BRANCHING OUT
Providing Full Service the Family Way
To become the largest family-owned tree-care business in Minnesota, S & S Tree Specialists took this approach: add services, invest in people and equipment and schedule bigger crews. It has certainly paid off for the Sylvester family (Steve and his sons Tony and Louie), who have built a 75-employee firm into a major, full-service tree-care company in the Twin Cities area and western Wisconsin.
TAKING DOWN DISEASED TREES Soon after Steve Sylvester started a general landscaping company in 1976 in South St. Paul, Minn., he had a chance to get into the tree-care business, and for the past 34 years he has regularly added services to expand the company.
Tree removal started when the company received a contract from the City of St. Paul to take down trees affected with Dutch elm disease. While working on that job, several colleges and many homeowners asked S & S to remove their diseased trees.
“That really focused my dad’s attention on tree care,” says Tony Sylvester, president of tree care, wood products and plant health care, “and he decided that offering just tree removal services would limit the growth of the company. So he added tree maintenance and pruning in the mid-1980s. The more the business grew, the more potential he saw in every aspect of tree care. Today we are a full-service company.”
There is no doubt about that, as evidenced by the list of services S & S provides: tree care, plant heath care, property maintenance and athletic field care. On larger jobs the company also does tub grinding on site, turning wood into mulch, (100 percent natural wood) which is then sold to garden centers. “We were spending $35,000 to $50,000 annually on tub grinding services,” says Sylvester, “and that justified purchasing the high-volume Vermeer®
TG7000 tub grinder. As a result, we have been able to pick up all kinds of miscellaneous grinding jobs.”
Next year S & S will begin selling trees — maple, elm and oak — from its 60-acre (24.3 ha) Wisconsin tree farm. “This will further set us apart from other tree-care companies,” says Sylvester.
EMPLOYEES WITH CREDENTIALS The staff includes 22 International Society of Arboriculture certified arborists, five foresters, a certified sports turf manager and a board- certified master arborist. “With all our credentials homeowners are more willing to spend a little bit more knowing they are getting exceptional expertise, and the job will be done right the first time,” says Sylvester. “And that we will be here tomorrow.”
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