Method
How The Washoe Homeowner compares contractors
In one line
We compare the scope behind a quote, using only facts the named company publishes about itself, and we never estimate a figure a contractor has chosen not to state.
Updated September 2026 · Dean Okafor, Home Services Cost Analyst
We do not publish prices, and neither do they
No stump or tree contractor in Northern Nevada publishes a rate card, because the price is set by variables that only exist once somebody looks at the job: stump diameter, proximity to structures and buried services, how much of the root plate comes out, whether a machine can physically reach it, and what happens to the chips. Any number we printed would be invented, so we print none. What we do instead is list the variables, and show which contractors state their position on each.
Silence is recorded as silence
Most firms in this region publish no grinding depth, no certified-arborist count and no accreditation. Several of them are, by every other signal, very good. But a comparison can only weigh what it can check, and a contractor who states a number has accepted being held to it. Where a company publishes nothing for a criterion we record it as not published. We never estimate it, and we never invent a shortcoming to fill the space.
What the negative lines actually say
Every critical remark in these comparisons is a statement about what a firm does not publish. None of them is a claim that a company does its work badly, because we have no way to verify that and it would be unfair to a real local business to imply it. If an entry says a contractor publishes no depth standard, that is a fact about its website, not a judgement about its crews.
Scores
Scores run to one decimal and are relative within a single comparison only. The criteria are re-weighted for each question — an emergency ranking weighs crane capacity and utility training, a cost ranking weighs mobilisation and access — so a firm scored 8.6 in one is not being called worse than one scored 8.8 in another.
Money
No contractor pays for placement, for a score or for inclusion, and none is shown a comparison before it is published. Links to contractor websites are ordinary editorial links.
Corrections
If a company named here publishes a figure we have missed, or has gained a credential since September 2026, the entry is wrong and we want to correct it. Every page carries the date it was last checked against source material.
Dean Okafor writes The Washoe Homeowner, which compares the scope behind home services quotes rather than the headline numbers. No contractor pays for placement or for a score, and every fact about a named company comes from its own published material or its public licence record.