A day as an Arborist
An arborist's day starts with a tree nobody on the crew has climbed before. You read it from the ground, pick a tie-in point, plan where every piece will land, and then find out halfway up that the tree had other ideas. This is the day of a climbing arborist on a residential crew, the most common way people do this job.
From the shop to the last load of chips
Loading out at the shop
You check the chipper, top off bar oil and mix gas, and go through your climbing kit piece by piece: saddle, rope, lanyard, carabiners, friction hitch. A frayed spot on your climbing line means it comes out of service today, not after this job. The crew leader hands you the work orders and you pull the chip truck out of the yard.
The job briefing in the driveway
Before a saw starts, the crew stands around the tree and talks it through. Who climbs, who runs the rope on the ground, where the drop zone is, where the power line runs, and which hospital you'd drive to. It feels like a formality until the day it isn't. The homeowner comes out to ask if you're keeping the lilac under the drip line, and you promise to rig over it.
Up the tree on a single rope
You set a throw line into a solid crotch high in the canopy, install your rope, and ascend. The job is a large silver maple that has to come down in pieces because it hangs over a garage roof. You limb it from the top, lowering each piece on a rigging line while your ground worker takes a wrap on the lowering device and lets it run smooth.
The limb that wasn't sound
A big lead you planned to rig out turns out to be hollow where it meets the trunk, and your tie-in plan above it no longer makes sense. You stop, come down to a lower anchor, and redo the rigging so the piece swings away from the garage instead of into it. The crew leader agrees, the job runs long, and lunch happens in the truck at a different address.
Pruning, not removing
The afternoon job is the kind people hire an arborist for instead of a guy with a saw. You're doing reduction cuts on a red oak, cutting back to lateral branches that can take over, never flush to the trunk and never topping it. When the ground crew finishes raking the lawn and blowing off the driveway, the last chip load heads back to the yard.
Why tree work isn't landscaping
Plenty of people with a chainsaw will cut down a tree. The arborist is the one who knows why a tree is failing, how to prune it so it lives, and how to take it apart over a house without touching the gutters. That knowledge is what the customer is paying for, and it's what separates a climber who stays a climber from one who moves up. Expect to learn tree identification by bark and bud, the difference between a good cut and a stub, and how decay shows up before it's obvious. You'll also learn the tree care safety standard well enough to spot when a crew is ignoring it. Storm season is the part nobody warns you about. After a big wind event you'll work long stretches clearing trees off roofs and cars, tired, around wires that may or may not be dead. Good companies slow down for it. Some don't, and those are the ones to leave.
How people end up in a tree for a living
Start on the ground crew
This is how most climbers begin. You drag brush, feed the chipper and run the lowering line, and you learn how the climber thinks by watching every cut. Crews promote ground workers who show up, handle rigging well and ask to learn to climb.
A college program in arboriculture or urban forestry
Community colleges and some universities run arboriculture programs with climbing labs. It's a faster path to plant health care, municipal forestry or a consulting role, though you'll still earn your climbing skill on a crew.
Line clearance tree trimming
Utility contractors hire and train trimmers to clear vegetation away from power lines, usually from a bucket truck. The training is structured, the safety rules are strict, and plenty of people move from there into residential or municipal work later.
What Arborist postings ask for
Hiring the most
- The Davey Tree Expert Company187
- ACRT Services5
- Liberty Utilities (Canada) Corp.2
- CityAndCountyOfSanFrancisco11
- NextEra Energy1
Remote
0% of openings are fully remote.
Questions people ask
Do I need a certification to work as an arborist?
You can get hired on a ground crew with none. The ISA Certified Arborist credential is the one clients and employers recognise, and it opens doors to sales, consulting and plant health care roles. Some states and cities also license tree workers or require a pesticide applicator license for treatments, so check with your state agriculture department or local board, because the rules differ by place.
Is being an arborist dangerous?
Yes, it's one of the riskier trades, and nobody in the job pretends otherwise. The main dangers are falls, falling wood, chainsaw cuts and electrical contact near power lines. Crews that do real job briefings, inspect gear daily and train aerial rescue keep that risk far lower, so ask about those things before you take a job.
What's the difference between a tree climber and an arborist?
On a crew the words overlap. A climber is defined by the skill of working in the canopy. An arborist is defined by knowing tree biology, pruning and diagnosis, and plenty of arborists sell work, write assessments or run plant health care programs without climbing much at all.
196 Arborist jobs are open today
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