Acrt is one of the best classes I have been to and provide alot of really good training and help in the most safe and efficient ways to doing the job in our industry that I know of I would recommend anyone to take at least one of not all of there classes that they offer it is worth the money read more

Unacceptable customer service in regards to ordering their manuals. My spouse needed an updated manual for a class. I ordered it on a Thursday as he needed it by the Saturday, I figured that would give them 7 business days to process it and send it out. I was wrong, they didn't email me until Tuesday and then told me that I'd have to upgrade my shipping to make sure I get it on time. When I requested they incur the extra fee, due to uncommunicated issues on their part, I was declined. As a business owner, I think their site needs an upgrade as I was not notified via email if my order was processed or even recieved. All I saw was a popup stating my order would be processed. I wasn't told how long it would take to process it or anything. Completely left in the dark until I got an email stating it would be emailed WITHOUT a tracking number, might I add. I wasn't sure who to contact since I needed it in a timely manner. To take 3 business days to process 1 MANUAL, that is probably just sitting on a shelf in their office, is absolutely unreasonable. This also happened to my husband's co-worker, fortunately for him, there wasn't a time constraint so he didn't mind waiting. The purpose of this review isn't for anything more than constructive criticism and advice to prevent this from happening to others. read more

As a Tree Service owner myself, we use ACRT for their excellent schools. They are always consistently helpful. They send whatever educational materials I need promptly and are always available to answer my questions. The training my crew receives at their school is taught in a manner that they are able to understand and retain, and which helps them perform their jobs better when they return. I wouldn't think of going anywhere else. read more

PATHOLOGICAL LIARS, EVIDENCE TAMPERER, PERJURER AND CROOKS I agree with another poster whose tree was cut down by ACRT Inc. Ryan Bonfield, an ACRT Inc. employee, drove an ACRT truck, made a right turn from the center lane of a two lane K street (in Sacramento) and lane changed into my car which was side by side on the curb lane. He refused to turn over the insurance information stating that he didn't want to get his employer to know (he started working for ACRT Inc about 6 month prior to the accident). Then he claimed that I rear-ended him. Then he said that he was sorry that he was distracted because his girlfriend's father died. There was no damages to the rear bumper of the truck and the front bumper of my car AND the only damages were on my car - to the front left fender area (scratches and pushed forward) and the left fog lamp popped out. According to the law of physics, it would have been impossible for my car to rear end him. The only possible explanation was that he didn't check his blind spot and clipped my car when he changed lane. At a small claims trial (I sued for damages), Bonfield and ACRT Inc. submitted a photograph of the truck bumper with scratches that look like being made with an utility knife to support their claim that I rear-ended their truck. I had two photographs of the truck at the scene of the accident showing that the bumper had no scratches. These guys tampered with evidence and submitted a photograph in perjury. Bonfield also denied that he made the admission that he couldn't have been distracted because his girlfriend's father had died months before. How did I, a stranger, know about the death of his girlfriend's father? Bonfield and ACRT Inc. argued that since there is a disagreement and there was no witness, the court should not award any damages, regardless of any physical evidence. Esther Ralich, Esq. the pro temp judge on the case, ruled for Bonfield and ACRT Inc. I'm not sure why she wanted to be on a pro-temp judge on a vehicle accident case if she doesn't know the basic law of physics and the rule of the roads. * If you have the misfortune of having a dispute with these guys, prepare to deal with their pathological lies (evidence tampering and perjury) and if you want to sue them, do not sue them in Small Claims Court as a plaintiff. In California, the small claims judge (likely not a real judge) can make arbitrary, capricious, incorrect, absurd and discriminatory ruling. Plaintiffs have no recourse. Take them to Superior Court so you can do discovery and take the matter in front of a jury and a real judge. * If you want to do business with ACRT Inc., read carefully the story above before giving these guys any contract to cut down trees. read more

The uncertainty and misinformation surrounding contract durations was fairly consistent. I was told that the last contract I was involved in would be three weeks long, and this was the main reason I agreed to participate. At the first orientation, that number had changed magically and drastically to 6 weeks or more, so I was pretty surprised. This sort of change is unsettling for an employee who has a life--who has made or who wishes to make other reliable plans--and while I understand that things change and are always in flux and that employees need to be flexible, it ought to be possible to estimate a contract's duration with far less than a 50% margin of error. Additionally, early in the contract another rover was taken off the job and sent to another project, which at least temporarily increased the duration of the project. If the job requires working all the time with no breaks between contracts and limited choices as to where one might be asked to go, then say so up front. A sixty hour work week for all projects. Too much time driving/sitting. I was also not told that we would be required to drive in excess of 1000 miles per week for the SCP project, which I did for the two weeks I was involved with the project. That's far too much driving. I think this kind of distance is fairly standard, since the truck I had driven, which was approximately 2.5 years old (or about 120 weeks), had 120,000 miles on it--pretty much 1000 miles per week historically. Also, the push for productivity caused all of us to rush, which translates into driving very fast between plot samples, often on dirt, gravel, winding, hilly roads (other employees will support this observation). Perhaps the biggest annoyance to me was the the fact that the software we were given to work with on the SCP project was highly proprietary, primitive in terms of what one might expect from even ordinary mainstream programs, and not adequately configured or field tested by its designers for the purposes of vegetation management data gathering. This was the most common complaint among the field staff. The interface was hardly user-friendly. Much data was compromised because the software was quirky, non-intuitive, and had very limited post-collection editing capacity and zero daily recall capacity (I'm talking strictly about the South Central Power project out of Lancaster, Ohio. In comparison, the TreeTime program we used on the hand-held Motorola MC75 units was infinitely more technically sophisticated and field-friendly). We were expected to accommodate the software's shortcomings in the field. One of the biggest time-consuming flaws in the product were simple, developer-related failures: field personal were required to extract their own gps coordinates using the pre-set coordinates from the software which then had to be transferred manually to a map (think thousands and thousands of key strokes), whereas the provider could very well have plotted the coordinates on the electronic (google) map or superimposed them on paper maps prior to the work. The capacity to do so is by now a 20 year old technology. I don't think I'm being either naive or presumptuous to suggest that in its present format this particular version of Richard's software would not survive its first consumer market review. Final complaint? I asked two supervisors for an expense form and never got one. I think there has to be a concerted effort to share and reveal as much as possible about the projects themselves. Rovers need better information in order to make better decisions so as not to find themselves in a project that's not suitable for them (whatever that might entail). I was given a few different choices. Managers don't seem to exchange this information amongst themselves in a form that is recognizable or digestible among the rover team. Details about the project, length and location and equipment, details like mileage and so on, ought to be posted on the site where rovers can decide if they want to participate. This seems easy enough to do, yet most of the grumbling on the field level seems to result from a lack of pertinent information. Employment package ought to include these details. "This is where you might find yourself. This is what to expect. This is the equipment you will be using. These are the people you'll be working with. Here are some pictures of the project. Here are some reviews of the project by those who have participated in it, or ones like it." My severance from the company was not a warm and fuzzy affair. I left quickly and suddenly due to an extremely painful work related injury, and nobody ever called to ask how I was doing (It's not like I expected a get well card, but really, folks). If an individual had been injured on a job of mine, I'd certainly be compelled, and not out of obligation, but out of human decency and natural curiosity--to see if they at least made it home. When I called HR to see if there was anything I should do, I got the iP read more