Price removals, trims and stump grinding from your own crew and trucks
You enter what your climbers, ground crew, trucks and yard cost you once. After that every tree is priced from those numbers, not from a figure you said out loud in someone's driveway.
- Know what an hour of your crew and each machine costs Insurance, wages, your own pay and overhead become one rate per labour hour, and the chipper, bucket truck, chip truck and grinder each get their own cost per running hour.
- Price the whole tree, not just the cutting Setup, rigging, felling, dragging and chipping, hauling, grinding and raking out each get their own line with a crew size and hours.
- Quote one number for the job The customer sees one price for the tree, and you see what it works out to per hour on site and per foot of tree.
- Stop paying for the hours around the tree Drive time for the whole crew, dump runs and the morning load-up sit on a checklist that must be answered before the quote is ready.
- Hand over a proper estimate the same evening One page with the scope, the deposit and tree-work terms on wood, brush, buried lines and hidden hardware.
- Learn which trees made money The Job Log keeps every bid, won or lost, next to the real hours each job took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns crew hours, chipper time and dump fees into a removal quote
The file has six tabs, in the order you would price a tree from the first walk-around to the finished job.
- Start HereA short walk-through using the sample tree service as the model. Set aside one evening.
- Shop SetupYour overhead, climbers, groundworkers and equipment (chipper, bucket truck, chip truck, mini skid, stump grinder), turned into a cost per labour hour and per machine hour.
- Price ListSaw fuel, bar oil, chains, grinder teeth, chipper knives, rope, topsoil and seed, each with a date so stale prices stand out.
- QuoteBuild the tree from its pieces, give each a crew size, hours and machine, answer the hidden-cost list, and get the price, the deposit and the earnings per labour hour.
- Customer QuoteThe estimate the homeowner signs: scope, price, deposit and tree-work terms.
- Job LogAfter the job, the real hours go next to the bid, so you see which trees ran long.
What is a crew-hour rate? It is what one hour of your whole crew on site has to bring in to pay the wages, the overhead and the machines running on that job, before profit. Tree owners either price per labour hour and multiply by the people on each piece, or price the whole crew per hour; the file uses labour hours so a two-person trim and a four-person removal are both right. The true hourly rate guide explains the idea.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up tree company and its $4,348 two-tree removal quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The example shop is an owner who climbs, a second climber and two groundworkers, with a break-even of $65.13 per labour hour before equipment. Its sample job removes a 70 ft silver maple leaning over the house (limbs rigged off the roof, house power drop kept up) and a 30 ft spruce by the shed, chips all brush, hauls all wood and grinds 2 stumps.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Sample removal |
| 2 | Supplies, crew labour and equipment | $2,390 |
| 3 | Dump fees and easy-to-miss costs | $866 |
| 4 | Markups, safety cushion and profit | $1,091 |
| 5 | Price to the customer | $4,348 |
The $1,091 is left after every cost, the owner's wage included, and the job earns about $93 per labour hour across 38.5 hours, or about $621 per hour of the crew on site. The full walk-through is on how much to charge for tree removal.
$746
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 14 times what the calculator costs. Miss them once and the file has paid for itself.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
Why pricing a tree by its height loses money
A lot of tree work gets priced by eye: a tall tree gets a big number, a short one a small number. But height is the smallest part of the price. What sits under the tree, how far the brush has to be dragged, and whether the wood stays or goes decide how many hours the crew spends.
Take two 70 ft maples. One stands in an open yard and gets felled in a few cuts. The other leans over a roof, so every limb is rigged down one at a time from the bucket truck. Say the first takes a crew of four 3 hours and the second takes 7. At the sample's $65.13 per labour hour, that is about $780 against about $1,820 in crew time alone, before the truck or profit. Quote them the same and the second tree is paid for by you.
The calculator prices each tree from its own pieces and hours first. You can still see a per-foot number at the end as a check, but the price is built from the work.
Drive time, dump runs and the other tree job costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a quote ready until each of these has a Yes, No or N/A:
- Drive time from the shop for the whole crew, both ways, not just the minutes on the GPS.
- Dump runs and waiting in line at the dump, paid crew time with nobody cutting.
- The morning load-up: fueling saws, hooking the chipper, getting everyone in the trucks.
- The estimate trip, including the trees you look at and don't win.
- 811, septic lids, sprinkler heads and private lines, checked before a log or the grinder lands on them.
- Money set aside for a knocked-down house drop or a broken fence on jobs near a house.
- Lawn repair from equipment ruts. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you set your own number.
Exactly what you get
The file lands in your downloads the minute checkout finishes. Open it in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets and keep it; there is no subscription and nothing to log in to.
- The six-tab calculator, ready for your crew, trucks and chipper.
- A sample tree service, with its maple and spruce removal quoted all the way through.
- Tree-work customer terms you can edit, covering wood and brush, buried lines and hidden hardware, with extra limbs added as a written change order.
- A Job Log that sets each bid's hours beside the real ones. One sample tree bid at 24 hours ran to 40, which is what job costing is there to catch.
How it compares
Most owners price a job one of these ways. Here is what each one gives you.
| Copying another company's price | A free estimate template | Estimating software | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from your own costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Makes you answer the easy-to-miss costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Shows which jobs made money | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Works in Excel and Google Sheets | – | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free | Usually a monthly fee | $49.95 once |
Who it's for: climbers and small tree crews running their own saws
It fits owner-operators and small tree services doing removals, trimming and stump grinding, and climbers who just started their own company and still price from memory. A one-climber outfit with a pickup and a rented chipper or a four-person crew with a bucket truck, it works the same way, because the rate, the machines and the hours are the ones you enter.
It is not for utility line clearance or storm contracts paid at someone else's unit rates, for large companies already running estimating software, or for anyone after a blank form to fill in by hand. The rate side is on tree service cost per hour, and the free true hourly rate calculator gives you a first number.
Stop pricing trees from memory in the driveway. Price every removal, trim and stump from your own crew, chipper and truck costs, catch the drive time and dump runs that slip off, and see which trees made money.
Tree Service Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
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