I had several companies come out and give me an estimate for my live oak tree that was damaged by the terrible wind storm we had. I have what's called included bark where two trucks have grown together and split apart from each other. After doing some research this job shouldn't cost more than it does to cut the tree down. Involves cleaning up the canopy of dead branches or sucker branches to allow more airflow through and then cabling about 3 trunks together to prevent them from swaying in the wind. The first estimate only wanted to cut my tree down which is not what I wanted. I want to save the tree. He quoted $3100 to completely remove the tree. The next two quotes to cable and rod the tree was $4500 and $4000. Again they wanted more to do this than to actually cut the tree down. Which my first estimate to cut the tree down was my baseline price. My son-in-law recommended Mitch Drake so I gave them a call and he quoted me $2500 to complete the job. Now we're finally below that baseline of $3100 I was looking for. He told me during the estimate they were several weeks out from doing the job. Finally I got a call they were coming on a specific day which was acceptable. Talking about a crew, there was about eight of them on the job. Between trimmers, clean up crew as the limbs dropped and another that climbed the tree and another that cabled the tree. They have a lot of equipment with them between a bucket lift, Bobtail, and a massive chipper with a high box truck that captured all the wood chips. Very impressive operation. They recommend several limbs to be removed to take some weight off to prevent further splitting. They cleaned up everything when the job was done. Very very satisfied with their work. Highly recommend them. read more