Over the past 20 years, Cavan Tree Services has developed a stellar reputation across County Cavan and beyond for providing professional tree pruning and felling solutions, as well as stump removal, line clearance, emergency call-outs and a whole lot more besides. We caught up with hands-on proprietor Nigel McDowell to find out more about this exceptional operation.
Fully-certified, vastly-experienced and thoroughly-professional in all aspects of arboriculture, Cavan Tree Services has become the first port of call for dependable, high-quality pruning, felling, grinding and line clearance work throughout the Breffni County and further afield, counting the likes of Cavan County Council, Monaghan County Council, Meath County Council, Leitrim County Council and ESB Networks as long-standing customers.
Nigel McDowell set the business up two decades ago and his meticulous approach to the services provided – resulting in totally professional and safe solutions – has been instrumental in the phenomenal popularity of this outstanding service provider.
The vast array of services offered covers everything from dangerous tree cutting and pruning to stump removal, line clearance and emergency call-outs. As well as being a fully-certified and –compliant arboriculturist, the Cavan man is also fully-insured and is on call 24/7.
Reflecting on the genesis of the business, he notes: “I set the business up by myself in 1996. I was a dairy farmer and I started to cut some hedges. I then started to do some hedge-cutting work for the ESB. They needed qualified tree surgeons to climb trees and prune them and we started to hire men in but this wasn’t a reliable way to run a business. So I went back to college myself and got my Certificate of Arboriculture from Ballyhaise.”
With his RFS (Royal Forestry Society) certificate secured, Nigel has been a fully-qualified arborist / tree surgeon since the early 2000s. That has been key to the organic growth of the business, as has training and certification… “Training is a big, big thing in this line of work,” he confirms. “You need to have qualified men and you have to keep them fully up to speed on everything that’s happening within the industry. All of our men have all the relevant certificates that you could think of – climbing certificates, chainsaw certs, First Aid & Manual Handling, hoist certs, chipper certs etc.
“This industry is highly regulated and training is absolutely critical. We also do a lot of private civil work as well and you need things like digger certs and excavator certs for that, all of which we also have in place.”
As well as having the best personnel, it is also imperative to invest in the best equipment and to ensure that this is fully certified and tested. To complement Cavan Tree Services, Nigel also set up Winch Man Recovery Services to provide 24-hour heavy plant and machinery recovery. “We do recovery and winching and we also do some cable pulling and installations for the likes of the ESB, P&S Civil Works and Sammy Wilkin.”
Demand for the service provided is such that Nigel is currently on the look-out for additional staff. “At the moment, we have four staff plus myself. We have invested in training the lads up ourselves over the years and these guys would all be here up to ten years. Training is the mainstay of the business, so you have to either source people who are already qualified or else invest in training them.”
Generally, work is carried out within a 60-mile radius of Cavan town. Work for the County Councils varies from cleaning up hedges and trees outside houses, in estates and other sites to clearing rivers etc. To this end, Nigel owns and operates a barge and boat and is fully qualified with the Civil Defence to work in Irish waterways.
Cavan Tree Services has been providing line clearance service for the ESB since 1997.
No matter who the client is, no job is every considered too big or too small. Whether it’s one tree that needs to be pruned or an entire forest to be taken down, the job is treated as an absolute priority. “We do pruning, felling, stump removal, surveys, emergency response, wood chipping, site clearance and line clearance under 10-20kv power lines,” the founder explains.
Fleetwise, Nigel operates a JCB Fastrac and lowloaders, a Valmet 8750 with 16” chipper, a Ford County with two large-capacity winches, a stump grinder, 24-metre hoist, diggers with grabs and rotators and cable-pulling winches as well as three vans and two jeeps. All equipment is kept in top condition at all times through a combination of in-house maintenance and the use of local services.
The Cavan man – who is heavily involved with Crossdoney Fair, which raised invaluable funds for cystic fibrosis and autism with a tractor-pulling competition last August – is helped in the day-to-day running of the business by his wife Audrey, who looks after accounts. He admits that the success of Cavan Tree Services has exceeded his expectations: “It’s going better than I had ever hoped, in that we have such a large customer base and are so well known for the quality of our work. Since I started 20 years ago, I haven’t had a single day where there was no work. I’m not saying I always have money – but there’s always work!
“We were under a lot of pressure this winter due to all the storm damage. There was plenty of work. Having said that, when we started out, there were an awful lot of big trees growing up to the lines, but the ESB has got that under control. They are spending a lot of money on it and managing it very well.”
The same could be said of Cavan Tree Services. Since inception, this self-made business has forged a superb reputation on the back of providing keen, reliable and professional arboriculture services to a host of satisfied clients. With continuous investment in the business guaranteed and a sworn commitment to providing an outstanding level of service, one gets the distinct impression that there are a few more chapters yet to be written in this impressive success story!
Cavan Tree Services,
Drummury,
Crossdoney,
County Cavan.
Tel: 049 4337191
Mobile: 086 2768221
Email: [email protected]
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 4, April/May 2016
