How Westcoast-Tree.org builds its numbers

Who runs this site and how it is paid

Westcoast-Tree.org is an independent information site about tree removal, trimming, stump grinding, storm work, land clearing and arborist services in Washington and Oregon. It is paid a referral fee when a reader calls the phone number on the site. That is the whole business model: no forms, no lead marketplaces, no sale of your details.

The site does not perform tree work. It does not license, insure, employ, inspect or rate anyone, and the person who answers the phone is not bound by any figure printed here. What the site does instead is show you how to check a crew yourself: the Washington Department of Labor & Industries contractor lookup, since the state’s definition of “contractor” includes tree removal services under RCW 18.27.010 [3][5]; the Oregon Construction Contractors Board and Landscape Contractors Board lookups, since ORS 701.005 brings anyone hired to remove or prune trees or stumps under the CCB unless they hold an LCB license [4][6][7]; and the ISA credential directory [8]. Those are on the Washington license lookup and the Oregon license lookup pages. More about the site is on the about page.

Modeled estimates: the method, step by step

At launch, Westcoast-Tree.org has not collected quotes from Washington or Oregon crews. Rather than copy national price lists that were never built for Douglas fir country, the site publishes a model and labels its output “Modeled estimate, not quotes” wherever it appears. The model has six parts.

1. Wage input. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, occupation 37-3013, tree trimmers and pruners: mean hourly wage $35.40 in Oregon and $32.20 in Washington [1]. BLS publishes a relative standard error with each mean: 2.8 percent for Oregon’s and 6.3 percent for Washington’s, so the Washington figure is the less precise of the two [1][16].
2. Burden and overhead. The wage is multiplied by 1.6 to stand in for payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance and the office. That gives $56.64 per worker-hour in Oregon and $51.52 in Washington.
3. Crew. Three people: a climber or operator, a groundworker on the ropes, a groundworker on the chipper. Three times the loaded wage is $169.92 per hour in Oregon and $154.56 in Washington. The split follows the occupation itself: O*NET’s profile of tree trimmers and pruners lists “Climber” and “Grounds Worker” among reported job titles, and its task list includes climbing, hoisting tools to the climber and lowering branches on ropes, and feeding limbs and brush into chipping equipment [14].
4. Equipment. The chipper, the chip truck, the saws and the fuel add about $55 per hour in the model. The totals round to $225 per crew-hour in Oregon and $210 in Washington. The Portland and Seattle metros sit within 5 percent of their state wage, so the model uses the state rate there too. The equipment line reflects what the work requires: O*NET lists boom trucks, loaders, stump chippers, brush chippers, tractors, power saws, trucks and sprayers among the equipment tree trimmers operate [14]. Bundling equipment into an hourly rate is also how public contracts buy it: the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s 2024 emergency debris bid (TAC 1326) asked for hourly equipment rates “to include an Operator, Fuel, Wear, and Maintenance” [15]. Those Oklahoma rates are not inputs to the model, and the $55 allowance is unchanged; the bid is cited only for the structure.
5. Crew-hours. Each job type gets a band of crew-hours, and the band times the rate is the modeled range.
6. Rounding and labeling. Every figure is rounded to the nearest $50, with a tie rounded up. Every range is printed next to the words “Modeled estimate, not quotes” and a link to this page.

Removal bands include felling or dismantling, chipping and haul-away, and exclude the stump. Trimming uses 1–3 crew-hours for a small ornamental, 3–8 for a medium tree and 8–16 for a large or mature one. Modeled estimate, not quotes.

Three adjustments sit on top of the bands. A trunk within 10 ft of a structure multiplies the range by 1.25, because the tree is rigged down in pieces. No truck or chipper access multiplies it by 1.3, because the wood is carried out. When both apply, the model multiplies both. A crane day adds $1,500–$3,500 for the operator and mobilization, varying with distance. Stump grinding is modeled at $4–$6 per inch of stump diameter at the ground, with a $150 minimum per visit, which puts most stumps at $150–$450. The three cost pages, tree removal cost, tree trimming cost and stump grinding cost, show the bands applied, and the tree removal cost calculator runs them with your inputs.

What the model cannot tell you

When quote samples are collected, they will be published with their collection dates and the modeled range they are compared against. Until then, a modeled range is a tool for spotting a bid that is far outside the arithmetic, and for asking why.

How far apart real bids can be is visible in public bid tabulations. In the same Tulsa bid, nine bidders priced a tree climber with chainsaw and gear at $55 to $138 an hour and a 25-to-37-in trunk removal at $250 to $1,475 [15]. Those are Oklahoma municipal figures and are used on this site only to show bid spread and pricing structure, never as Washington or Oregon prices.

