How to Hire and Keep Good Tree Climbers

A good tree climber walks off your crew. Two weeks later you find out he went to a competitor for about the same hourly rate.

You’re left wondering what you did wrong on pay. Probably nothing. He didn’t leave for the dollar. He left for the schedule.

Hiring tree climbers is hard. There aren’t enough of them, the good ones know it, and the talent pool is thin. But keeping the climbers you’ve already trained is the part that quietly decides whether your business grows or treads water.

And the thing that wrecks retention most isn’t pay. It’s hours you can’t guarantee. Which traces straight back to your marketing.

Why Hiring Tree Climbers Is So Hard Right Now

Let’s start with the honest picture. Skilled climbers are scarce, and the math shows it.

Climbing arborists average around $29 an hour nationally in 2026, with most pay landing between roughly $22 and $35 depending on experience and market. Top climbers push past that. Groundsmen run lower, in the high teens to low twenties.

The pool of people who can safely climb and rig a 70-foot oak is small. The pool willing to do it for the long haul is smaller. And every other tree service in your area is fishing the same water.

So when you finally land a good climber, that’s not a routine hire. That’s an asset you cannot afford to lose.

Which makes the next question the one that actually matters. How do you keep him?

Pay Fairly, But Know Pay Isn’t the Whole Story

Pay matters. Underpay a skilled climber and he’ll leave, full stop. You have to be in the market range for your area or you’re just training people for your competitors.

But here’s what the wage data doesn’t tell you. Climbers rarely jump ship for a dollar an hour. They jump for stability.

A climber earning $30 an hour with reliable 40-hour weeks will turn down $32 an hour at a shop known for sending people home when work dries up. He’s done that math. He knows $32 times 28 hours loses to $30 times 40.

So pay competitively, yes. But understand that competitive pay with an unreliable schedule still loses good climbers. The schedule is the real product you’re offering.

That’s the trap most owners never see. They keep raising pay to fix a problem that pay can’t touch.

The Real Reason You Lose Good Climbers

Walk it through the way a climber experiences it.

Spring and summer, you’re slammed. Plenty of work, full weeks, everyone’s earning. Then the calls slow down. October gets thin. November is worse. By January you’re short on jobs and you start sending people home early or skipping days.

Your climber has a truck payment and a family. A few light paychecks in a row and he’s listening to the next offer.

This is the cycle that breaks crews. Feast or famine doesn’t just stress you out. It stresses out everyone depending on the schedule you can’t control.

You can’t fix that with a culture speech or a year-end bonus. A climber who can’t predict next week’s hours will eventually leave for somewhere that feels steadier.

The fix isn’t a retention tactic. It’s a lead pipeline that doesn’t collapse every fall.

You Can’t Keep Climbers Without Steady Work to Give Them

Here’s the hard truth most articles about hiring tree climbers skip.

You cannot promise a climber steady hours until your lead flow is predictable.

Think about what you’re really offering when you make a hire. You’re offering hours. And hours are just work. And work is just leads that closed. Trace it all the way back and your retention problem is a marketing problem wearing a hard hat.

If your phone rings hard for two weeks then goes quiet for three, your schedule swings with it. Your climbers feel every swing. The good ones leave to find a floor under their feet.

If your lead flow is steady and predictable, you can build a stable schedule. You can promise 40 hours and actually deliver them. Now retention isn’t a constant fight, because the thing climbers leave over has been removed.

This is why the owners who keep their crews longest almost always have one thing in common. They run a lead channel they control.

Build the Lead Flow Before You Make the Hire

Most tree service owners run hiring backward. They land a job they’re short-handed for, scramble to hire a climber, then hope enough work shows up to keep him busy.

When the work doesn’t show, the new hire sits idle, and a few quiet weeks later he’s gone. Now you’ve spent recruiting time and training hours to train someone for a competitor.

Do it in the right order instead.

Get a predictable lead source running first. A channel where you decide how many leads come in and when. Direct mail works for exactly this because you control the volume directly. More letters out, more calls in. You set the dial.

Let it run 60 to 90 days so you have real numbers. You’ll know roughly how many calls a month your mail produces, your close rate, your average job. Now you can model what one more climber does to your revenue and your schedule.

Then you hire into proven lead flow, not into a hope. That’s a hire that sticks. We walk through the full sequence in getting out of the field.

The order is everything. Leads first. Then headcount.

How Predictable Leads Make You a Better Place to Work

When your lead flow is steady, hiring tree climbers gets easier in a way that surprises owners.

You can make an honest pitch. Tell a recruit, “We mail roughly 4,600 letters a month across our best neighborhoods. Here’s our call volume. Here’s our close rate. The work is there, and your hours are steady.” That’s a real offer, not a vague promise, and good climbers can tell the difference.

You also stop hiring in a panic. Companies that hire ahead of need, instead of when they’re desperate, get to be selective. They screen for the right people instead of grabbing whoever shows up. Desperation hiring puts weak or risky climbers on your crew, and in this trade that’s a safety problem, not just a productivity one.

Steady leads also keep estimates clustered. Matt Morovic with Upright Tree Care runs 5 estimates in 2 hours because his calls land in the same neighborhoods. Tighter routes mean fuller, more productive days for your crews, which means more billable hours, which means the steady paychecks climbers stay for.

Ricky Folse with Veteran Tree Care got 10 calls in 2 days during what was historically his slowest season, on his first direct mail drop. That’s the difference between a winter where you keep your crew and one where you lose them.

Predictable leads don’t just fill your schedule. They make you the shop climbers don’t want to leave.

Don’t Go Dark in the Off-Season

One more thing, because it’s where most owners undo their own retention.

Fall comes, work slows, money gets tight, and the owner cuts marketing to save cash. It feels responsible. It’s the opposite.

Cut marketing in the fall and your winter pipeline goes empty. Now you have climbers and nothing to put them on. So you send them home, and you lose the crew you spent all spring training.

The owners who keep their climbers through winter market harder in the fall, not lighter. They build a backlog before the slowdown hits. We get into the money side of this in managing slow-season cash flow.

Your marketing budget in October is really a retention budget. It’s the difference between a crew that’s still with you in March and one you have to rebuild from scratch.

Hire Smart, But Fix the Foundation First

Hiring good tree climbers comes down to a few things. Pay in the market range. Hire ahead of need so you can be selective. Make an honest offer about hours, and then keep it.

But that last part is the whole game. You can only promise steady hours if your lead flow is steady. Pay, culture, equipment, none of it holds a good climber if the schedule keeps collapsing on him.

So before you write the next job posting, look at your marketing. If your leads are unpredictable, your schedule will be too, and your retention will be too.

Build the predictable lead pipeline first. Then hiring tree climbers stops being a revolving door.

Want to see how a controllable direct mail campaign could give you the steady lead flow your crew can count on? Schedule a call and we’ll map the highest-value neighborhoods in your service area before you commit to anything.