What do you do when a hardwood is lying across the front of your house and the family SUV is under the branches? The Decatur homeowner in these photos called (770) 272-6747. A real person answers — any hour — and help starts moving while you’re still talking. We’re 770 Arborist Emergency Tree & Crane Service — Atlanta trees have been our work since 1997. And the pictures? One real Decatur street, one July 2024 storm call — that single job supplied every frame you’ll see here.
An emergency room doesn’t take reservations, and neither does our storm crew. Text over pictures of what the tree did, and the dispatch decisions get made straight off your camera roll — crane size, crew count, what comes off first. The work authorization reaches you with the rates already printed on it, so nothing about price gets improvised mid-crisis. More than once we’ve pulled into the driveway ahead of the pizza delivery. First order of business, every time: tree off, family safe, camera documenting from the opening minute.
Nothing on the roof? Easier still. Book scheduled Decatur tree work and an I.S.A. Certified Arborist tours the yard with you, then writes up your estimate before driving off — free, and on paper.
One number before you read on: the job log holds 240 documented emergency tree removals since January 2023 — Georgia accounts for 214 of the 240, with 62 of those inside 20 miles of Decatur, and the remainder logged on storm deployments into South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. Five states, current through .
Storm Damage & the Insurance Question Decatur Asks First
Picture the call that comes a few days after our trucks leave. An adjuster from your carrier dials our office with the usual list of questions — and gets a colleague on the line, because our staff includes multiple licensed insurance adjusters*. Same vocabulary on both ends of the call, and the file is already open on the screen: the damage photographed before anything was touched, then the removal, then the tarping, every hour and every machine accounted for. Nobody collected from you at time of service — that isn’t how we bill. When the work wrapped, the invoice went from us to your insurance company, with a duplicate to you.
What keeps that call short is the file itself. Documentation built this way has accompanied roughly a thousand homeowner insurance claims in a tree business dating to 1997 — the July 2024 Decatur job in the gallery below among them, photos to invoice through the homeowner’s insurance like the rest.
And one line from the books worth quoting: the homeowner’s insurance carried 9 out of 10 of those 240 jobs — straight from our books; no carrier endorsement implied. The log names 29 separate carriers, State Farm at the top with 84 jobs, USAA next at 37, Allstate at 30.
The July 2024 Decatur Job, Frame by Frame
One storm call: a big hardwood snapped and dropped across the front of a Decatur house, catching the family SUV underneath. Our crew took the call that evening and worked into the night — Tree-Mek crane picks under work lights, trunk off in controlled sections, roof tarped before anyone went home. Here’s the record:
Put a stopwatch on that job: authorization signed at 4:05 PM, first on-site photo stamped 5:49 PM — 104 minutes from signature to crew in the yard. Across 57 storm calls from 2024–2026, the median gap runs 1 hour 38 minutes, timed the same way by our first on-site job photo (the clock opens when you sign, or at 7 AM the following morning for signings that land after 5 PM). Hurricane Helene sat outside that math entirely — 73 jobs across Georgia and South Carolina, worked against a multi-day backlog — and outside that deployment, our own Tree-Mek grapple-saw crane handled 65 of the 141 jobs completed since January 2023; lifts made by a partner operator’s crane during Helene stay out of that tally.
Tree Services We Provide in Decatur, GA
Tree Removal
Decatur’s big intown oaks grew up with the neighborhood, so every removal threads between driveways, porches, power drops, and the neighbor’s fence. That’s why the grapple-saw crane makes its picks from the street, the trunk comes down in controlled sections, and nothing free-falls into a yard with no room for error.
Tree Trimming & Pruning
A healthy old canopy is a lot cheaper to keep than a roof is to replace. Our pruning is I.S.A. Certified Arborist work — crown thinning, deadwood out before gravity takes it, limbs lifted clear of the roofline. And when a trim is all your tree needs, you’ll hear that from us before anyone talks removal.
Stump Grinding
We grind below grade so the stump goes back to being plantable ground. Book it with the removal and it’s one visit, one bill — the tidy way to finish the job.
24/7 Emergency & Storm Response
The job in the gallery ran from evening into full dark — crane picks under lights, roof tarped before the trucks rolled up. A normal shift for our 24/7 emergency tree service: answer at any hour, secure the scene, get the tree off, protect the structure, and photograph every step for the file.
Where We Work in Decatur
The downtown square, the streets around Agnes Scott College, North Decatur, Medlock, and every block in between. The same crews roll next door for tree service in Avondale Estates and straight up the road for tree service in Atlanta, with Tucker and Stone Mountain on the same route. All of DeKalb County, one call: (770) 272-6747.
Before You Call: Decatur Tree Questions, Answered
What does it cost to cut down a tree in Decatur, GA?
The walkthrough is the answer to the price question. On scheduled work, the person doing that walkthrough is an I.S.A. Certified Arborist who meets you at the tree and reads the access — intown, the street is often the only place equipment can sit, with something breakable under every part of the canopy — and hands you a free written estimate before leaving. In an emergency the walkthrough moves to your phone: you send photos, the right crane and crew get read off those, and the authorization you sign already carries the rates in print.
What’s the cheapest time of year for tree removal?
If price were the only variable, winter would win — dormant trees are simpler work and the schedule runs lighter, so prices follow. The caveat hangs in the gallery above: that July job caught an SUV because the tree, not the calendar, picked the date. A leaning or dying tree has already opted out of discount season.
Will homeowners insurance pay for tree removal?
Over a thousand claims into our career — with multiple licensed insurance adjusters on our own staff* — the truthful answer hasn’t changed: it depends, because every policy reads differently and every situation lands differently. Four details do most of the deciding. Standing, or down? Landed on what? Growing on whose side of the line? Any hazard paperwork on it before it failed? A paragraph can’t sort those for your address; a phone call can get close. (770) 272-6747 reaches us at any hour, and talking through situations like yours is a part of this job we genuinely like.
Can seniors get free tree cutting service?
Not that we’ve found in DeKalb County — no program we know of does free removals, and a pitch dressed up as one has earned your skepticism. What actually is free with us: the written estimate on scheduled work, plus an unvarnished opinion on whether removal is even warranted. More than once that opinion has been “prune it” — at a fraction of removal money.
Do you actually have crews working in Decatur?
Scroll back up: that gallery is our answer — our crew and our crane on a genuine Decatur street in July 2024. The log lists 3 documented Decatur jobs since early 2024, framed by steady work across DeKalb and intown Atlanta. A tight intown lot is a normal shift for these crews.
Get a Free Estimate in Decatur
You’ve just watched us work a Decatur job where the tree, the roof, and the SUV shared one frame — so when your photo looks anything like that, you know whose number it belongs in. Call 770 Arborist at (770) 272-6747 to put it there. On the scheduled side, you get a free written estimate for your Decatur tree work; on the storm side, a crew dispatched off the photos you send. Either way, a human answers.
*Please note: while we do have multiple adjusters on staff, Georgia law prevents an adjuster from also working as a contractor, and 770 engages its customers in the contractor role.
