Davey Tree Flipbooks

23 22 Growth Rings the engine test site in the Santa Susana Mountains. e crews pruned trees all along the 30-mile route so the enormous second stage of the Saturn II moon rocket would not be obstructed as it traveled on the back of a huge flatbed trailer. e work would make it possible for Apollo XI commander Neil A. Armstrong to be the first man to set foot on the moon in July 1969. To increase services to tree care, utility, and landscape customers, Davey opened a new shop and office facility in Charlotte in 1969. e 4,900-square-foot facility served as a headquarters for servicing equipment, warehousing, and office work with plans for it to serve as a maintenance and repair facility for everything from trucks to tractors, aerial basket units, brush chippers, and power tools. e new Charlotte facility complemented other shop facilities around the continent located in Kent; Old Greenwich, Connecticut; Ninety-Six, South Carolina; Winter Park, Florida; Chicago; Buffalo; New York; Troy, Michigan; Toronto, Ontario; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. One year into his return to the president's office, Al Smith had to navigate the acquisition of the Davey Tree Surgery Company, Ltd., effective Jan. 1, 1969. Keith L. Davey, grandson of John Davey, was the principal shareholder of Davey Tree Surgery, with company headquarters in San Francisco. e surgery company started in 1928 when Keith's father, Wellington Davey, took on Davey Tree's assignments in the West. e acquisition reunited the two organizations and provided e Davey Tree Expert Company with five more states – California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington – in which it had not previously operated. Reuniting the two companies, that is, incorporating the West Coast company as a new subsidiary of the Kent-based Davey Company, proved a difficult task. Fortunately, Davey had the right man for the job. Eugene W. Haupt, known for his penchant for bolo ties, a booming voice, and colorful language, was named general manager of the Davey Tree Surgery Company, which remains a wholly owned subsid- iary of the Davey Company even today. Haupt was born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, in 1923 – two years after Davey signed its first-ever utility contract. He attended a one-room schoolhouse with an eighth-grade ceiling, which was the extent of his own education. He started with Davey in 1939 after embellishing his age. He said he was 18 when in fact he was only 16, too young to legally work. Haupt's youthful exuberance triumphed, and he landed a job with a Davey crew led by foreman Chick Johnson after completing his Davey training in Kent. Haupt's time with Davey was interrupted for two years when he entered the army and served in Europe during WWII. After parachuting into occupied France as part of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, Haupt rose through the ranks to second lieutenant with the 377th Field Artillery Battalion and earned three Bronze Stars for his acts of heroism in combat, in addition to a Purple Heart. He returned to Davey in March 1946. e surgery company specialized in utility line clearance work, although it also had residential tree care operations. It had lost money in the three years prior to the acqui- sition due primarily to the loss of several large utility maintenance contracts. Months before the deal closed, Haupt discovered that the liability insurance for the surgery company was under threat of cancellation due to several pending lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in total compensation. Some of the surgery company regional offices were drowning in overhead, both in terms of personnel and physical space. Many of the districts were struggling to break even let alone turn a profit. e liability insurance hadn't been the only untoward aspect of the acquisition. In the months leading up to the deal, the corporate office in Kent had sent John "Jack" W. Joy and James Pohl to California to examine the surgery company's assets. During the review, certain employees had arranged for the company's newest equipment to be prepared and displayed for Joy and Pohl to inspect. As the men traveled from one site to another, the equipment was moved from site to site. us, Joy and Pohl reviewed the same pieces of equipment multiple times at different sites and were misled into thinking that the surgery company's equipment fleet was new and large, when in fact much of it was old and in poor shape. Chapter 1 In 1969, Davey crews on the West Coast were contracted by North American Aviation to prune trees along the route one of the moon rocket engines would take from Port Hueneme, California, up to the engine test site in the Santa Susana Mountains. Davey crews pruned trees all along the 30-mile route so the enormous second stage of the Saturn II moon rocket would not be obstructed. e work made it possible for Apollo XI commander Neil A. Armstrong to be the first man to set foot on the moon in July 1969. A two-person Davey crew fertilizes a tree on the grounds of a commercial client using an automated auger system, which would drill holes in the root zone of a tree. e holes would then be packed with dry, granular fertilizer. A Davey arborist prunes a tree for a client. Like many companies, Davey enjoyed robust orders for service from residential clients in the 1960s thanks to the post-war economic boom. A Davey line clearance crew works along a roadway in the early 1960s.

• Cover