Talk Story with an Advertiser: TR’s Property Shop LLC

TR Odeh comes from a family of success stories. His mom was running a thriving steakhouse when he was born and she took him to work with her immediately after, and his dad owned a trucking company that delivered jeans across the country. While his seven siblings chose to work in the medical profession, TR became a firefighter, while also running a successful arborist business.

TRʻs career started in 1996, when he joined the US Forestry Department. He became a smokejumper—a firefighter trained to jump out of helicopters—and his team would stay out in the forest for seven days at a time.

To help prevent the spread of fires, TR and his team would go 120–140 feet up in the air to cut the top half of trees off, rappel down, and then cut the rest of the trees from the ground. These experiences set the seed for the beginning of TR’s tree cutting business.

TR has lived on Hawai‘i Island since 1991. Beginning in 1996, he worked in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and California for each year’s fire season. He got his fire science degree and became a certified, accredited structure firefighter, smokejumper, and search and rescue operator, and did that for 12 years. In 1998, he founded his tree service on Hawai‘i Island.

Simultaneously, TR was recruited by the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, and for eight years taught marketing and consumer behavior there. Eventually, TR left firefighting and teaching so he could focus on his tree and yard maintenance business.

One of TR’s greatest achievements is when he climbed to the summit of Mount Everest in 2008, saying “it provided me with humility and grassroots thinking that has allowed me to persevere in business.”

TR’s favorite type of work utilizes his skills and education as a certified arborist—his scientific outlook on the health of trees and what will help his clients to maintain their landscape. He and his crew enjoy the challenge of complex jobs, like trees that are overhanging homes and catchment tanks. They prune and take down albizia, lychee, banyan, mango, and other invasive trees such as gunpowder, African tulips, basswood, and cecropia.

When it rains, they are unable to do tree work, so TR and his crew have diversified. Offering landscape and architectural design, water features, arborist services, remodels, and reconstruction, TR and his crew serve the entire island and offer free estimates, so give him a call!

TR’s Property Shop
TR Odeh
808.896.1964