Thanks for the positive input..geez, someone obviously doesnt like young guys looking to start a new career.
I guess I need to ask.
Do you guys respect workers that went to college?
Yeah it would of ended up being about 2 years and around 60 grand including room and board...certainly not worth it to be a pion.
Good advice. I do need to do more research in the jobs available for arborists though. I am thinking now that I'd like to be more involved in the scientific aspect of the field rather then the labor side IE Removing problematic trees and braches hanging over houses and whatnot. Does anyone here work for the NPS, a college or a city doing pruning and corrective treatment. That's really the world I'm interested in....Are those jobs even out there?
BTW, thanks everyone for your constructive criticism...it's helping alot.
And crap, I thought the ground crew were doing the hard work..I kind of figured climbing would be the fun part.
Sir you are 24 I am 28 I started this gig when I was a kid and have been climbing for quite a while now. I put the hooks on for the first time when I was 10 started climbing full time when I was 18 and let me say it is a very bitter/sweet profession and often somewhat of a feast or famine situation. It is a tough way to go, you take a lot of risks even if you work safely and a fair number of individuals that you will work with and encounter will likely be some type of drug user or at least drinks regularly. The pay is good most of the time but for what you have to go through certainly not one of the better lines especially with a lib arts degree sorry to say will help you not. When you said something about more of the rec end of things or the science field I would say based on your posts that may be a good path for you. Climber/Arborist is a noble profession but certainly not for most. I have met many with a similar background as you and about 0% have become legitimate climbers, you either got it or you don't and you have to have a level of legitimate crazy in you to do what needs to be done now and again and you will get hurt it is a matter of when and how bad. There are much better paying jobs that are easier than this I would advise against it on your part, Sir.
All arborist work pretty much includes labor unless you are gonna be a consulting arborist or something like that. In order to do that you still have to work your way up, no one is gonna hire a consulting arborist that has never done any tree work. My brother has a four year degree in forest health from ESF which is a damn good school for forestry. He currently works as a ground guy making 12 bucks an hour. I don't think you can really get into this industry without doing the labor. I know a lot of guys that got out of school then went the PHC route, but in my opinion it's much more fun to climb. If you really don't want to do any labor then maybe that is one thing you can look at, it's still labor though it's just not as demanding as tree work.
Any good tree company is going to have plenty of jobs where you are diagnosing and correcting problems as well as clearing branches over roofs and whatnot. I would say at least sixty percent of the work I do is "corrective pruning". Pruning is very labor intensive as well, you still have to climb the whole tree and you have to do it without damaging anything or wearing spikes. I don't know how you think that removing a problematic tree is not labor intensive. Cutting down a 65 foot tall dead and hazardous cottonwood in someones tiny backyard is an extremely laborous task.
I have never worked for something as a big as a college or city, though I did just get a contract at a golf course. I go to school with a couple of grounds maintenance guys for one of the local universities and they contract their tree work out to one of the local tree companies. It seems like in most circumstances there wouldn't be enough tree work for a small municipality or a school to have a permanent guy for it, so most contract it out.
Also here is a little piece of advise that the first guy that hired me told me. "If you can climb and prune, you'll never go without a job" So far I have seen that to be true. Almost any tree company I have worked for would hire a good climber right now, or any time. That doesn't necessarily mean that you will always be making a ton of money, but if you get good at this finding a job shouldn't be a problem.
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