Estimate your stump before you call anyone

This is the local market range for Cherokee County, not a quote. Access, slope and grinding depth can move the real number well outside it, which is why every crew wants to see the stump.

Not sure how to measure?

Measure straight across the widest point of the stump where it meets the ground, flare included. Do not measure the trunk higher up, and do not use the width of the tree you remember. People routinely come in six or eight inches under, then find the quote surprising.

• Small, up to 12 inches: ornamental pear, dogwood, young pine
• Medium, 12 to 24 inches: mature loblolly pine, river birch
• Large, 24 to 36 inches: water oak, sweetgum, old hardwood
• Very large, over 36 inches: heritage oak, old-growth poplar

Why the second stump costs so much less than the first

The number above is not diameter times a rate. Every crew in Cherokee County charges a minimum of $100 to $200 simply to load the grinder, drive out and unload it, and that cost lands on your first stump whether it is eight inches or thirty. That is why the estimate stops falling as you type smaller numbers: below about 34 inches the bottom of the range is the callout rather than the grinding, and the top of the range is pinned all the way up to about 40 inches.

Once the machine is off the trailer that cost is spent, so every further stump is priced close to the work itself. The calculator takes about a quarter off each additional one to reflect that. Two twenty inch stumps in one visit come in far below two separate visits, and the practical advice follows: if you have one small stump and another tree you have been thinking about, deal with them in the same booking.

What this calculator cannot know

Diameter sets a floor and nothing more. Two identical stumps, one at the curb and one behind a narrow gate on a graded lot, are different jobs at different prices, and no calculator can see your yard. Access is the factor that moves a real quote the most, followed by how deep you need it ground and whether you want the chips taken away.

We wrote all of that up properly, with the local numbers behind it, on the Woodstock stump grinding cost guide. Read that before you call anyone; this page is only here to get you to a number in ten seconds.

For what happens after you call, the stump grinding in Woodstock, GA page covers the questions a crew will ask and how the grinding itself goes.

Three worked examples from around Woodstock

One Bradford pear in a nineties subdivision. Fourteen inches across, front yard, drivable. The arithmetic says forty two to seventy dollars, but the crew's minimum fee is what you will actually pay, so expect one hundred to two hundred. This is the clearest illustration of why a single small stump is the worst value in this trade, and why you should wait until you have two.

A mature loblolly pine after a storm. Twenty four inches, backyard, gate wide enough for the machine. Seventy two to one hundred twenty on the per-inch rate, so the range holds. Add time if the tree came down recently, because fresh pine sap gums up the grinder teeth and slows the job beyond what the diameter suggests.

An old water oak near a driveway. Thirty eight inches at the flare, which most people would have guessed at thirty. That is one hundred fourteen to one hundred ninety on diameter alone, and oak is dense enough to push toward the top of it. If the roots have lifted the concrete, ask about them while the crew is on site rather than calling someone back.