How Much to Charge for Tree Trimming: A Price per Tree by Height, Built From Crew Hours

How to price a tree trimming job: the formula

Price the clock hours the visit takes for the whole crew, add what the saws, chipper and dump run cost, then divide by one minus your margin. Tree height is not in the formula. It changes the hours.

1. Clock hours = (drive and load + setup + trees × (pruning + brush cleanup)) ÷ 60.
2. Crew hours = clock hours × workers.
3. Materials = on-site hours × saw and chipper running cost + dump fee.
4. Break-even = crew hours × (loaded wage + overhead per hour) + materials.
5. Price = break-even ÷ (1 − margin). Price per tree and per foot are outputs.

I build pricing maths; I am not an arborist. Every minute and dollar below is an assumption for a two-person crew with a chipper. Replace each from your own timed jobs.

Rates (assumed): a $28 wage plus 40% burden is $39.20 an hour. Burden is payroll taxes, workers' compensation and insurance on that wage; take your own percentage from your policy and payroll records (the labor burden calculator guide shows how). Overhead is $50,400 a year ÷ (2 people × 210 billable days × 8 hours = 3,360 hours) = $15 per crew hour. Break-even is $54.20 per crew hour, or $77.43 once divided by 0.70 for a 30% margin.

Materials (assumed): $14 per on-site hour for saw fuel, bar oil, chain wear, chipper fuel and knives, plus each tree's share of an assumed $40 fee for a full load of chips.

Tree trimming cost calculator (opens on one 15–30 ft tree)

Type your own numbers to get break-even and the price to quote. It opens on the example, so it shows $431.43.

Hours are 150 minutes ÷ 60 = 2.5. Materials are 1.5 on-site hours × $14 plus a $10 dump share = $31.00.

Check it: 2.5 clock hours × 2 workers = 5 crew hours. At $39.20 that is $196.00 of labour, plus $75.00 of overhead and $31.00 of materials: $302.00. Divided by 0.70, the price is $431.43. The free tree service pricing calculator runs the same maths on its own page.

Tree trimming price per tree by height: a worked price list

On these assumptions one tree per visit prices from $248 under 15 ft to $1,348.57 over 60 ft. Each row is one computed visit.

Why there is no single price per foot

The last column divides each price by one example height. It moves between $17.26 and $20.67 on the same rates, because the 60 minutes of driving and setup sell at $154.86 whatever the tree. That is 62% of the smallest tree's price and 11% of the largest.

So a flat per-foot rate underprices short trees. Quote the 15–30 ft figure of $17.26 a foot on a 12 ft tree and you bill $207.12: $40.88 under that visit's computed price, a 16.2% margin in place of 30%.

What should the minimum charge be, and how to price several trees

Set the minimum at the computed price of the shortest visit you will drive to. Here that is one tree under 15 ft: $248.00.

For several trees, add each tree's minutes to one visit. With 15–30 ft trees the price per tree falls from $431.43 for one to $315.29 for four.

The last column is the multi-tree discount this cost build supports: the 60 shared minutes spread over more trees. Every quote is a $154.86 visit charge plus $276.57 for each 15–30 ft tree.

Tree trimming price per hour: what one crew-day must bring in

Behind the list sits one rate: $77.43 per crew hour, or $154.86 for each clock hour the two-person crew is out. An 8-hour day is 16 crew hours, so it must bring in $1,238.86 before materials to hold a 30% margin.

Per tree or by the hour? A fixed price suits work you can size from the ground. When the hours cannot be estimated beforehand, quote time and materials at the clock-hour rate plus the dump line, with an hour cap.

Equipment. The owned chipper and chip truck sit in overhead here, an assumed $21,000 of the $50,400. A lift rented for one job is a materials line at the yard's quote.

Access and debris: price them as minutes and a dump line

Access and brush handling change the minutes, so they change the price: extra time at the clock-hour rate, not a difficulty percentage.

Debris. Hauling loose brush costs $204.86 more than chipping here, because the dump run is crew time. Leaving the brush stacked takes $72.57 off. That is the honest size of a “leave it” discount: the cleanup minutes and dump share you no longer spend.

Hedges and shrubs price by the foot, not by height band; see the hedge trimming pricing guide.

