Dominick Caracappa

I'm Dominick. I handle the sales side at DC Tree Cutting and Land Service.

How I got into tree work

I didn't grow up doing tree work. That's not my background at all. My brother Anthony and I started DC Tree Cutting and Land Service in December 2022. Before that I was in sales, and I'd never touched a chainsaw. Anthony knew trees, I didn't, so I learned everything I know from him. In the beginning that meant both of us out there running saws, doing ground work, bringing in contract climbers when we needed more hands. I just figured it out as we went. Three and a half years and a couple hundred jobs later, here we are.

What I do now

These days I'm mostly on the business and sales side of things, but I still get out on jobs when I'm needed. Between me, Anthony, and our crew, we cover nine counties in Eastern NC out of Rocky Mount and Goldsboro. I've got my Class A CDL, OSHA 10, and OSHA 30, and I'm first aid certified.

Safety

Safety's the one thing I won't budge on, period. I've seen what happens when a company doesn't take it seriously, and I want no part of that. Every job, our guys are in proper PPE, we set real drop zones, and we're checking for power lines and underground hazards before a saw ever touches the tree. We carry three insurance policies on every job: general liability, workers comp, and commercial auto. None of that matters unless the crew actually believes in it. You can't just write it in a manual and hope it happens.

The Scotland Neck contract

One job I'm still proud of is the contract we had with Scotland Neck: we took out 27 trees and stumps along the streets, right through the middle of town. It took a few separate visits spread over a couple of years. Big trees, a lot of them compromised, right around power lines and close to people's houses. Honestly, cutting them down was the easy part. The hard part was juggling everything else at once — traffic, the power company, homeowners, our crew, the equipment. On a job that size, in the middle of town, you can't afford to mess up.

How Eastern NC trees come down in a storm

Eastern NC's got its own mix of trees. We deal with a lot of loblolly pines, sweetgums, water oaks, willow oaks, and tulip poplars, and they don't all fail the same way. Pines snap out partway up, or uproot once the ground gets soaked. Sweetgums are the ones that pull out of waterlogged ground, root ball and all. Water oaks are the ones that worry me most: they rot from the inside where you can't see it, then the whole tree lets go at once. Willow oaks are actually the toughest of the bunch. Knowing which is which is how we tell you what's a risk before a storm hits, and what to watch for after.

Why DC Tree

I wanted to build something that's run right. A company that cares about the customer and the guys doing the work, not just the bottom line. That's what we're going for at DC Tree. If you want to see what that looks like day to day, Anthony's page lays out how we run the business.

Anthony and I grew up in Connecticut playing in the woods, outside all the time. Funny how we ended up running a tree company in North Carolina.

Give me a call

Got a tree you're worried about, or land that needs clearing? Estimates are free. I'll come out, walk the job with you, and give you a straight price. And if we're not the right fit for it, I'll tell you that too.

Call me at (252) 506-0099 or send in a request online and I'll get back to you.