Awards & Recognition

Collier Arbor Care Wins Family Business Award

Collier Arbor Care was presented the 2006 Oregon State University (OSU) Austin Family Business Excellence in Family Business Award for firms with 25 or fewer employees during the annual awards ceremony at the Portland Zoo in mid-November.

The tree a and shrub care firm, begun in 1937 by Ray Collier and currently operated by second generation Terrill Collier and his family, were chosen over 21 other firms which applied for the award in the Small Category Family Business of the Year category. Winners also were chosen in micro, medium and large business categories. The small business category attracted the most entries.

Award entries are judged by an outside panel of nine judges on professional leadership with high standards for quality, safety and training; accessible management that includes employees at annual meetings, well developed estate and succession planning and active stewardship of the environment.

In his application, Collier emphasized his firm’s pro-bono activities and approach to educating the public and other industry professionals in various tree diseases, pests and pruning methods through his web site, a quarterly newsletter and classes for other professionals.

Judges seemed particularly taken with Collier’s pro-bono activities with regard to Hurricane Katrina where he and two of his arborists and their equipment were among the first into the New Orleans area to help remove trees which had fallen on residential roofs.

“We consider this an exceptionally high honor. Collier Arbor Care was a main topic of conversation and activity around the dinner table while I was growing up and my father was very patient with my slow embrace of the business. I wish he and my mom were here to see this,” said 52-year-old Collier, who holds a degree in entomology from OSU, said in accepting the award.

Collier’s dad built the business “on a third grade education. He read everything he could lay his hands on and became the go-to guy in Portland for the public and professionals on shrub diseases and treatments.,” Collier said.

top »

Collier Arbor Care’s Accreditation Among First in Nation

Clackamas' Collier Arbor Care has become one of the first eight tree care firms in the United States to earn accreditation from the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA), a national trade organization that represents more than 2,000 tree care companies.

Collier became the first west coast company to be accredited under a TCIA pilot program which judged the firm on its ethical and up to date business practices, worker and customer property safety procedures, employee training and quality of its work.

"This is an affirmation that we're a professional, quality oriented company with modern, efficient and ethical business practices and that we're a safe company. It differentiates us from those who just operate out of the back of their truck with a chain saw, no insurance and no training or depth of knowledge," said Terrill Collier, president of the 66-year-old company, the oldest and one of the largest in the metropolitan area.

Accreditation followed an on-site inspection by TCIA representatives. The audit covered the firm’s insurance coverages, business practices, employee training, compliance with state and federal safety regulations, business ethics and customer satisfaction.

"It was a very thorough process. They interviewed our customers and employees, examined personnel and insurance records, visited our facilities and our crews on the job sites. We spent four months preparing for this audit," Collier said.

TCIA representatives said the new program "provides tree care companies with a means of evaluating themselves against industry standards and best business practices and gives consumers a way to find companies trustworthy in their business and tree care practices.

As side issues, they said, accreditation helps insurance companies identify safer companies and provides governmental and institutional agencies a means of finding companies that meet industry standards for safety and performance. Terrill Collier is a member of the TCIA board of directors.

top »

Collier Arbor Care Wins National Award for Oregon Garden Work

For the second time in three years, the 2,700 member Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA) has honored Clackamas' Collier Arbor Care for its community service work.

Collier has received the 2004 TCIA Heritage Tree Maintenance Excellence in Arboriculture Award for its pro-bono work on the 400-year-old Oregon White Oak, the signature oak at the Oregon Garden in Silverton.

In 1991, the firm earned a similar award for its work on Vancouver’s Historic Apple Tree, an "English Greening" tree planted 174 years ago and considered the oldest apple tree in the Pacific Northwest.

In celebration of Arbor Day this year, Collier's firm "installed six cables in the large oak tree to prevent trunk and branch failures in a tree that has a history of branch failures and a potential for a trunk failure" and did other work, according to the application.

"The crown is extremely wide-spread, which made cabling the branches to prevent further tree damage very challenging to say the least," said Collier Arbor Care President Terrill Collier.

Oregon Garden's Signature oak is 99 feet high. The crown is 125 feet wide and the trunk is 279 inches in circumference, making it one of the largest specimens of its species in the world, according to Collier, who is also a member of the Oregon Garden's Oak Grove Committee.

The Garden's signature oak is part of an oak grove the committee is working to restore. "The Signature White Oak was here before Europeans settled this continent and it's really awe inspiring to be able to work on such a magnificent tree with that kind of history. Hopefully, this and future efforts to care for the tree will help it live another 400 years" Collier said.

He pointed out that the committee has developed a long-range management plan to help protect and preserve the tree for the next several hundred years.

Oregon Garden’s signature oak was un-maintained until the Oregon Garden acquired the property in 1995. Formerly a farm, horses ran on the property for a number of years, damaging trunks in the grove of oaks. Invasive, non-native plants had grown around the oak and in the grove. Today the section has been developed with a walking path through the grove and around the Signature Oak, which suffered a large branch break in 2001.

Dedicated in 1999, signs and the walking path were constructed with a donation from the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, which also provided funding for the cabling equipment installed during Collier’s award winning project in April of this year.

In addition to cabling and pruning dead branches from the tree’s crown, Collier Arbor Care treated the tree organically to help control an infestation of oak pit scale and did soil and leaf tissue tests to determine nutrient levels and identify any deficiencies.

In an interesting side light, invasive plant species like Himalaya blackberry were removed while native species such as camas, an important source of starch for Native Americans, was conserved.

Collier valued the two days of labor by six arborists at around $5,000.

top »