Pruning type changes the hours: cleaning, raising, thinning, reduction

Name the pruning type on the quote; each is a different amount of cutting. The wording is quoted from the International Society of Arboriculture's Pruning Your Trees page; the minutes are my assumptions for the same 15–30 ft tree.

Topping is not a line on this list. ISA calls it “perhaps the most harmful tree pruning practice known”, and Penn State Extension tells owners to consider another firm if “topping” or “rounding over” shows up in the paperwork. Penn State also says the old limit of removing up to 25 percent of live branches or foliage a year “is too broad to apply to all trees”, so do not print a fixed percentage as a standard. How much to remove is a qualified arborist's call; this page prices only the time.

How much to charge for palm tree trimming

Price palms per palm from their own minutes, on the same rates. Assumed here: 25 minutes to remove dead fronds, 10 to clean up, and a $6 dump share per palm.

Scope drives the minutes. ISA's guidance is to “remove old, dead, lower fronds only, unless otherwise required for clearance”.

Access is the cost question. ISA says climbing spikes “should not be used to climb palms for pruning because they permanently wound the palm trunk”. A tall palm then needs a ladder or lift: overhead if owned, materials if rented.

Winter pruning, power lines and safety time in the price

Timing. ISA says most light, routine pruning of weak, dead or diseased limbs “can be accomplished at any time during the year”, and that growth and wound closure are maximized if pruning takes place before the spring growth flush. Penn State's advice for training young trees is to avoid pruning from bud break until full leaf expansion and as trees become dormant: “Once dormant, resume pruning.”

For pricing, dormant-season work is extra billable days. Move the assumed 210 days to 230 and overhead falls from $15 to $13.70 per crew hour; the example tree prices at $422.11, not $431.43.

Penn State also tells owners to try to schedule work in the fall or winter, “when rates may drop”. 10% off the example tree is $388.29. Break-even is still $302, so profit is $86.29 and the margin kept is 22.2%.

Power lines. This price list assumes no energized line within reach of the tree, the crew or its tools. Penn State says that if the work will bring a person, tool, equipment or any part of the tree within 10 feet of an electrified line exceeding 750 volts, notify the utility company several days in advance or use a qualified line clearance tree trimmer. OSHA's rule at 29 CFR 1910.333(c)(3) sets 10 ft as the closest an unqualified person, and the longest conductive object he or she may contact, may come to an unguarded, energized overhead line of 50 kV or below. Utility line clearance is not this job. Write the exclusion on the quote and confirm the rules with the utility.

Safety time. OSHA's tree care hazards page names overhead power lines, falling branches and faulty safety equipment among potentially fatal hazards. The 15 setup minutes hold the site walk and gear check; do not cut them to win a job. This page is not safety instruction.

Excel formulas for a tree trimming price list, the markup mistake, and tools

Inputs go in B2 to B14 of your own sheet; each formula's note names its cells.

The mistake: adding 30% to break-even in place of dividing. On the example tree that bills $392.60 and keeps 23.08%. It is $38.83 short on one visit; the example table's yearly row assumes 8 such visits a week.

There is no ready-made tree trimming product in the shop, and neither free tool has a height band, per-tree or per-foot cell.

Put on the price list: the minimum charge, height bands, pruning type, what happens to the brush, access limits and the power-line exclusion. Taking the whole tree down is a different job: the tree removal pricing guide prices it by the crew-day, and the stump grinding guide prices the stump as its own line.

Step-by-step: How Much to Charge for Tree Trimming: A Price per Tree by Height, Built From Crew Hours

1. Size the tree and the pruning. Note the height band, pruning type, access, drop zone and any overhead lines.
2. Write the clock minutes. Drive and load, setup, then pruning and brush cleanup per tree, from your own timed jobs.
3. Convert to crew hours. Minutes ÷ 60 × workers.
4. Add materials. On-site hours × saw and chipper running cost, plus the dump fee and any rented lift.
5. Find break-even. Crew hours × (wage × (1 + burden %) + yearly overhead ÷ sellable hours) + materials.
6. Divide by one minus margin. For 30%, divide break-even by 0.70. Never quote under your shortest-visit price.

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