Most cities take tree branches free at the curb. You cut every piece under four feet, tie the bundles, keep the pile to clean wood only, and stay under the bundle count for that collection. County green waste sites take bigger loads if you own a truck. One curbside pickup, whole pile, nothing cut, is $129.
Free works, and here is exactly when
If this was an afternoon of hedge trimming, stop reading. Cut the limbs under four feet. Tie them with twine, not wire. Set the bundles out on your normal trash day, and put leaves in paper yard bags. Most cities take it and it costs nothing.
Four feet is the most common cut length. Some cities say three, some say five, and many cap branch diameter at four to six inches. Your sanitation page has the real number for your address. Read it before you cut anything, because a pile cut to the wrong length gets tagged and left.
If you own a truck, the county green waste site is the other free answer. Most take resident loads free or for a few dollars a cubic yard. Bring ID and go early. The hours are short and mostly weekday.
What the free program actually counts
Your city is not taking your pile. It is taking bundles. That distinction is the whole story on this page.
- •Length. Every piece gets cut to the posted size. On a downed tree that is saw work, not chore work, and it is the part people underestimate by a full day.
- •Ties. Loose brush is not a set-out. Each bundle has to be tied, and most programs cap bundle weight around what one person can lift.
- •Count. Most curbside programs take a set number of bundles or cans per household per collection. That is the cap nobody reads until the truck leaves half the pile behind. A real tree's worth of wood goes out over weeks of Tuesdays, not on one Tuesday.
- •One clean material. Yard waste has to be yard waste. The tarp under the pile, the plastic nursery pots, the length of old fence the limb took down, the bag of dirt from the root flare. Any of that in the pile and the set-out gets refused as contaminated. So you sort first.
- •Season. In cold states, yard waste collection usually runs spring through late fall and then stops. A February limb waits for April.
That is the trap. The free program is counted in bundles and your yard is not in bundles. A mature tree drops 800 to 2,000 pounds of wood depending on species. Free is not the price. Free is the price plus a saw, a roll of twine, an afternoon of sorting, and four Saturdays you have not scheduled yet.
| What you book | Price |
|---|---|
| Tree branches, one curbside stack | $129 |
| Each additional stack | $59 |
| Bags of leaves or clippings, added on | $19 each |
Stack it at the curb. Nothing gets cut to length. Nothing gets tied. Nothing gets sorted. The whole pile goes in one trip, and the price cannot change after you book. Book by 2 PM and a local hauler comes today where same-day pickup is running, seven days a week. Haulers head out between 8 and 10 in the morning, and almost half of pickups are done by noon. You get a text with the ETA before they arrive and photos once it is gone. Nobody comes inside, and you do not need to be home. You do not need the pile at the curb to book. Book it first, then drag it out before the hauler gets there.
See my price for a stack of branchesHow many stacks is a downed tree?
"I was concerned this wasn't a legit company, but they absolutely are… I was quoted $1500 by another company."
— Melissa Mader, Google
Tree work draws big quotes because full service crews walk your yard first and price by how much of the truck you fill. Curbside is priced by the stack, on screen, before you book.
5.0 on Google, 150+ reviews · 4.9 on Trustpilot, 125+ reviews
Price one stack per pickup bed of brush. If you are eyeballing two truckloads, that is two stacks. One stack is $129 and every stack after is $59, so three stacks is $247, on screen, before you pay.
There is no cap on how many stacks you can book. Nothing has to be cut to length, nothing has to be tied, and nothing has to be sorted. The tarp, the pots and the busted fence panel go in the same pickup as the limbs. It is one trip and it takes the whole pile.
Bags of leaves and clippings ride along with a branch pickup at $19 each. Bags on their own are $79 for the first and $19 after. That is the right booking if you raked and never cut anything.
The price locks when you book. It does not move when the hauler arrives, so there is no on site estimate to sit through and nothing to settle at the curb.
Rounds are the exception to eyeballing. Six bucked rounds of oak weigh what a whole brush pile does, so count them separately.
Trunks, rounds and stumps
Branches, rounds and stumps are three different jobs.
Cut rounds of oak, maple, hickory or ash are worth something to somebody. List them free on Facebook Marketplace and they usually move in a few days, because people who burn wood watch those listings all winter. Green rounds sell for very little, but free green rounds still go.
A trunk cut into rounds two people can lift rides along with the branches. A trunk section that takes a machine to move is tree service work, not hauling, and you want it bucked before anyone quotes it.
Stumps are their own trade. A stump in the ground carries soil and rock in the root ball, which is why haulers will not take one and why grinding is a separate line of work. Get a tree service with a grinder. Once it is ground, the chips are yard waste and go out with your normal collection.
If a storm just came through
Wait before you pay anyone. After a declared storm, many cities run a separate debris pass. Where a pass runs there is no cutting, no bundling and no size limit, and it is free. You pile it at the curb and a claw truck comes through, sometimes more than once.
The catch is the schedule. A first pass can be days out and a final pass can be weeks out, and your city posts both. Check the city or county emergency page before you book anything. If a pass is coming and your pile can wait, take the free pass. That is the right answer and it is not close.
Book a pickup when the pile cannot wait. Listing photos on Thursday. A closing date. An HOA letter. A driveway you cannot get a car down.