Chris Fess

I'm Chris, crew lead at DC Tree Cutting and Land Service.

How I got into tree work

I've been doing tree work for 15 years. I started young, cutting on my family's property, and in my mid-20s I went to work for Russ Hubbell at Directional Falling. That's where I learned most of what I know. The hard stuff, the stuff you can't learn any other way. I spent almost five years there, ran my own operation for a year after that, and I've been with DC Tree since 2023.

What I do on your job

On a job site, I'm hands-on with everything. I run the grapple truck, the forestry mulcher, the stump grinder, the Bobcat, whatever piece of equipment the job calls for. I cut trees from the ground, I handle most of our estimates, and if you call the office, there's a good chance you're talking to me. I hold a Class A CDL, I'm CPR certified, and I've got my OSHA 10.

How I run a job

We never guess, and we never do anything that "might work." If we can't do something safely, we keep working the problem until we can. There's no shortcuts in tree work. Shortcuts are what get people killed. That's how I was taught, and it's how I've always done it.

The Scotland Neck oaks

Scotland Neck is the job I bring up when people ask what we can handle. Three oaks, each one six feet across at the base or bigger, growing right in the sidewalk with houses on one side and a storage building on the other, and live main power lines running straight through all three crowns. The power company couldn't kill those lines. It was main power and had to stay hot the whole time. We worked it live, cutting everything down into pieces small enough for our grapple truck to move, because the wood was too big and heavy to handle any other way. Halfway through, our stump grinder broke down. We brought in a loaner from Vermeer and that broke too. We got our own grinder fixed on-site and kept going. Three trees on the ground in one day, and the whole job, stumps ground and everything hauled off, finished in a week.

What fails in Eastern NC wind

I know Eastern NC trees because I've cleaned up after what our storms do to them. Bradford pears and pecans that have gotten too big without any care are the ones that fail the most. They'll drop whole limbs or lose an entire side of the tree, and it doesn't even take a hurricane, regular wind will do it. Bradford pears are invasive to begin with, and brittle as glass. Pines fail differently. They don't usually go over whole, they snap out at the top, and that happens in a regular thunderstorm just as much as it does in a hurricane.

Why DC Tree

I work at DC Tree because I want to be here. I like working directly with Anthony to build something. We've already got something good going, and I want to help make it great.

I'm from Chesapeake, Virginia, originally, but I've lived most of my life in Wilson, NC. Off the clock I'm usually with my boxer, Zander. He rides along with me to estimates.