I need professional help! No, not from a shrink (watch it, bub), but from a tree surgeon! Pro lanscapers and nursery people, what is your professional opinion?
I need to replace 2 or 3 mature (~8’) arba vitae trees, variety unsure, along a tree-lined hedge along my property line. The trees were damaged by a drunk driver who escaped the scene. I have called several nurseries and landscapers. Most don’t wish to get involved when they (a) hear it’s an insurance thing and/or (b) it’s a small case. It seems the written estimate “thing” turns them right off and/or they want a ridiculous amount of money for the estimate…and some won’t apply it to the final cost!
Even more puzzling, ONLY one landscaper claims he can get the trees I need at $80/tree total…$30/tree wholesale! …And, this includes labor! (Maybe he heard me wrong? That’s 8-ft, not 8-in!) Everyone else wants $350/tree plus maybe another 50% for labor per tree.
Tell me how the industry works, what is a reasonable price, and what I should (or should not) say when cold-calling, etc. Is there some verbal pathway to help me find the trees and labor at a reasonable cost…without the case being too small? If it matters, I am in the mid-Atlantic area. (It’s the growing season, I know…) :rolleyes:
Can’t seem to see the trees through the forest…thanks for your professional help!
I work for a landscaper/ nursery. The largest upright arbors we sell are 6’. I’m not sure that ones larger transplant very well. The prices range from 110.00 to 153.00 per plant. The lower the price usually the faster it grows. It seems reasonable.that a two foot bigger plant could be in the $300.00 range. Our price includes delivery to your site. It’s pretty standard for planting charges to be 50% of the cost of the plant. I don’t know if the costs you gave include removal of the damaged trees. It might cost $45.00 or more to remove each tree. You should get a year guarantee on the plants, not the planting.
The guy who says $80.00 each including planting is bad news… no way can he get them for that price unless he digs them up from someone’s yard in the middle of the night. No way wholesale on a quality evergreen that big is 30.00.
We often get requests for insurance estimates. Usually the people are just big pains, wanting us to pad the estimate as much as possible, taking up a lot of time and never buying anything from us. We started charging 35.00 per estimate but that can be used towards later purchase.
If I were you I wouldn’t say anything about the insurance. It’s none of their business. You want to replace 3 large evergreens, that’s all they need to know. If you can’t get the landscaper to do the labor see if you can get the trees from them and hire a guy from a nursery or landscaper on the side. Planting’s not really hard, a tree that size is just heavy to manuever, you and two friends should be able to do it. You might consider getting 6’ instead, 8’ are very hard to find and that might be one of your main problems. We can rarely even find anything that size at any cost.
We don’t turn down jobs no matter how small but get new customers all the time because all the other landscapers do. Your job to me sounds like some easy uncomplicated money, not that small of a job either. Who cares how big the job is as long as they get their hourly rate. This is just the kind of thing to fill up a slow day. Too bad you don’t live in the midwest.