The Davey Tree Expert Co. sponsored the 2019 International Tree Climbing Championship (ITCC) final round, the Masters’ Challenge.
The best male and female professional tree climbing arborists from around the world competed in Knoxville, Tenn., at Lakeshore Park from Aug. 9-11 for the title of ITCC world champion. This year’s Masters’ Challenge winners were Scott Forrest of New Zealand and Josephine Hedger of Ireland.
The 43rd Annual ITCC is organized by the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA). The event showcases these industrial athletes to educate the public about professional tree work and the training and expertise it requires to be done safely, according to the company.
ITCC was hosted by and in partnership with the ISA Southern Chapter. The event occurred in conjunction with the ISA Annual International Conference and Trade Show.
In other Davey news, the company is the 9th largest employee-owned company in the U.S., according to a report from the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO).
The NCEO 2019 Employee Ownership 100 list shows Davey has grown considerably, moving from the 13th-largest employee-owned company in 2017 to the 12th-largest company in 2018 to ninth in 2019.
Companies are ranked on the list according to the number of the employees; Davey now employs nearly 10,500 people across North America. To be ranked on the list, companies must be at least 50 percent owned by an employee stock ownership plan or other qualified plan or by one or more other types of plans in which at least 50 percent of the full-time employees are eligible to participate, according to the NCEO.
“The longevity of employee ownership at Davey says there’s a belief in the ownership structure,” said Davey President and CEO Pat Covey. “Employee ownership has allowed us to create a culture that has withstood a lot of economic and business challenges over time. We’ve created a culture through the people we hire and promote, and I like to think that’s because employee ownership fosters hardworking, savvy businesspeople.”
Davey has been employee-owned since 1979 when employees bought the company from the family of its founder, John Davey.
Profile Products was named as a winner in the Business Intelligence Group’s 2019 Sustainability Awards program.
The Sustainability Awards honor the people, teams and organizations who have made sustainability an integral part of their business practice or overall mission. Profile is one of four companies to earn recognition in two categories.
It won the Sustainability Initiative of the Year — given to an organization that launched or completed a sustainability initiative or project within the last 12 months. Profile won for its environmental scorecard that outlines the work the company has done to create a more sustainable environment, including restoring more than 1.5 million acres of land.
Profile Products also won the Sustainability Leadership Award — given to an organization whose actions over the last 12 months prove sustainability is a core business objective. Profile earned recognition for several of its sustainability measures, including being the first in the industry to adopt packaging with up to 12 percent recycled content, the most available by current packaging vendors. The company was also recognized for its educational outreach and new wood fiber processing plant that features state-of-the-art greenhouses for sustainability research and development.
Case Construction Equipment dealer Miller-Bradford & Risberg provided Team Rubicon with a pair of compact track loaders to complete community service projects, multiagency training drills and operator training during the Patriot North ’19 event.
The event, based at Camp Douglas and Volk Field Air National Guard Base in Juneau County, Wis., included more than 70 Team Rubicon representatives and hundreds more from National Guard units, the Salvation Army and other emergency response organizations.
Miller-Bradford provided Team Rubicon’s heavy equipment team with TR270 and TV370 compact track loaders equipped with grapple buckets. Team Rubicon staged the simulation by scattering logs and obstacles across the airfield and later assisted in the cleanup of the exercise after members of the Special Tactics Squadron parachuted onto the airfield with chainsaws to clear the majority of the large debris.
Additionally, Team Rubicon’s heavy equipment operators used the compact track loaders to help with the construction and resurfacing of a local park, grade an impassable residential roadway that sustained significant storm damage and work with Team Rubicon sawyer teams on clearing debris from strategically selected wooded areas.
