The stop
One row per tree. Hours grow with the square of DBH because that is how wood volume grows. Access and targets change the hours more than species does.
Your costs
Crew hourly is what you pay the whole crew for an hour on the clock — climber, ground, and chipper operator together. Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation (expensive in this trade), and insurance. Travel is billed once for the stop, not once per tree. A crane day is charged only if any tree is marked crane-required.
Your bid
- On-site hours
- Travel hours
- Loaded labor
- Equipment, crane, dump
- Overhead
- Total job cost
- Profit at this bid
- Price per inch of DBH
- Effective crew hourly
- Walk-away price
- Quote floor (cost or minimum)
A bid link carries the whole stop — every tree, access, and your rates — so the page reopens exactly as you left it. Send it to yourself or your crew. The customer should get the price, not the link.
Which tree is carrying the job
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The hour factors are starting points, not an industry standard, a benchmark, or a guarantee — time your own crews and replace the wages and fees with yours.
Common questions
Why not just quote a price per inch of trunk diameter?
Because wood volume does not grow with diameter, it grows with diameter squared. This tool uses (DBH ÷ 12)² against a 12-inch reference tree, so a 24" trunk is four times the wood of a 12" one at the same height — not twice. A linear per-inch rule underprices every big removal on the schedule and overprices the small ones, which is how a crew stays busy all season and still finishes the year flat.
What actually drives the hours — species or access?
Access, usually by a wide margin. Species moves the base hours by a factor of 0.7 (palm) to 1.25 (oak, maple, hickory, beech), with mixed or unknown at 1.0. Access moves them from 1.0 at the street with the chipper at the tree, to 1.15 for a side yard, 1.4 for carrying brush out of a backyard, 1.75 for a tight backyard or work over a structure, and 2.1 when a crane is required. Hazard premiums stack on top of that and add up: +25% near a structure, +40% near power, +20% for a dead or hazardous tree. Those are pricing factors for your own estimate, not a hazard rating or a recommendation to remove anything — that is an arborist's call.
How is haul priced separately from the removal?
As a share of the tree's base removal hours, before access and hazard multipliers: leaving wood on site is 0, chipping on site and leaving the chips is 0.12, chip-and-haul is 0.35, and hauling logs is 0.45. The two haul options that actually leave the property also add a dump fee per tree. Basing haul on base hours rather than the multiplied figure keeps a backyard carry from being counted twice — the carry is already in the access multiplier.
Does the stump grind come out of the removal price?
No, it is its own line and only when you tick it. Grind hours are about 0.2 h of setup plus a growth term that scales with the stump's face — diameter squared, not diameter, because the wheel sweeps the whole cross-section — roughly 0.6 h for a 12" stump and 3.8 h for a 36" one (three times the diameter is nine times the face), in the range a two-person grind crew actually spends including repositioning. You can enter a stump diameter that differs from DBH, which is what you want on a flared or previously topped tree.
Why does a one-small-tree job come out at the minimum charge?
Because a stop costs more than its cutting. Round-trip drive for the whole crew is priced from the travel minutes you enter and billed at the loaded crew rate, equipment is charged per on-site hour, and a crane — if any tree on the stop needs one — is a day rate charged once for the whole stop, not per tree. When the margin price still lands under your mobilization floor, the floor is used instead and the result says so. That is the number a "can you just take out this little one?" call actually costs you.
Is my bid data uploaded anywhere?
No. No account and no network requests — the address, the trees, your wages, and your prices stay in this browser. The stop itself saves to this browser's local storage as you type, so it is still here on your next visit, and "Start a fresh bid" clears it. "Copy bid link" puts the same numbers in a URL you can send yourself or your crew instead — treat a copied link like your rate sheet, since it carries every tree and rate. The business details saved for the printed proposal live in this browser's local storage separately, and "Forget my business details" clears them. The optional local usage counter records only which features were used and the day, and the footer checkbox turns it off.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.