Wilson County Spotlight
From One Mower to an Empire: West Tree Service
Some family businesses pass from one generation to the next like a relay race. The father runs his leg, hands the baton, and the son takes off. But West Tree Service in Lebanon, Tennessee, was never that neat. It was more like the son grabbed the baton before the father was ready to let go, and they both had to learn to run together.
Harrison, now co-owner of West Tree Service and West Lawn Service, remembers his dad starting the business roughly around 1994, the year his sister was born. For the first 15 years, it was strictly landscaping — mowing grass, trimming bushes, the kind of work that keeps a small crew busy from spring through fall. But winter was always the problem. His dad would have to let his guys go in the cold months and scramble to rehire them come spring. So he started adding tree work to keep the crew busy year-round.
Harrison was in 8th grade when the tree side began to take shape. Even before that, his dad had him out there cutting grass in 5th grade, and more importantly, making him talk to customers. "I really wasn't much help," Harrison admits, "but he'd make me talk to the customers, and that was real help." That early exposure — learning to communicate with homeowners before he was strong enough to be useful with a rake — turned out to be the foundation of everything that came later.
Falling in Love With Trees
By his own admission, Harrison didn't like either side of the business growing up. He didn't like mowing, and he didn't like tree work. What he did like was motocross, and he was good enough to train professionally. After high school, he went to Clarksville, Tennessee, to train at a facility owned by a company called Cumberland Tree Service.
While he was there, they asked him a question that changed everything: did he want to sit around while they went to work, or did he want to come along? Harrison chose to work. "I fell in love," he says. "When I left there, I actually started getting more out of motocross and more into the tree world." He started taking his own paychecks, buying his own equipment, and running his own tree jobs on weekends. Before long, the weekends turned into weekdays, and the side work became the main work.
The owner of Cumberland Tree Service, a family Harrison had grown up racing motocross with, became an informal mentor. He took Harrison to tree expos, showed him what equipment was available, and opened his eyes to how far behind Middle Tennessee was compared to northern tree companies. "I feel like the Wilson County area, Middle Tennessee, we were still in the Stone Age when it came to tree work," Harrison says. He saw what was possible and decided to bring that standard home.
The 50-50 Handshake
When Harrison's dad saw his son putting serious money into equipment and building a tree division within the family business, he recognized it was time to formalize the partnership. They wrote up a contract and went 50-50. That was about seven years ago, and the company looked nothing like it does today. "We just had a 9-inch chipper, an old utility bucket truck, not even a real forestry truck. No skid steer. Still doing everything by hand."
Harrison set out to rebrand what a tree company looks like in Wilson County. "Not your cut-off sleeve kind of guy," he says. "Someone who's just doing one job a day. We're here to protect your lawn. When we get off, it looks like the tree was just plucked out of the ground, and it looked like we were never even there."
They invested in communication headsets, safety equipment, and efficiency systems that let a crew do in one day what used to take four. That efficiency means they can often be cheaper than competitors while still making a profit, because they're not burning overhead on multiple days of drive time and setup.
A Family Affair
West Tree Service is a family business in the truest sense. Harrison's dad is an arborist. His sister is an arborist with a risk assessment certification. His wife, Sherry, handles the office side — emails, scheduling, the work Harrison freely admits he couldn't do without her. Even his brother-in-law is part of the operation.
"Most of our employees are either brothers or cousins," Harrison says. Justin has been with them for over 20 years. Joe Dawn, Harrison's cousin, has been there for over 15. Most of the core crew has been around for about seven years. When people stay, they stay because West Tree Service aims to be something more than a dead-end tree job. Harrison's goal is a clear ladder: from raking to bucket operator to sales position, and eventually into plant health care, which they plan to bring in-house next year.
The Landscapers Depot
The business has grown beyond tree work and landscaping. With so much material piling up at the shop — wood chips, mulch, firewood — Harrison's dad started brainstorming. They bought a grinder that colors mulch. They built a certified firewood kiln that the state inspects, producing dry, smokeless firewood that can be sold to state parks as well as residential customers.
All of that material needed a place to sell. So the family opened the Landscapers Depot, a retail yard just next door to the shop. They sell boulders, ornamental rock, pavers, and any landscape material a homeowner or contractor might need. The whole operation — West Lawn Service, West Tree Service, and Landscapers Depot — functions as a family of companies at one facility in Lebanon. "It's all started cutting grass, cutting trees, and then now selling that," Harrison says.
He calls his roughly 15 employees his 12 kids. "I feel like I look at them as a family. We go canoeing. We'll take a day off, full pay. I want us as a family to grow. I want you to build a home, and your kids to live a better life than you lived."
Building Up the Community
Harrison and his team don't just serve Wilson County — they help build it up. They work with other tree services in the area, taking referrals from smaller companies that don't want to drive long distances, and paying a 10% referral fee. "I'm not here to steal their customers," he says. "That's the main goal."
He has a vision for the future that goes beyond growing his own company. He wants to start a program for high school students in Wilson County — kids who, like him, might not be wired for traditional college but have the drive to learn a trade. "I grew up, I'm not great at school. I have dyslexia. I'm more hands-on. When it comes to business, I'm really good with it."
He sees a generation that has more opportunities than they realize if they're willing to put the work in. "When the older generation sees that you have a good head on your shoulders and you know what you want to do in life — I've seen every single one of my friends that have a good head on their shoulders, they hit 30 and they're cruising." That's the message he wants to bring to Wilson County's high schoolers: that a career in the trades can be as fulfilling and profitable as any path that runs through a university.
A Legacy That Keeps Growing
Harrison's relationship with his dad is the thread that runs through the whole story. It hasn't always been easy. "It takes sacrifice, and a lot of therapy sometimes," he laughs. "But it's doing the work to make sure that relationship stays intact." He's honest about the difficulty of separating business from family, of learning when to talk shop and when to turn it off at Thanksgiving dinner.
But he's also clear about what made it work: trust. "What helped more than anything was separation, and growing that other company. It's hard to have two heads of a company. It doesn't work." His dad had to trust him. Harrison had to earn that trust. And now, looking ahead, he knows he'll face the same test if his own daughter or son one day wants to take the reins. "I hope I do the same thing for my kids, and realize that I need to trust in the work that I put into my kids."
West Tree Service started with a lawn mower and a father who wanted to keep his crew working through the winter. Today, it's a multi-company operation serving Wilson County and beyond — from Lebanon to Mt. Juliet, Hendersonville to Franklin, and every town in between. But the mission hasn't changed. It's still about family, still about showing up, and still about doing the work so the people around you can build something better.