Meet Jason Sigman, When It Comes to Arborjet Equipment-He’s Your Guy

These days if your calling into Arborjet offices you’ll probably talk to a guy named Jay…

Jason Sigman, is Arborjet’s Insides Technical Sales Support.

I have always loved the outdoors and nature; this is probably why I have been led down a path of working in the green industry. I started out working landscaping with my father which led me to obtaining my bachelor’s degree in urban forestry and Arboriculture then to landing a job for a commercial tree care company as a climber. I was a quick learner who loved working hard. I briefly experimented with a career in the utilities but found that wasn’t a good fit. I made my way back to the same tree company doing large scale removal projects. This was enjoyable for a while, but the novelty of the heavy equipment quickly wore off. I was looking for something more.

I was tired of removing trees, it was something that didn’t seem rewarding to me anymore. At first, I liked the thrill of figuring out a new way to remove the tree as quick as I could. Either off the crane, out of the bucket, or just hanging off a rope. After a while what was extremely enjoyable ended up becoming a chore. I was tired of beating my body up, and always being on call for a storm.   I always had an interest in the plant health care side, being the detective that found the problem before the problem got worse, and sharing my knowledge with people on how to save their trees. I am not saying that we should be saving all trees. There will always be trees that have become hazards or have declined too far to be saved.

There was a time I was on a customer’s property removing a severely damaged Bradford pear. The customer came home while we were halfway through the removal, when we noticed she became very emotional when she saw that we were doing. Instantly, I was furious thinking that was the sales rep identified the wrong tree but this was not the case. When we approached her, she explained to us that they had watched that tree grow for the last 11 years around the time that their sons were born. This was the first of many examples where I have noticed that people have a deep connection with the trees on their property.  I felt that finding a job where I could share my knowledge about saving trees and advancing my career in the plant health care side of the tree industry would be extremely rewarding.

In May, I was excited to take the leap towards change and accept the inside sales and technical support position. Instead of constantly being exposed in the elements, I am in an office fixing the equipment, answering technical calls, and providing solutions for disease and insect problems all across the country. I’ve found this extremely interesting since my experience was mostly in dealing with removals and pruning of trees as well as dealing with specific pests and diseases regionally to New England.

I have been working at Arborjet for about five months now and I am constantly learning. My plant health care knowledge is constantly expanding. The most interesting thing that I have learned from working here is how the Arborplug system works regarding the trees response to compartmentalization. Since Arborjet uses a plug system, the tree has something to aid in the callusing of the wound and allows for a clean application. If you were to go “plug-less” you run the risk of having the product run back out of the tree if you don’t hold the needle in long enough. This can become messy. The other huge benefit to injection is you no longer have to worry about off target application like you would with spraying.

I was a little nervous at first going from doing a dangerous job where we all relied on each other to make sure each one of us goes home safely, to answering phone calls and responding to emails.  The transition has been a very easy one and the camaraderie is similar.  Every day I learn something new and giving customers advice on how to protect and keep their trees, has proven to be very rewarding.

Along with trouble shooting and technical support, I have taken over Arborjet’s 2020 Winter Webinar. The webinars include going over Arborjet’s products, equipment and troubleshooting. The webinar also goes over how to properly set plugs in the tree, the benefits of injecting with plugs, and tree physiology. The tree physiology webinar will be very interesting because we will discuss the fundamentals of a tree and the internal parts of the tree and leaves. This webinar will give our customers a better understanding on why we inject the way we do, connecting all the other webinars together.

If you would like to learn more about the winter webinar and future webinars, click here.  

 

Hope to talk to you soon!

Jason Sigman