Steve Cubis Tree Services

Eight staff, sixteen vehicles and better than 30 years of tree work in the Northern Rivers is what Steve Cubis Tree Services has grown into. Steve built it up off the tools and still answers his own mobile, and his son Jake is on the other one, so the two names you deal with are the two names on the business. Between the crew we hold Cert 3 in Arboriculture, elevated work platform tickets and traffic control accreditation, and we're fully licensed and insured.

Home is Lismore, with the yard in South Lismore, but the trucks are out across the whole district most days. We work Ballina, Casino, Evans Head, Kyogle, Bangalow, Alstonville and Nimbin, for houses, farms, strata and businesses, and our commercial tree services run alongside all of that for the sites that need their trees kept on a schedule.

The calls we get are usually about a tree with nowhere to fall. Something hard up against the eaves, a big one wedged between two sheds, a street tree with cars going past it all day. We look the site over and work out a removal plan before anyone starts a saw, then bring the tree down in pieces small enough to keep control of the whole way. The platform tickets cover the trees nobody should be climbing, and the traffic control accreditation means we can work over a road properly rather than hoping for a gap in the traffic. Our Bandit and Vermeer machinery handles what comes down, chipping and mulching the limbs where they land, and the grinder finishes the job with stump grinding so nothing is left sticking out of your lawn. Where a tree can stay, we handle the pruning and maintenance, the deadwooding and the strategic cuts that stop it becoming next winter's problem.

The Cert 5 in Arboriculture is what lets us write tree reports, and that is a different kind of work again. We cover tree hazard and risk assessments, site tree surveys, tree valuations, maintenance programs and budget estimates, completed in accordance with local council guidelines. Councils ask for them, insurance companies sometimes want a tree surveyed against a liability, and people buying or selling a property want to know what the trees are worth and what they are going to cost to keep. A report sets out what is going on inside the tree, what the real risk is, and what it will take to manage it.

We're available round the clock for the work that will not keep. A limb through a roof, a tree that has shifted in the wind, a driveway blocked at two in the morning: we will make it safe, clean the site up and take the green waste away with us, and if there is an insurance claim attached to the job we can complete that too. The office runs Monday to Friday from 7:00am to 4:00pm, and outside those hours Steve and Jake have their mobiles on them. Ring whichever number suits the hour, tell us what the tree has done, and we will tell you what happens next and what it will cost you.