About Highline — and the rope we're named for

Nineteen years old, a crew out of Matthews

I started climbing when I was nineteen, on a crew based out of Matthews. I didn't know anything about running a business. I knew how to tie in, how to move through a canopy, and how to listen to a lead climber who'd been doing it twice as long as I'd been alive. That's still most of what this job is. Fifteen years later I've climbed thousands of trees across Mecklenburg and the counties around it, and I founded Highline in 2011 because I wanted to run jobs the way I'd learned they should be run, not the way it's fastest to run them.

Why "Highline"

The highline is the rope a climber ties into before anything else happens, before the saw comes out, before a single cut gets made. It's not the rope doing the cutting. It's the rope that means if something goes wrong, you don't fall. I named the company after it because that's the whole philosophy in one word: the safety and the plan come first, the cutting is what happens after. "Tied in before we cut" isn't a slogan we picked for the truck. It's the actual order of operations on every job we run.

Nothing free-falls, and a crew small enough that everyone knows why

We don't drop wood. Every piece that comes off a tree near a house, a fence, a driveway, or a neighbor's yard gets roped and lowered by a groundie, section by section. It's slower than letting gravity do the work. It's also the difference between a clean job and a cracked roof tile or a busted sprinkler line, and it's the rule I hold every climber to, no exceptions for a piece that "looks light enough."

That rule is a lot easier to enforce on a crew of two to four people than it would be on a bigger operation running six trucks at once. We've stayed small on purpose: climbers and groundies who've worked together long enough that nobody has to explain the plan twice. I still climb every job we send a crew to. Not because I don't trust the climbers who work for me, but because the person deciding what gets cut should be the person who's actually looked at the wood up close.

Certified, insured, and we'll prove both

I'm an ISA Certified Arborist, and that's who's making the call on every job, not just writing the estimate. Highline carries 2 million in general liability coverage and workers' comp on every crew member, and we'll email a certificate of insurance before a truck shows up on your property. No need to ask twice; we build it into the process.

The Clean-Yard Guarantee

We run the chipper, we rake, we blow off the driveway and the beds, and then we walk the property with you before we leave. Here's what happens if we still miss something:

The storm promise, and what we won't do

There are jobs we turn down on principle, not because we can't do them:

• Topping. Hacking a healthy tree down to stubs to "control" its size doesn't control anything. It creates weak regrowth and a tree that's more dangerous in five years, not less. We'll prune for clearance and shape. We won't top.
• Spraying everything as a first resort. If a tree has a pest or disease problem, we want to know what it actually is before recommending a chemical answer, not reach for one because it's a quicker sale.
• Cheap and fast at the expense of safe. An uninsured crew with no rigging plan can beat our price. They can't guarantee your roof, your neighbor's fence, or their own guy on the ground.

How to check us out

Don't take the website's word for it. Ask us for the last three addresses we worked, not references we picked in advance, the most recent three jobs on the schedule, and go look at the yards yourself. Read what people say on our reviews page. Then get your own number: the Job Sizer gives you a written range in about three taps, no phone call required, or book a visit and Wes will walk the property with you directly.

Questions about this