Multiple Stump Removal in Hartsville, TN
The first stump carries the trailer, the walk-through and the setup. Every one after it is priced off the wheel time alone, which is why groups are the cheapest work we do.
How Stumps Come in Groups Around Here
Three patterns cover nearly all of it. The first is a run in an old fence line, where cedar, hedge and black locust seeded in along the wire and got cut off at knee height when somebody put up woven wire and pipe. Those are rarely one or two. Twelve is a normal count over a couple hundred feet.
The second is a homeplace row. Pear, apple and cherry planted together in the fifties or sixties, aging out together, plus a line of Bradford pear from a later era doing what Bradford pear always does. Small stumps, fast wood, and the value is entirely in doing them all in one go.
The third is a windbreak or a driveway line, usually cedar or Leyland cypress, planted the same spring and failing the same year. Cedar is the one to watch in that group. It stays hard indefinitely, so a row of twenty cedar stumps takes longer than a row of twenty pears twice their diameter.
The Ladder Starts Once the Trailer Is Down
A single stump carries every fixed cost of the day: the drive, the locate ticket, unloading, the walk-through with the owner, marking, reloading. That is why one small stump on its own has a floor under it that surprises people.
Add a second within a short walk and it is priced off the grinding alone, which typically lands somewhere between a third and half of what the first one cost. By the sixth or eighth in the same yard the per-stump figure has flattened out and stays there.
Distance across the property is what moves it back up. Eight stumps inside a hundred feet of each other are one setup. Eight stumps scattered over fifteen acres are eight walks, five gates and possibly two trailer moves, and the pricing reflects that rather than the count. When you call, describe the layout as much as the number.
Count Them Twice, Then Paint Them
Almost everybody undercounts, and the misses follow a pattern. Stumps cut flush years ago and grassed over. The little ones under a brush pile. The two in the fence line that read as posts until you look. The one on the far side of the barn that nobody has thought about since it came down.
The fix costs nothing. Walk the property with a can of marking paint and put a dot on every one, then walk it again from the other direction. The second pass finds one or two more nearly every time.
Get an accurate count and the quote off the photos is the quote on the day. Miss four and either the price moves in the yard, which nobody enjoys, or the crew leaves with work still standing. A firm number needs a firm count, and you are in a far better position to produce that than we are from the road.
Sequencing One Trip Across the Place
On a job of any size the order is planned before the machine moves. Wet ground gets done first if a dry stretch is holding, or last if the forecast is against us and we would rather not track mud across the good part of the yard.
Stumps near the house go early in the day so the noise finishes before evening. Anything in a hayfield waits until the field is cut or works from the headland. Fence line stumps go in one direction so the machine is not crossing back and forth over the same soft strip.
And wire changes the order too. Where a run is expected to hold staples and old strand, we do the clean stumps first with a fresh tooth set and take the fence line last, so a chewed-up set of teeth is not slowing down the other eleven.
Send This With a Group of Stumps
- A count you have walked twice, with the marked ones visible in a photo if possible
- Which are in an old fence line, since those get scanned and priced differently
- The widest measurement across the ground on the two or three biggest
- Species where you know them, and a bark photo where you do not
- How spread out they are, and how many gates lie between the first and the last
- Whether the spoil can stay on the place, and if so, exactly where you want it
Common Questions
My neighbor has four to do as well. Is there anything in that for us?
Yes, and it is one of the few genuine discounts in this trade. Two adjoining places on one visit means one drive, one locate, one setup, and both counts priced up the same ladder. On a rural road where the next house is a half mile off, that is worth real money to both parties. Line the dates up and call once with both names.
Half the pear row is dead and half is hanging on. Take them all now?
If they went in the same spring, they are on the same clock. Bradford pear splits at the crotch and once one in a row has gone the rest generally follow inside three or four years. Doing the standing ones later means paying the setup a second time for stumps you already know are coming. Most people take the dead ones now and the marginal ones with them.
Is there a minimum number before the per-stump price kicks in?
The ladder starts at the second one. Nothing has to be reached first and there is no package involved. Two is cheaper per stump than one, six is cheaper than two, and past eight or so in the same area the figure stops falling because it has reached the actual cost of grinding wood. What changes it back is distance, not count.
There is a line of small stumps under the old fence. Worth grinding at all?
If a mower goes over that ground, yes. Knee-high cedar and locust stubs are what tear a deck belt and bend a blade, and cedar in particular will still be sitting there in twenty years. They are also cheap once we are on site, since the wheel time on a six-inch stump is a couple of minutes. The scanning for wire is what takes longer than the grinding.
I have eleven and can only pay for part of it right now.
Then we do it in blocks and you choose the order, usually by what is in the mowing path or in the way of a project. Be aware that each visit carries its own setup, so two trips cost more than one. If the money is coming in a couple of months, waiting and doing all eleven at once is usually the better arithmetic.