2 days later he called, they had decided to use us: " Because we appeared to be more professional"
I hear this. A lot of former loggers turned to residential tree service who largely are spur-and-flipline, cut it down guys, and poorly trained tree service guys.
A good compliment to reinforce their spending could be to the effect of "I like working for people smart enough to know the differences of professionalism and value, from price.
Sometimes, I definitely 'lose' to a cheaper bid.
I've had new employees say, "okay, let's go bust this out real quick". I reply, "No, we're going to go do a professional job in the time it takes to do it safely, efficiently, and professionally".
I try not to review the price on the bid, just the specs. Keeps me away from $/hour thinking, which leads to cutting corners, IMO.
If that means coming back or working by headlamp, so be it. I've been finding that magnetic LED lights are great. They move around the inside and outside of the truck canopy, under the hood, and as I found out the other night, moving heavy wood before the soaking rain came in overnight, A big, magnetic, LED rechargeable light is great to put on the mini or grapple.
I've got something like this.
https://www.toolnut.com/milwaukee-2...-pEafNho2TBY9dB9pJvHrz41v2NRE-zRoCr8UQAvD_BwE
We get an extra hour or so of light more than Denmark. Lights are definitely useful. No worry about rain like with super hot, plug-in quartz halogen lights.
This runs on the same batteries as my cordless little sawsall for cutting nails on fence posts, and impact driver/ drill, that is useful for boring trees with a long, thin bit, plus all the typical drill/ driver stuff.
Storm work sometimes needs lots of lights. Its a good thing to have in advance.