About Tree Trimming Grand Rapids
Family run, small on purpose, and straight about what Michigan does and does not license.
Who we are
Tree Trimming Grand Rapids is a small, family-run tree service working Grand Rapids and the surrounding Kent and Ottawa County communities. Dale started it in 2011 with one chip truck and a groundman after nine years with a larger West Michigan tree service. It has grown, but not by much and not on purpose.
Reid climbs and holds the ISA Certified Arborist credential, which is what an estimate gets walked by. Marcus and Tyler run the ground. The fleet is a chip truck, a sixty-foot tracked lift that fits through a standard side gate, a Vermeer grinder and the orange Kubota with the peeling decal on the tailgate. We run Bandit chippers because they are built in Remus, about an hour north, and parts arrive the next morning rather than the next week.
What Michigan does and does not license, which matters more than a badge
Michigan issues no tree service licence and no arborist licence. There is no state registry to look us up in, no number to print on a truck, and no legal barrier to anybody with a saw quoting your job. Any tree company in this state that tells you it is state licensed is telling you something that is not true, and it is worth knowing that before you compare quotes.
What does exist and is worth checking: the ISA Certified Arborist credential, which is examined and requires continuing education and is verifiable through the International Society of Arboriculture's public directory, and the ISA Tree Risk Assessment Qualification for anyone telling you a tree is dangerous. Alongside those, ask every bidder for a certificate of liability and workers' compensation sent to you directly by their carrier rather than forwarded as a PDF. Those two requests will thin your list faster than any question about price.
The bigger operators, since you will get quotes from them
You will probably talk to Bartlett, and to the larger regional outfits with several crews and a dispatcher. They are competent, they are properly insured, and on a genuinely large or complex job with a crane over a building they may well be the right call. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
Where we are different is that the person who walks your job climbs it, the person who quotes it is the person you ring afterwards, and we do not have a sales team with a monthly number to hit. That last one matters more than it sounds, because it is the reason we can tell you a tree does not need removing without it costing anybody their commission.
A note from Dale
I spent nine years working for somebody else in this business and the thing that finally got to me was quoting removals on trees I knew wanted pruning. It happened constantly. Not because anyone was crooked exactly, more that removal is a bigger ticket and nobody upstairs ever asked why the removal number was so high. I started this out of the garage on Ball Avenue in 2011 with a chipper I should not have bought yet and my brother in law running rope, and the one rule from day one was that if a tree is fine we say the tree is fine. We have lost jobs that way and it is still the rule.
Dale
Everything else we do
We also handle a number of things that do not justify a page of their own: cabling and bracing, deep root fertilisation, root collar excavation, storm debris and yard cleanup, hedge and shrub work alongside tree jobs, firewood cut and stacked from your own removals, holiday lighting installs in mature trees, and lot mowing on cleared parcels. If you want general lawn care in Grand Rapids rather than tree work we will point you at somebody who does it properly, because we do not.
What people say
Two other companies had already told me the big maple out front had to come down and I had more or less accepted it. Reid climbed it instead of looking at it from the driveway, was up there a good twenty minutes, and came down and said it had maybe fifteen years in it if we took the deadwood out and put a cable in where the trunk splits. I asked him twice whether he was sure because it seemed like he was talking himself out of a much bigger job. Cost me a bit over eight hundred instead of the twenty six hundred I had been quoted to remove it. That was two springs ago and the tree is fine.
Silver maple leaning over the garage, 1850 all in. Got three quotes. One guy was 1400 but wanted to leave the brush at the kerb, one was 3100 and would not put the crane price in writing which I did not love. These guys wrote down what it cost if they needed the crane and what it cost if they did not, then did not need it and charged me the lower one. Wife made them leave the chips for her beds.
Stump grind got pushed back twice and I was pretty annoyed because I had sod being delivered on the Saturday. To be fair Dale rang me both times rather than letting me find out when nobody turned up, and knocked forty dollars off. When they did come they ground it a lot deeper than the six inches on the quote without me asking. Grass took fine. Would use again, would also ask them to confirm the date twice.
Showed up when they said, did what they said, cleaned up after. Not much else to say.
Called them at about eleven at night in that March storm with a limb across the driveway and half the street out. He was honest and said we were behind two houses that had trees actually on them and it would be the morning, which I would rather hear than be told someone is on the way. They were there by seven. Cut it up, dragged it clear, and did not try to sell me the whole tree coming out while I was standing there in my dressing gown.
Where we work
Twelve communities with their own pages, and a good many more without. See the whole service area.
Talk to us
A person calls you back the same day, or first thing the next morning if you reach us after six. Storm calls get picked up whenever they come in.
Prefer to talk? Ring (616) 297-2972. Photographs help more than descriptions, and one that shows the gate or the side of the house is worth three of the tree.