Davey Tree Flipbooks

19 18 Growth Rings Chapter 1 the associated maintenance and purchasing costs. To keep pace with sales, the equipment fleet grew rapidly during the 1960s. In 1963 Davey bought 124 new pieces of major equipment, including aerial baskets, cranes, chippers, sprayers, mist-blowers, and trucks. By the time Hershey took over as president, company sales increased by $1.1 million over 1964. is rise in sales brought with it further demand for additional heavy-duty equipment. In 1965, the company spent more than $900,000 on new equipment – a significant expense repeated in the following two years – and another $2.4 million in equipment oper- ating costs. Instructors at D.I.T.S. started teaching the field men how to maintain power saws. e Bulletin regularly published articles explaining routine maintenance tasks with photos and illustrations detailing everything from truck chassis lubrication points to proper care procedures for chipper blades. By 1967 it became clear the company needed somewhere to outfit and maintain its fleet, and construction started on a $200,000 facility in Kent. e Kent Shop would serve as an equipment warehouse and maintenance center for the company with bays specially adapted for servicing cranes, a paint booth, and a parts department. is growth and success meant the company's ranks had to grow to meet the demands. A thriving economy, with the U.S. unemployment rate on its way to a low of 3.4 percent in 1969, and the military draft for the conflict in Vietnam posed an obstacle for Davey Tree in terms of hiring enough crews. e company had, in part, found success through employee retention by providing educational and advance- ment opportunities. e Davey Technical Service Center became a busy hive of ongoing training meetings. "We continue to place emphasis on the training of our own company employees, with programs for field training, special sessions and meetings in Kent for field, super- visory, sales and Kent office personnel," management noted in the 1967 annual report. "Our technical, supervisory and management personnel attend schools and seminars outside the company to gain new ideas and discuss mutual problems. As in the past, our personnel growth is from within, and so we strive to prepare all groups of person- nel for advancement and greater responsibilities." anks to this clever approach, the rates of return on sales, capital invested, and assets continued to improve. Davey crews had the privilege of working at Arlington National Cemetery in 1967 on tree care and landscape work surrounding the gravesite of President John F. Kennedy, who had been interred there just four years earlier. at same year Davey crews delivered the White House Christmas tree from Northeast Ohio (near Davey's corporate headquarters) for the first family of President Lyndon B. Johnson to enjoy for the holidays. Just three years after his promotion to president, Paul Hershey stepped down. In 1968 he announced his retirement in a letter to employees. "One of the reasons for our success is that we not only tried to do the job right, we were always looking for ways to do it better," Hershey wrote. "One of the real assets of this company is the knowledge and experience of its people, and this has had much to do with the further development of our reputation as a company that knows its business – and that's worth preserving." In the letter, Hershey noted that he believed the use of power equipment had the greatest effect on the industry during his 42-year career. Fittingly, at his retirement party he received a brand-new Homelite chainsaw – friends joked the saw and an abundance of free time would lead to an increase in "buzzarding" (off-duty tree work) on Kent's west side, where Hershey lived in John Davey's former Kent homestead. e onset of the machine power age in the 1950s and 1960s necessitated frequent servicing and rebuilding of power saw engines, as observed here. Cott Burchett managed the power saw maintenance duties at the Kent Shop in 1961. Right: Bucket trucks were first introduced at Davey in 1953, and by the mid-1960s the company was buying dozens of new bucket trucks and aerial units each year. Davey employees Fred Lauck and Wesley Hayes work on the grounds of the Tennessee capital building in 1961. Davey shaped and planted the landscaping for the new state capital grounds in Nashville, which included 115 Magnolia trees and other plantings. Davey celebrated the work in an ad in Newsweek. A Davey employee performs line clearance work in a residential neighborhood during the 1960s. Trees are prepared for transplanting in this image from the 1960s.

• Cover