Davey Tree Flipbooks

71 70 Growth Rings leader at Davey. Karl J. Warnke, who started with Davey in 1980 just after the employee acquisition, had already earned several promotions during his short tenure. Warnke was promoted to utility operations coordinator in 1982, utility operations manager in 1984, and then vice president of utility operations two years later. Warnke had graduated from e Ohio State University College of Agriculture School of Horticulture less than 10 years earlier. He'd spent his early years working for a large, family owned nursery, garden center, and landscape business in northwest Ohio, becoming its top manager. Warnke recognized that there was a ceiling on his career at a family owned firm, and when he saw an opening at Davey Tree, he took it eagerly – despite having to take a pay cut to make the move. Warnke started work- ing at Davey's West Cleveland residential office, once the stomping grounds of the company's then president, Jack Joy, as a spray/feed technician. Within a year, after excelling in every aspect of residential operations there, Howard Eckel, who had been Warnke's initial connection to Davey, offered Warnke a management trainee position in the corporate office. Accepting the invite into the management trainee position meant Warnke would transition into utility operations. It was just the start of a historic rise through the ranks at Davey. e resumed acquisition process following the employee acquisition meant growth in residential services, particularly along the East Coast and in the Midwest. In 1982 Davey acquired United Tree Service of Minneapolis. e 35-year-old tree care company provided a ready base for Davey to operate in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, areas. In 1983 Davey acquired Suburban Services in Memphis, where the company focused on tree and shrub care. New tree care offices opened in south Detroit, southern Indiana, and Seattle. New lawn care districts opened in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. e company also upgraded and developed company-owned properties and facilities in Baltimore, Chantilly, and Richmond, Virginia. Davey Tree bought land for a new lawn care facility in Buffalo, New York. e Kent Shop hummed as it kept up with repairs and rebuilds for the field. A total 34 trucks, 58 chippers, and 23 aerial basket units were rebuilt there in 1982. e shop realized a net savings of $750,000 compared with the cost of replacing all those units with new equipment. Such savings were realized in part thanks to a 15,000-square-foot addition on the shop completed in 1981 at a cost of $440,000. is new space provided the height necessary for repairing and rebuilding cranes and aerial units. In the Southeast, Davey expanded in Atlanta by opening a second tree care territo- ry, the North Atlanta office. Residential management put a relatively new employee, James F. Stief, in charge as district manager. Stief started with Davey in 1978 as a trainee and excelled almost immediately. By 1979 he'd been promoted to foreman. A year later, he graduated from the D.I.T.S. as the Golden Oak winner – the top student in his class. Armed with his knowledge from D.I.T.S. and an education from the School of Forestry of Virginia Tech, management made Stief a sales and service coordinator later that year in the Atlanta office. Two years later, he was promoted to district manager when the company created the new North Atlanta office. "We were fortunate in Atlanta," Stief recalled in a 2017 interview. "We had a very loyal base of higher-end residential clients, and we also did a decent job of working the commercial market back then." Additional recognition of Davey's quality service came when the Professional Grounds Management Society bestowed its Grand Award upon the Chantilly, Virginia, office for its work on the two buildings that house the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. ere, Davey maintained the trees, shrubs, lawn, and flower beds. In 1982, the company introduced the Employee Stock Purchase Plan, which made it easier for employees to acquire shares in the company through payroll deduction at a 15 percent discount per share. First, 146 employees participated in the program buying 1,789 shares through payroll deductions. About half of the participants were field hourly employees, and 56 percent were first-time shareholders. ere were a total 228 participants in the plan that year, which was considered quite a success given the economic conditions of the time with rampant inflation and the prime interest rate hitting 17 percent in February. Doug Cowan was elected a director of the company in 1982, and David E. Adante was elected assistant treasurer. Adante, like many employees who built long and successful careers at Davey, didn't anticipate he would end up working for a tree care company for more than 30 years. At the time of his first job interview at Davey, which included questioning from Jim Pohl, Cowan, and Jack Joy, Adante had been working at a bank managing several ESOPs as a trust officer. "I have a suspicion that might have been one of the factors, or the reason, why I was hired," Adante recalled in a March 2016 interview. "I remember thinking, 'What have I gotten myself into here?'" By the time he retired as chief financial officer, executive vice president and secretary in 2013, Adante had served as internal auditor, assistant treasurer, company Chapter 4 Davey's facility in Ninety-Six, South Carolina, provided equipment outfitting and repair services to operations in the Southeast. Davey broke ground on its facility in East Dundee, Illinois, in 1980. It served the growing operations in the Chicago area.

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