Howdy everybody,
Anyway, I'd love some advice to best set me up for the most success as an arborist. Any recommendations on course work, seminars, actual school, etc. ? I'm in this 100%.
Also, any advice on equipment? I wanted to try and stick American but we know there's few and far between...so I'm thinking STIHL since they're so highly rated.
Any of our advice will be too generalized until you give us more details about yourself. So far, you've only given us a non-specific goal. Without a starting point, this is a journey we cannot finish.
- How old are you?
- what is your relative experience?
- life status: stuff like married, kids, wealth, education?
- what part of the world are you in? Local economy is important!
- what is your current equipment list?
- What are your physical traits?
My advice for a 19 year old kid out of high school with no work experience, equipment, or startup capital will be significantly different than a 40 year old guy, recently retired from the Army. It also changes a lot is we make that a 25 year old femaile college graduate with a liberal arts degree and two years of working for a tree company.
Who you are makes a difference as to the advice you get. That being said, knowledge is power. Learn about the business by learning about trees, and the business of trees.
As to the I.S.A. Certified Arborist study guide?
https://wwv.isa-arbor.com/store/product/7/
That would certainly be a good start on becoming a certified arborist, but I'd suggest you learn a bit more about the business of being an arborist. You may not know that there are quite a few different varieties of arborist, and they are significantly different. Do you wish to be a "certified arborist, a climbing arborist, utility arborist, a municipal arborist? ISA has 8 different categories of arborist certification; there is even a category for a Board Certified Master Arborist, but that would only be possible after you had learned the basics.
As a "got tired of paying dues"
(formerly) certified arborist, I consider myself an expert in all the various certifications except utilities. I've pretty much done it all otherwise, and there are even aspects of arboriculture that ISA doesn't address. For example, they don't even mention timber management nor lumber harvesting, which I consider very important aspects of the "tree business". ISA doesn't discuss or care about how to run a tree service. either. That would be TCIA.
https://treecareindustryassociation.org/
