an hour.  Some days I was lucky to get 3 or 4 because of the rural areas I was working in. Some other team members were given feeders in highly populated areas and in that instance it is feasible to get the 7/hour.

This project would run a lot smoother if teams of two were assigned to Feeders and the coordinator could actually coordinate-- to have a system where guys wouldn't walk into a situation where nothing was matching up in the system to what was going on in the real world-- especially in the rural areas where the lines tap off in multiple directions and someone like me is responsible for getting it done right the first time.

Bad management, bad planning, no coordination, and I got fired because my quota was low and my quality was inconsistent.  Beware of what you are getting into with this job and if you are not local be doubly concerned.

First off some pros. Pay is good, even at entry level. You get to be outside and explore your city, always in beautiful properties with generally nice customers. Your coworkers as a PHC tech will be your friends. 

Now for some red flags. Management is not your friend. All of them in my office had been promoted based on nothing but seniority and need; they must receive some training but I couldn't for the life of me spot it. They rely on vague threats, literal gossip and withholding routes and time working to correct behaviors. At times it was downright childish and insulting. 

The training is abysmal. You will receive about 5 days working with another driver, then you're on your own. Asking your supervisor questions about how things should be done or solutions to problems you encounter on the field (you will be dealing with mechanical issues constantly) causes more hostility than just dealing with the issue in silence. 

Management hired too many workers, leading to some being assigned to equipment which was much older and shouldn't have still been in operation. Those workers had to move slower and deal with constant mechanical issues, making 8 hour days 10 hour days. I was told to do impossible tasks, such as making 6 inch deep holes in frozen-solid February soil with a metal rod, and when I told management I wasn't getting anywhere they told me if I couldn't do it there would be no work for me. 

You will be exhausted, not just by the work but by the constant games played by management. You will make good money and when you get home the job may as well not exist. If you are someone who can put your head down, push out the noise and focus on a difficult task day in and day out, you may be able to make it to a much more relaxed management position. But don't expect much support along the way.  

From the so-called "management" using the place as their personal garage during work hours, and the inventory as their personal supply for parts for their side businesses to the hiring of incompetent relatives to the disgusting and stomach turning sexual innuendos with the beastly secretary all day long(vomit), this place was a joke. The main manager of the Fleet Service couldn't order the correct part if you gave him the part number and the phone number to call. The HR person has the worst attitude and the biggest chip on her shoulder, especially if you don't return the vomitous sexual jokes she and some of the other employees make all day. The promises they make you at the time of hire might as well come from a politician, cause they don't mean anything. The management is never wrong, even if they are, they will blame the night shift mechanics. The management as a whole was a joke. "Provided training", yea right. "Generous compensation", no way, barely enough to make ends meet. More than 1 year without a review or raise is more like it. Other employees have gone for more than 5 years without a raise. There is "mandatory" more than 10 hour days, but if there is no work, be prepared to see the day shift get work while the night shift gets to burn a vacation day. Oh, and you can bet the day shift always has work, especially the incompetent cousin-in-law of the maintenance manager. "We have a fully stocked work truck", except for any tool that you might actually need for the job. Oh, and there is no insurance provided for your tools while they are in the non-secured building, so if one of the climbers snags your tools while you are gone, too bad for you. Feel free to apply for this job, you will be sorry just like I was after a year of employment. Whatever you do, don't photocopy a piece of paper, cause that's a safety violation!

This is a great place to work for a single individual with no family. You're provided a company truck, stipend for phone and even Per Diem in some instances. Housing is also typically provided on most projects. Combined with the fact that you can work as much overtime as you want, you can make good money and be able to save most of your paycheck because you don't have to pay rent, a car loan or insurance. The job also includes benefits like full medical, dental, eye, 401k, and investing.
On the downside, employees are expected to work at least 45 hours and 50+ hours is usually preferred. This means being asked or expected to work Saturdays on most weeks. In addition, you are only paid for your time in the field, even if it takes an hour to get to the work site from your hotel. So, most employees are out for 11-12 hours to make a 10 hour day. This leads to having little time to do anything other than work, eat and sleep each day. Furthermore, if the job is located more than 6-8 hours from home/family, don't expect to be home every weekend. Hence, the poor rating on Job Work/Life Balance.
Finally, management is poor at best. Goals are based on each week, which is difficult in an outdoor job affected by weather/terrain, and employees are expected to make up for lost time/revenue due to weather delays. Management's focus is all about the revenue and little is given to ensuring employees are satisfied. Sure, they give out raises and promotions to those who consistently go above and beyond, but don't be expected to be rewarded with more free time, just more work, for not much more than everyone else is making. Anyways, this job is very similar to the military. You will be given Room and Board and nearly everything you need, but expect your life to revolve around the job.

