Davey Tree Flipbooks

39 38 Growth Rings annual report states. "Not enough praise can be given to the Davey field managers and production crews for their dedication, efforts, and personal sacrifices throughout the year. ey have encountered the most difficult market conditions experienced in 25 years. e measure of success we have had in 1975 is due to their attention to sales and customer satisfaction." at cautious recovery in the utility market could certainly be attributed to employ- ees like James "Earl" Williams. In 1957, Williams joined Davey on the Duke Power Company account in Charlotte, North Carolina. By 1974 he'd been promoted to account manager on the Carolina Power and Light account. Along the way, Williams had accumulated one of Davey Tree's top safety records. Williams had always been sure to encourage his crews to take pride in a job well done, which meant both safely and efficiently. "Most of the people who work at Davey must like the outside or they won't make it," Williams said in a July 2000 interview. "Most of them don't want to be penned in a building somewhere. I think that's why they like the job. […] One thing that I liked most of all about tree work was the fact of seeing what you did with your hands. It's interesting to ride down the road and see a power line that you as a foreman, or you as a climber, maintained yourself. When I got done, I was always proud of it, or I wouldn't even do it. I was always one of those fellows that would say, 'You're going to do it right or not at all.'" Williams, who so frequently echoed John Davey's motto, would go on to become the company's first regional safety trainer in 1991. He traveled the Carolinas and Georgia conducting training sessions for field employees until his retirement in 1993. Another Williams, Bobby Williams, also served on the Duke Power account where he'd started with Davey in 1964. He earned several promotions in the southeast utility operations before returning to the Duke Power account and retiring as a supervisor in 1998. Other employees who served valued roles on the Duke Power account, one of the largest utility companies in the U.S., included Jimmy West and Dan Shellingburg. West had joined Davey in 1969 and would eventually become a senior account manager for Duke Power before retiring in 2006. Shellingburg started with Davey in 1976 as a groundperson and would be promoted to manager of the Duke Power account in 1980 before leaving Davey in 2003 after 30 years of service. Further south, in Florida, the company could rely on employees like James L. "Jimmy" Robinson, who'd started with Davey in 1946, to further shore up utility operations. Robinson graduated from D.I.T.S. and was promoted to foreman the same year. He'd risen through the ranks and by 1965 was named a general foreman on the Florida Power and Light account. He was promoted four years later to supervisor and again in 1971 to account manager for Florida Power and Light. "In Florida we had about three or four different large utility companies as clients: Florida Power and Light, Florida Power Corporation, Tampa Electric and Jacksonville Utilities. We had quite a few crews over the state," Robinson recalled in a November 2000 interview. Robinson essentially ran all of Davey's utility operations in Florida during the 1970s and 1980s. Robinson groomed a young protégé, Alvin Cannon, who would eventually succeed Robinson as vice president of the Florida utility oper- ations. At their peak, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Davey had over 200 utility crews throughout the state. Like Williams and Robinson, Herbert J. Winters was yet another important asset of Davey utility services who kept things rolling smoothly. Winters had started with Davey in 1946 dragging brush for a utility crew near Chicago – an experience that gave him a from-the-ground understanding of the operation. A late 1940s graduate of D.I.T.S., he'd earned several promotions and served in multiple roles. Winters recalled in an October 2000 interview that negotiating union contracts had been the most difficult aspect of his Davey career. "I spent most of my time on the road," he said. Winters' success in managing large clients, including the Commonwealth Edison and NIPSCO accounts, would see him rise to account manager in 1985, overseeing contracts in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. ese and other employees were among the many Davey personnel who comprised the southeast operations for Utility services. e southeastern utility operations were the most significant of all the company's utility accounts in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, save for the Davey Tree Surgery Company accounts in California. Duke Power was the flagship of the utility operations east of the Mississippi, although the Georgia Power account also represented a sizeable operation. ere, Tommy Davis and James Shephard, Sr., were the key management on the account through the 1970s and into the late 1980s. Recovery and Success after the Recession e slow recovery in the utility market came as the United States crawled out of what had been the longest recession in the post-World War II era to date. e recession had lasted from November of 1973 until March of 1975 and had been punctuated by double-digit inflation numbers in the middle of 1974. e Davey Company was recovering but, like the rest of the U.S., it had felt the recession's sting. Company sales fell by nearly 12 percent from $38.1 million in 1974 to $33.6 million in 1975. But Davey Tree fared exceptionally well after the end of a recession: by 1976, company sales grew by 12.5 percent over 1975. One of the company's most important innovations in tree care came on the back- side of the recession. In 1976, Davey received a patent for Arbor Green, a new, liquid fertilizer that represented a major advancement in tree, shrub, and plant fertilization. Creation of Arbor Green started with the fact that Davey's spray equipment sat idly during the fall and winter. e company wanted to find a profitable use for the trucks year-round – a perpetual struggle the company once thought might be solved by de-icing airplanes at commercial airports. Chapter 2 Davey introduced its Lawnscape service in 1975 in the Kent and Akron, Ohio, markets. Roger Funk worked with J. Martin Erbaugh, son-in-law of then Davey President Joseph T. Myers, to develop the program. Davey's development of Arbor Green liquid fertilizer, patented in 1976, doubled the efficiency of tree fertilization. Prior to its introduction, a crew of at least two or more arborists had to fertilize trees by hand first by drilling holes in the root zone and then filling them with powdered or dry fertilizer. Now, using a tanker truck and injection probe, one arborist could easily fertilize multiple trees.

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