Tree on your house, blocking the driveway, or into power lines? Call 612-532-9996 now. · Live answering · Same-day emergency response
Tree on your house, blocking the driveway, or into power lines? Call 612-532-9996 now. · Live answering · Same-day emergency response
Home / Service Areas / Minneapolis
Minneapolis is the one city in the metro where the tree out front might not be yours, and where cutting it without permission is a problem you do not want.
If it turns out to be a Park Board tree, we will tell you to call them, not write you an estimate.
We hold the Minneapolis Tree Servicing licence, we pull the permits, and we close the street when a crane needs the road. Before we quote anything we check whose tree it actually is.
ISA Certified Arborist · TCIA Member · Fully Licensed & Insured · ★ 4.8 / 133 Google Reviews · 1,000+ Removals · Locally owned since 2006
The Thing Nobody Tells You First
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board plants, prunes and removes every tree on public property in this city, and that includes the boulevard strip between your sidewalk and the street. No living public tree comes down without written MPRB permission, and permits to work on a public tree are issued to approved companies, never to the property owner.
So the first question is not what it costs. The first question is whose tree it is. We answer that before we write a number, and if the answer is the Park Board’s, we tell you to call them at 612-313-7710 and we do not send you an invoice for finding out.
Between the sidewalk and the street. MPRB’s tree, MPRB’s cost, MPRB’s schedule. You do not hire this out, and you should not let anyone talk you into paying for it.
Anything inside your property line. Yours to maintain, yours to remove, and yours to decide on. This is the work we quote.
A dead, hazardous or infested private tree can be condemned. Then it is still your tree, but the clock is the city’s.
ISA Certified Arborist · TCIA Member · Fully Licensed & Insured · ★ 4.8 / 133 Google Reviews · 1,000+ Removals · Locally owned since 2006
If You Got a Letter
Minneapolis condemns private trees that are dead, dying, structurally hazardous or infested. Once that happens you are on a clock, and the clock is short.
Dutch elm disease spreads through the beetles in the bark of a dying tree, which is why the elm deadline is the tightest one in the city.
Minneapolis has already removed roughly 40,000 public ash trees. The private ones are what is left, and yours is one of them.
The Park Board contracts the removal, charges you what it was charged, and adds an $80 fee. Unpaid, it becomes a special assessment against the property over 5, 10 or 20 years.
The city’s Condemned Tree Assistance Program covers removal, stump grinding and replanting for qualifying households at or below 80% of area median income, funded into 2029. Ask us and we will point you at it.
A city hazard-tree inspector marks the trunk with yellow paint, branches are not marked, and an Order to Correct letter follows in the mail. If you are looking at yellow paint on your tree right now, call us and we will tell you what the realistic timeline and cost look like before the deadline runs.
Real Numbers
Minneapolis is an old city on a tight grid. Alleys, garages on the lot line, power drops, no parking on half the streets and a boulevard tree in the way of the drop zone. None of that changes what the tree is. All of it changes what it costs to get it out. Here is the same 45-foot ash in four different positions.
Where the tree is
45-foot ash
Why
Front yard, truck can reach it
$800 to $1,200
Bucket truck parks at the curb. One day.
Side yard, tight but walkable
$1,500 to $4,000
Hand carry, rope work, property protection.
Backyard, by hand
$7,000 to $8,000
Every piece carried out. The expensive one.
Backyard, by crane
about $3,500
Lifted over the house. Usually the cheaper way.
Same tree, four different jobs. Access is the price, not the trunk. That is why a crane is usually the cheaper way out of a back yard, not the expensive one. How crane removal works →
A removal in Minneapolis is rarely about the saw work. It is about where the truck can sit, whether the crane can reach over the garage, how the wood gets from the back lot to the street, and who is parked where on the day.
That is the part we plan before we quote, and it is the part a cheap bid usually has not thought about. When a crew arrives and discovers the access problem on the morning of the job, the price changes or the work does not get finished. We would rather find it at the estimate.
It is also why we pull the street-closure permits ourselves when a job needs the road. Your neighbours get told where not to park before the truck shows up, not after.
Trunk rounds bucked on site, Minneapolis. Ash logs and hardwood firewood cannot leave a quarantined county without an MDA certificate, so where the wood goes is part of the job.
Every Service, Same Standard
Same crew and same standard as everywhere else we work, with the Minneapolis licence and permit work handled as part of the job rather than billed as a surprise.
Planned removals of any size. Tree removal →
The cheaper, safer way down when access is bad. Crane removal →
Tree on the house or across the drive. Triaged ahead of planned work. Emergency →
Structural pruning, clearance and deadwood. We will not top a tree. Trimming →
An arborist looks before anyone sells you a treatment. Tree care →
Treat it where that still makes sense, remove it where it does not. EAB →
Below grade, chips out, ready to seed. Stump grinding →
From Your Neighbours
“The removal required obtaining permits from the city to close off the street which they took care of.”
Scott Belcher
Realtor
“They stick to their estimates and there are no surprises. They’ve taken down some huge trees for me in tight spots without any damage.”
Alex Molldrem
Repeat customer
“Gabe (owner) has an awesome crew working for him. These guys were efficient, thorough and professional with my large 70' ash tree removal project.”
Tom Schibilla
Large ash removal
Questions
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. MPRB arborists plant, prune and remove all trees on public property, boulevards included, and no living public tree is removed without written MPRB permission. Call MPRB Forestry at 612-313-7710 about a boulevard tree. We will tell you for free which side of the line your tree is on.
For a tree fully inside your property line there is no citywide removal permit today. Minneapolis has been drafting a Tree Preservation Ordinance that would cover protected trees on private projects needing a city permit, but it has not been adopted. Public trees are a different matter and always need an MPRB permit issued to an approved company.
Yes. Minneapolis requires a Tree Servicing licence for cutting, trimming, grinding, chipping, removing or hauling trees, limbs, branches, stumps or roots two inches or more, and requires the licensed company to employ or contract a certified arborist. Minnesota separately requires every commercial tree care provider in the state to be registered. Our MN Tree Care Registry number is #20190969, and Gabe Tschida is an ISA Certified Arborist.
Twenty days for a diseased elm and sixty days for an ash infested with emerald ash borer. You may remove it yourself, hire your own contractor, or have MPRB contract it. If the deadline passes, MPRB contracts the removal, bills you what it was charged plus an $80 fee, and an unpaid balance becomes a special assessment on the property.
Yes, and we handle the permit. A realtor we worked with put it plainly in a review: the removal required permits from the city to close off the street, which we took care of. Neighbours are told where not to park in advance.
Sometimes. A healthy ash with limited canopy loss can be worth treating, and treatment has to be repeated on a regular cycle rather than done once. An ash that is well down the line is money spent twice. A certified arborist will tell you which one you have, including when the answer is that treating it is not worth it.
Yes, and legally. Hennepin County is under the Minnesota Department of Agriculture emerald ash borer quarantine, so ash logs, ash chips, ash tree waste and any hardwood firewood cannot leave a quarantined county without an MDA certificate. Anyone offering to haul your ash wood anywhere they like is telling you something about how they operate.
Access decides it more than size does. The same 45-foot ash runs $800 to $1,200 in a front yard the truck can reach, $1,500 to $4,000 in a tight side yard, $7,000 to $8,000 out of a back yard by hand, and about $3,500 out of that same back yard by crane. The estimate is free and the number holds.
Free Estimate · No Obligation
Send a photo and your ZIP. A certified arborist will tell you whose tree it is, what it needs, and what it costs. Including when the answer is that it does not need anything.
Ask your neighbour, then call.