The position involved processing weekly payroll for approximately 80 employees, maintaining compliance documentation (driver inspections, safety meetings, job briefings), managing timesheet tracking books for billing, and serving as the primary office contact for field staff and clients. The role required strong organization, attention to detail, and the ability to manage competing priorities.

The most rewarding aspect of the job was supporting field crews and ensuring payroll and documentation were handled accurately and on time.

Unfortunately, the workplace culture was negatively affected by inconsistent leadership, limited communication, and a lack of transparency regarding expectations and performance standards. There was minimal constructive feedback or documented performance discussions, which created uncertainty and instability within the office. Professional concerns were not consistently addressed in a structured or collaborative manner.

The operational experience itself was valuable; however, stronger leadership, accountability, and clear communication would have significantly improved the overall environment.


My experience as a "Client Experience Coordinator" (which is their term for customer service agent), was pretty awful. You are basically told that you get a 30 min lunch, no break options. If you need a day off, you have to make sure another office can cover your calls before you can take the day off and if you are sick, you are required to reach out to others offices to take the calls. 

The training is pretty awful. You have a 4 week training period and 2 of those weeks are spent having binders READ to you as you watch someone on a computer. Actually, you will have binders read to you the entire time of the training but you will eventually be on a computer. You are then expected to be able to jump into the systems and use them. It's quite possibly the worst training I have been through. Being a former trainer in databases, employees should be given computers on day one not day 8. When I did finally make an actual call, which is the majority of the job but not as originally advertised, I asked for feedback...the trainer gave me almost no advice on what I could have changed. My advice for all new hires...keep looking while you work here. 

FYI: As a new hire, in your first year, you will receive 5 vacation days off. That's it. No sick time in year one. 5 days for 365 days.  I don't think I have ever worked for a company that cared less about its employees before.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Horrible management, poor communication, and petty arguments among the sales arborists. The DM does everything in his power to NOT invest in his employees, and has been around for so long he practically invents his own rules that aren't company policy. Pair that with a fragile ego about his leadership and you won't feel so enthused about coming into work. Want any kind of time off during the summer time? Good luck. Great and efficient staff that deserve better, but all it takes is one person at the top to make the experience unbearable. For a dangerous jobs that require so many tasks out of you, pay really isn't worth it either.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
High risk, low pay, and management.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Safety-oriented, but training beginners is severely lacking.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
You start earlier than most offices in the Wheeling office for dispatch... to discuss very trivial matters and get hung up on every talking point. Often times sales and the DM don't communicate properly and have to reschedule the day. You stretch, receive your work sites, head to the yard, load up on what you need, and head out to the tree care part of the job. At times, sales guys under-assign equipment we could've used for the job (needing a bucket truck or a bigger stump grinder), or assign things way too big to get to where we need to be (bucket trucks not fitting into driveways for example).

My role in the communications/marketing department was very different from the overall workplace experience at Davey. The company is build on a strong foundation with well-deserved accreditations and reputation. Field-level workers were respected, worked hard and advanced in promotions and training as they felt comfortable. I was in a corporate role where management skills/training and communication were poor (ironically) and honesty and respect for each other was lacking. My direct managers did not give clear directions on priorities. Behind-the-scenes, the corporate communications and marketing departments were divided with no clear goals or ways to track progress. The role I was hired to do was a combination of three roles, and by the time I left, the job duties had been divided amongst others and I was blamed for not meeting expectations, even after my job description had changed.
Overall, I recommend Davey as a company. But I do not recommend Davey for corporate roles, especially in communications/marketing.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Arborist 21 salaries reported	$24.93 per hour
Landscape technician 16 salaries reported	$20.75 per hour
Tree trimmer 4 salaries reported	$22.47 per hour
Utility worker 6 salaries reported	$24.21 per hour
Forester 13 salaries reported	$23.46 per hour

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