Hiring a tree service is not like hiring most contractors. If a landscaper does poor work, you are out a season of shrubs. If a tree service does poor work, a six-hundred-pound limb goes through your roof, or somebody gets hurt in your yard and you find out afterwards that you are the one who is liable for it. Tree work is consistently among the most dangerous occupations in the country — chainsaws, chippers, heights, and enormous suspended weight, all at once — and the stakes of hiring the wrong crew are simply in a different category. So the questions you ask should be different too.
The first question is insurance, and it is not close. Ask for two things: general liability, which covers damage to your property, and workers' compensation, which covers the crew. Workers' comp is the one people forget and it is the one that can genuinely ruin you. If an uninsured climber falls in your yard, you — the property owner — can end up personally responsible for his medical costs and lost wages, and your homeowner's policy may well not cover it because you hired an uninsured contractor. This is not a hypothetical. Ask for a certificate of insurance, and ask for it to be sent directly from the insurance agency rather than as a photocopy from the contractor, because a certificate can be expired or fabricated. Any legitimate company will do this without being annoyed by the request. We send ours before anybody asks.
Second, ask who is actually doing the work and what they know. The ISA — the International Society of Arboriculture — certifies arborists through examination, and the TCIA accredits companies. Not every good tree worker holds a certification, but a company that can talk fluently about branch collars, compartmentalisation, co-dominant unions, and why topping is unacceptable is telling you something real about how they will treat your tree. A company that cannot, or will not, is telling you something too. Ask them directly what they think about topping. If they offer to do it, that is your answer.
Third, get it in writing, and get the scope specific. A real estimate says exactly which trees, exactly what work — removal, deadwooding, crown reduction, clearance — whether the stump is included and how far below grade it will be ground, whether the debris is hauled away or left, and whether the crew is responsible for lawn damage. 'Take out the big tree — $1,800' is not a scope of work; it is an invitation to an argument. Vagueness in a written estimate is almost always deliberate, and it always resolves in the contractor's favour once the truck is in your driveway.
Be genuinely suspicious of the low bid, and be more suspicious of anyone who shows up uninvited. Storm season in Central Indiana reliably brings out crews going door to door with a chipper and a chainsaw, no insurance, no address, cash up front, and a price too good to refuse. Some of them are competent. Many are not, and when they drop a limb through your fence they are unreachable by that evening. Large deposits demanded before work starts, high-pressure 'today only' pricing, no physical business address, no written estimate, and no insurance certificate are all the same signal.
Ask how they intend to bring the tree down, and listen to the answer. On any tree close to a house, a fence, a driveway, or a power line, the correct answer involves rigging — climbing or a bucket, taking the tree apart in sections, and lowering each piece under control on ropes. The answer you do not want is a plan that relies on dropping pieces into a landing zone that is really just your lawn and hoping. Rigging is slower and it costs more, and that difference is the entire product. Insurance exists for the day something goes wrong; nobody actually wants to find out how their insurer handles a tree through the bedroom.
Finally, notice whether they ever tell you not to do something. A tree company that finds a removal in every yard it visits is not assessing, it is selling — removals pay considerably better than deadwooding, cabling, or a straight 'that tree is fine, leave it alone.' The willingness to talk you out of work is, perversely, one of the better indicators you have found somebody honest. At Hoosier Elite Tree Services the estimate is free and written, the crews are fully insured, we do not top trees, and if your tree can be saved we will tell you so — even when saying so costs us the bigger job. Call us anywhere in Indianapolis and Central Indiana and ask us anything on this list.