Tree Removal & Trimming in Beaumont, TX

About Tree Removal & Trimming

Most of the trees we deal with are the ones this part of the state grows in quantity. Water oak that has rotted from the inside and shows it only when a limb the size of a truck lets go. Pecan that has split at a bad crotch. Loblolly and slash pine up in the Big Thicket country north of Beaumont that lean a little more every year toward a house or a barn. Chinese tallow that came up in a fence line and is now shading a yard it was never meant to be in. Sweetgum with a root plate lifting a slab. And live oak, which people rarely want down and usually want reduced, because a live oak over a house in Lumberton or Nederland is worth a great deal until the day it is not. A take-down is the straightforward version. The tree has room to fall, or it can be made to fall in a chosen direction, and it comes down in one or a few pieces, gets bucked into lengths and goes on the trailer. That works on open acreage, along a driveway, or in a back pasture. It does not work over a roof, a fence, a propane tank, a septic field or a neighbor's shop, and a good share of the calls we get in Vidor, Bridge City and the older neighborhoods of Beaumont are exactly that: a big tree with nowhere to put it. That is where the climbers come in. A climber goes up the tree, rigs the limbs, and brings the tree down from the top in pieces, lowering each one on a rope where it needs to land rather than letting it fall. It is slower than dropping a tree and it is the only honest way to take down a tall tree over a structure, a tree boxed in by other trees, or a tree in a tight lot where no machine can be set up. Having experienced climbers on the crew means we do not have to say no to those trees, and we do not have to pretend a machine can do what it cannot. Topping is something customers ask for, usually because a tree has gotten taller than they are comfortable with. We will do it when that is what you want. What we will also do is tell you when crown reduction is the better answer. Topping cuts the leader and the main limbs back to stubs; the tree responds by throwing up a mess of fast, weakly attached shoots from the cut ends, and in a few years it is as tall as it was and the new growth is more likely to come down in a storm than the wood that was there before. Crown reduction cuts back to a lateral limb that can take over as the new end, so the tree keeps its shape, keeps its structure and stays shorter without the regrowth problem. On a water oak or a pecan that has outgrown its spot, reduction is usually the one you want. On a tree that is going to be removed in a couple of years anyway, or a tallow nobody cares about, topping is a fine way to buy time. We explain the difference at the estimate and do the one you choose. Storm work is its own category. Rita, Ike, Harvey and Laura each left this region with trees on houses, trees across driveways and trees hanging in other trees from Port Arthur up through Silsbee and Kountze. After a storm the phone is answered around the clock and the damaged trees go first, ahead of scheduled work, because a tree on a roof is letting rain in and a tree across a drive is keeping someone home. We do not promise arrival times; we tell you where you are in the line and we get there. Two safety points come before anything else on storm calls. First, if a tree is on, in or near a power line, it is the utility's job before it is ours. Entergy or the co-op has to make the line safe, and nobody on our crew or yours touches that tree until they have. Call the utility and call us, in that order. Second, a storm tree that is bent, hung up, or lying with weight on a bowed trunk or limb is under tension, and cutting it in the wrong place releases that tension in a fraction of a second. It is not a chainsaw job for a homeowner, and every year after a hurricane somebody around here gets hurt finding that out. Leave the tensioned ones for people who cut them for a living. Haul-off is part of every job unless you tell us otherwise. The wood and brush go on the trailer and off the property, so you are not left with a pile to burn during a Hardin County burn ban or to deal with when the ground goes soft. If you want the firewood, say so and we will buck and leave it. The stump is a separate question: grinding is available with a removal, and on a building site or a future pasture the stump usually needs to be pulled rather than ground. That work is covered on our stump removal page.