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30 THE DAVEY BULLETIN | September/October 2020 FROM THE ARCHIVES 'THE CARE OF TREES' LEGACY HAS FAR-REACHING ROOTS In 2008, The Care of Trees (TCOT) joined The Davey Tree Expert Company via one of Davey's largest mergers in company history. But the Chicago-based firm brought its own storied legacy, having been founded in September 1945 by its namesake Archibald Enoch Price – a pioneer in the tree care industry – as "Archibald Enoch Price, The Care of Trees." At the time of the merger, in 2008, TCOT operations consisted of 500 employees in 11 states with annualized revenue of $50 million. The business had been built, in part, through TCOT's own earlier mergers and acquisitions with other tree care operations in the U.S. The 2008 merger benefitted Davey perhaps the most via the people who came along with TCOT, some of whom themselves had joined TCOT through its own acquisition activity. TCOT, like Davey, was employee-owned – a driving force behind TCOT's choice to join Davey Tree. John Hendricksen, who served as chairman of TCOT in 2008, had himself founded Hendricksen Tree Experts in the 1960s and later merged with TCOT in 1985 to create "Hendricksen, The Care of Trees," dropping the founder's moniker from the company name (Price had sold the business in 1973). Hendricksen said TCOT had been built by generations of dedicated arborists, many of whom were giants in the industry. "It's kind of like a watershed, with all its streams turning into rivers that turn into a larger river," Hendricksen said. "And it's all meeting toward Davey Tree and where we arrived at the profession today." Those businesses could not have come together without the countless people who came together like rain drops to create the larger whole. "Our motto at TCOT was 'Our business is people and their love for trees,'" Hendricksen said. "That was intended to capture both clients and employees. That was really an underlying theme at TCOT, and I believe it's true at Davey also." Many people who helped make TCOT a thriving business stayed on to find their own successes at Davey. Ken Clear, now vice president, New England/Southeast operations, U.S. R/C services, had joined TCOT through an acquisition it had made of Alpine Tree Care in 1992. "At TCOT, we recognized there were two sides to the coin," Clear said. "One side is employees, and the other side is clients. We recognized that one can't survive without the other. As I've gotten to know people at Davey over the years there is not one person I don't respect. For me, it's the best place I've ever worked." Phil Snyder, vice president, East Atlantic operations, U.S. R/C services, tells a story similar to Clear, having joined TCOT through the Alpine merger. In 2008, Snyder was serving as an officer of the company overseeing an entire operating region for TCOT. "TCOT was truly focused on employee training, development and personal growth," Snyder said. "When the merger happened, I urged my team to compete for opportunities and approach the merger as a moment to stand up and shine and show what we could do and how we did it. I'm proud of the fact that some TCOT strengths have resonated across R/C services at Davey." Kevin Peters, vice president, operations, Davey Tree Surgery Company, said strengths that resonated helped bring about programs at Davey such as DaveyCare, which was introduced in 2011. DaveyCare provided a 3 4

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