About Us

Johnny Trueblood became owner of Grade-A Tree Care in December 2023.

Before that he coached college basketball at the University of South Dakota and the University of Hawaiʻi.

Tree work was not the plan.

Running a crew that shows up on time, prices the job honestly, and leaves a yard cleaner than they found it was.

He works out of Grade-A Tree Care’s shop at 3400 Robinson Pike Road in Grandview.

The company Phil Giordano built after the 1996 ice storm is still the same shop.

Johnny’s job is to keep the name worth something in Johnson County, Jackson County, and Wyandotte County, not to turn it into a franchise logo.

Felici “Phil” Giordano is a Kansas City native.

He started tree work in 1980.

Most of the first decade and a half was line-clearance — the kind of climbing you do around energized conductors for Kansas City Power & Light — and then union work.

He became president and lead negotiator for the IBEW local that represented those crews.

The company exists because of one storm.

On October 22–23, 1996, a surprise ice storm glazed the metro.

People still call it the October Surprise.

KCPL and the contractors could not keep up.

Phil spent the following months taking trees off houses, opening streets, and cutting what the ice had already killed.

Grade A Tree came out of that winter.

Jesse Swena hired on at Grade-A Tree Care in 2015 as a member of the crew.

That is the least decorated way to say he has done the work.

Groundsman, climber, crew manager, general manager.

In more than 15 years in the trade he has held every seat that exists on a Kansas City tree job.

If you get a written estimate from us, Jesse has usually already walked the yard or reviewed the photos.

He is the person who decides whether a pin oak over a Leawood garage is a climb, a crane, or a conversation about the neighbor’s fence.

Kim Curtis joined Grade-A Tree Care in May 2023.

Before that she spent more than 20 years as president of the Grandview Chamber of Commerce.

If you have run a shop, a restaurant, or a church in Grandview, there is a decent chance you already know her voice.

That is why she sits at the phone.

Tree companies lose jobs in the first three minutes — not because the climber is bad, but because nobody called back, nobody knew the address, and nobody asked whether the tree was on a power line.

Kim does that part.