In Ohio, a chainsaw and a Facebook page is all you need to call yourself a tree service. The bill for getting that wrong falls to the homeowner.
Every storm season it's the same story. A low-bid outfit with a magnetic sign on a pickup drops a limb through somebody's sunroom, turns out to carry no insurance — Ohio doesn't require a license to cut trees — and the homeowner ends up filing against her own policy to cover the four hundred dollars she thought she was saving.
It happens more than it should. Someone takes the deposit, takes half the tree, and disappears. The customer calls to ask if we can come finish the job, and we do — but the cleanup costs more than hiring it right the first time.
The fix isn't complicated. Before you hire anybody — us included — ask for two things: a current liability insurance certificate, and three local references from this year. A crew that has them will hand them to you before the chain starts. A crew that doesn't will tell you they're "on the way over." They're not.
We carry our certificate in the truck. If you call about an estimate, the first thing through your door will be the binder. Read it. Look up the policy number. Trust nobody, including us, until you've seen the paper.
The trees in this part of Ohio are old, tall, and increasingly tired. Ash borer took the ash. Storms hit harder than they used to. A real tree service has a place in this region; a guy with a chainsaw and a Facebook page does not. Hire accordingly.