The BLS labor index, and why it is not a price

The cost pages print the BLS mean hourly wage for each metro where BLS publishes one: Portland $35.04, Salem $34.49, Eugene $33.56, Bend $33.32, Seattle $33.85, Spokane $25.94, against state means of $35.40 in Oregon and $32.20 in Washington [1]. BLS suppresses Medford and does not publish Bellingham, Yakima, Olympia or Kennewick for this occupation, so those areas carry the state figure with a label saying so.

The index is each metro’s wage divided by its state’s wage, and on some pages also by the US mean of $26.91: on that basis Oregon is 1.32, Washington 1.20, Portland 1.30, Seattle 1.26 and Spokane 0.96 [1]. It tells you where labor is dearer or cheaper. It does not tell you what a job costs, for three reasons. The wage is one input among several, and equipment, insurance and dump fees do not fall when wages do. The BLS figure is a mean across employers, including utility line-clearance contractors and municipal crews, not the rate a small residential crew pays. Nationally, BLS counts 55,160 tree trimmers and pruners, 49,410 of them in landscaping services at a mean of $26.56 an hour, about 1,040 in utilities at $31.25 and about 2,880 in federal, state and local government at $31.92 [1][16]. And the survey reference month is May 2025, so the figure lags the market. On every page the number is called a wage or a labor index, never a price.

How permit rules are verified

Permit thresholds, fees and who issues what are read from primary sources only: the municipal code as published by the city or its code publisher, the Revised Code of Washington and Oregon Revised Statutes on the legislatures’ sites, and agency pages. Contractor websites and directories are not used as sources for a rule. Where a city’s code could not be reached on the check date, the rule is marked “not found” rather than filled in from memory, and where the only readable source is a secondary official document, such as a county’s summary of its cities’ tree codes, the page says so.

• Citation and date on every rule. Each rule carries its code section and the date it was read, in the form “checked 2026-10-02”, and every page ends with a numbered source list.
• Re-check every 180 days. Each rule is re-read against its source at least every 180 days, and sooner when a code is known to be moving. Two live examples: Vancouver, Washington replaced its tree chapter, VMC 20.770, by ordinance effective July 31, 2026, with a new numbering [9]; Bellingham’s interim landmark tree ordinance was extended in March 2026 to run through September 2026 [10]. Both are flagged on their pages for an early re-check.
• Fees as of the check date. Fees change each fiscal year. A fee printed here is the amount on the official page on the check date, and the page says so.
• Paraphrase, not copy. Rules are restated in plain language. Statutory wording is quoted only when the exact words matter, such as “treble damages” under RCW 64.12.030 and ORS 105.810 [11][12].

The full city-by-city tables are on tree removal permits in Oregon and tree removal permits in Washington.

Storm and climate data: sources and caveats

Storm figures on this site come from NOAA’s Storm Events Database, entered by the National Weather Service [2]. They are computed from NOAA’s bulk detail files, filtered to Washington and Oregon; the newest file used is dated September 18, 2026, and its latest Washington or Oregon event begins in June 2026, so 2026 is a partial year [17]. Five rules apply wherever a storm number appears:

• Reports, not storms. One windstorm produces many reports across forecast zones, so counts are presented as report counts.
• No trend across 1996. NOAA broadened the event types it collects from 1996 on; older years cover fewer types, so totals before and after 1996 are not compared as a weather trend [17].
• Zones are not counties. Most wind and winter reports are logged by NWS forecast zone rather than by county: of 7,292 Washington and Oregon records from 2016 to mid-2026, 5,957 are zone-based. A zone name such as “Central Oregon Coast” is not a county total.
• Nominal dollars. NOAA damage estimates are published values, not adjusted for inflation, and are not used as repair prices.
• Fatality records are records. NOAA fatality rows are matched to events by ID; coverage and indirect-death practices vary by era.

Monthly rain and snow figures are NOAA’s 1991–2020 U.S. Climate Normals for named stations [18]. Where a city has no station of its own, a nearby one stands in and the page says so: Bellevue uses Seattle-Tacoma airport, Gresham uses Portland-Troutdale airport and Springfield uses Eugene airport. Normals are 30-year averages, not observations from any single year.

Correction, 2026-10-02: an earlier version of this section said storm statistics were planned and would not appear on any page. Storm counts now appear on some pages; this section describes how they are built.

Corrections

If a figure, a fee or a rule on any page is wrong or out of date, report it. The contact method is in the footer of every page. A report is handled by re-reading the cited source, fixing the page, updating its “checked” date, and noting the change on the page where it matters. Reports that say which page, which number and which source make the fix faster. The site does not accept payment to change a figure, and no crew or company can buy a listing, a rating or a mention.

Not affiliated with Westcoast Tree Care Inc

Westcoast-Tree.org is not affiliated with, and is not a successor to, the former Westcoast Tree Care Inc of Tumwater, Washington. It does not hold that company’s licenses, insurance, crews, customer records or reviews, and it makes no claim about that company’s work. The domain is used for an information site, and the referral number on the page is not that company’s number.