What working with a two-person crew is like
| What happens |
What it means for you |
| Danny looks at the tree in person before quoting |
The price is for your tree, not an average; no surprises when the truck shows up |
| The same crew that quoted the job does the job |
The person who promised to protect the pool cage is the one standing next to it |
| Big removals are done in sections, roped down |
Limbs don't free-fall onto the roof, the fence, or the neighbor's Lexus |
| Chips and brush leave the same day unless you want the mulch |
The yard looks like a yard when we pull out, not a job site |
| Stumps are ground below grade, not flush-cut |
You can lay sod or run the fence line right through where the tree was |
| The phone is answered even while we're working |
You get a callback time, not a voicemail that gets returned at 8 PM |
Trimming is not "cutting it back"
Half the calls we get about a dying oak start with somebody topping it years earlier. Cutting the big leaders off a live oak or a laurel oak doesn't make it safer; it makes a burst of weak, fast growth that breaks in the first real wind, and it opens the tree to decay.
Proper pruning takes the dead wood out, thins the crown so wind moves through it instead of pushing on it, lifts the low limbs off the roof and the driveway, and leaves the tree looking like itself. The same goes for palms: a sabal palm needs the dead fronds and seed pods off, not a "hurricane cut" that strips it to a feather duster. That cut weakens the palm and it doesn't make it any safer in a storm.
Marion County trees, Marion County problems
Ocala sits on sandhill: deep, fast-draining sand under a canopy of live oaks, laurel oaks, longleaf and slash pine, with sabal and queen palms wherever somebody planted them. Live oaks here are the real thing — hundred-year-old trees with limbs that run sideways over two houses. Laurel oaks look similar and grow faster, and they're the ones that fail: hollow at fifty, down in the road at sixty.
Then there's the season. June through November, every afternoon storm is a test, and one named storm a decade rearranges the neighborhood. The horse farms out toward Reddick and McIntosh have miles of fence line under oak canopy; the subdivisions in Silver Springs Shores and Marion Oaks have pines planted too close to the house in the 1980s. We work all of it, and we've seen what each of those trees does when it goes.
What to expect on the estimate
Danny comes out, walks the tree with you, and tells you what he'd do and what it costs. If a tree can be saved with pruning instead of removed, he'll say so — it's less work for us and a better yard for you. If it needs a crane, he'll tell you that too and bring in the one he works with.
You'll get a written price the same day. No deposit for most jobs. If you say yes, you get a date; if you say no, you still got a straight opinion about your tree, and that's fine with us.
