Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions Albuquerque property owners ask us standing in the driveway — what it costs, who does the work, whether the tree can be saved, what to do when a limb is already down — answered the way we would answer them in person.
Nobody can price a tree honestly without seeing it, and a flat rate quoted sight-unseen is a guess. What moves the number is the size of the tree, what sits under it — roof, block wall, drip system, PNM service drop, sewer line — how the boom truck or a crane can reach it, and the condition of the wood, since brittle standing-dead elm comes apart in smaller, slower pieces than live wood. Nationally, residential tree work runs from a couple hundred dollars for a small trim or a stump up to several thousand for a large tree over a structure; those are market figures, not our price list. Ours comes after somebody has looked at your tree, and it is free and in writing. Treat a number far under the rest of your bids as information rather than a bargain — something has been left out, and it is usually the coverage or the cleanup.
Yes — every estimate is free and you get it in writing. Send the details through the Get Free Estimate form on this site, or call (505) 306-2007: what the tree is doing, what sits under or beside it, your cross streets, and a photo or two if you have them. Photos help more than people expect, because a picture of the trunk flare and the ground around it answers things a written description cannot. From there we arrange a time to come look at the tree and walk the property with you before anything is priced. There is no obligation and no charge whether or not you hire us. Try to be there for the walk-through if you can. Half of what we need to know is history only you have: the year the lean started, the summer the tree stopped leafing out on top, how often that side of the yard gets water.
Yes. Roque Tree Service LLC is licensed under NM license #L1313927408, bonded and insured, and we put the paperwork in front of you before a saw starts — nobody should have to take a stranger's word for it. More can go wrong in one hour of tree work than in a week of most trades, and when sections of an elm are coming down over your roof, the question that matters is who carries the liability if a piece lands wrong. With an uninsured crew, the answer is you and your homeowner's policy. The second question is who is actually on the property: 100% of our jobs are done by our own crews, so the people who quoted the work are the people doing it. Put both questions to every company bidding your tree. A company that can answer neither is generally the one whose number came in lowest.
Yes. Emergency service is 24/7, and we head out within about an hour, depending on distance — a tree down in the Southeast Heights is a very different drive from one in Moriarty or Belen, and we would rather tell you that plainly than promise a number we cannot hold. Call (505) 306-2007 and tell us what came down, what it is resting on, and whether anyone is blocked in. Two things come before us. If the tree or a limb is touching a power line or the service drop to the house, report it to PNM through its outage channels and keep everybody well back — that span belongs to the utility until it is de-energized. If the house is breached or anyone is hurt, 911 first. Then us.
Yes, that is worth getting looked at. Limb drop on a still, hot afternoon shows up most in old cottonwoods and elms carrying long, heavy horizontal limbs, especially trees that have been drought-stressed or are carrying mistletoe in the crown. A limb that fails on a calm day is telling you the wood failed, not the weather, which means the next one can go over the driveway or the patio just as easily. Keep cars and chairs out from under it, look for cracks at the limb union and for mushrooms or soft, punky wood at the base, and send photos through the estimate form. If a broken limb is already hung up in the canopy over somewhere people walk, call (505) 306-2007 instead: we run 24/7 and head out within about an hour, depending on distance.
For a tree standing wholly on your own private lot inside the city, no permit is required to trim or remove it. A tree in the sidewalk strip, a median or the alley right-of-way is a different animal — that is public land, and cutting, trimming or removing it needs a City Forester permit under the Street Tree Ordinance. Historic districts can add review for street-frontage trees, nothing gets cut on City Open Space or in the bosque, and MRGCD controls vegetation on its ditch banks. Westside HOAs such as Ventana Ranch, Taylor Ranch and Mesa del Sol generally want written approval before a removal. Outside the city limits the rules change again by county. We confirm what applies at your address during the estimate, before anything is scheduled.
Often the trim is enough, and we will tell you when it is. One dead or cracked limb over the roof, branches scraping the shingles, a crown that has never been thinned or raised, watersprouts off an old topping cut — those are pruning jobs, and the tree stays. Removal is the honest answer when the problem is the whole tree: a new lean with cracked or mounded soil on the far side of the trunk, decay or mushrooms at the root flare, a split at the main union where included bark has been building for years, or a tree that has simply outgrown a 6,000-square-foot lot. If you are unsure which one you have, start with a tree health assessment rather than a removal quote. Selling a removal that two cuts would have solved is not how a company lasts eleven years in one city.
Topping cuts a tree back to stubs — the top comes out at a chosen height with no regard for where the branch structure actually is. The trade warns against it for good reason: it strips away the leaves feeding the tree, leaves big wounds that decay from the cut down, and forces out fast, weakly attached regrowth that is more likely to fail in the next spring wind than what was there before. Crown reduction does the same job properly. Each leader is shortened back to a lateral branch large enough to take over, so the tree keeps a natural outline and can seal its wounds. Reduction is almost always the right answer for a tree that has outgrown its spot. There are cases where we will still top on request, including Albuquerque's old mulberry pollarding habit, and we explain the trade-off in writing first.
Albuquerque is home. We are based in the Southeast Heights and work every quadrant of the city, from the old canopy around Nob Hill and Ridgecrest to the Westside subdivisions and out to Four Hills at the mouth of Tijeras Canyon. Beyond the city we cover the rest of Bernalillo County — the North Valley, Los Ranchos, the South Valley and the Northeast Heights; Sandoval County to the north for Rio Rancho, Corrales, the town of Bernalillo and Placitas; Valencia County to the south for Los Lunas, Belen and Bosque Farms; and Moriarty out east in Torrance County. Belen is about 34 miles south and Moriarty about 40 miles east on I-40, and both are covered — the distance mainly affects how quickly we can reach you in an emergency. Every service we offer is available everywhere we work.
Our own crew arrives with the estimate you approved, and nothing on it changes without you agreeing first. Before a cut is made we walk the plan on site: where the boom truck and its outriggers sit, where sections come down, what gets protected — block wall, drip lines, patio furniture, the neighbor's roof — and where the chipper feeds. Limbs and trunk wood over anything that matters are tied off and lowered under control instead of dropped. Brush goes through the chipper as we work so the pile never gets ahead of us, and wood and debris are hauled off unless you would rather keep the rounds. Then the ground is raked and the yard walked before the truck leaves. Stump grinding, if it is on the estimate, usually happens the same visit rather than as a second trip.
Both. Commercial work is a real part of what we do: HOA common areas and greenbelts, apartment complexes, parking-lot islands where ash and honey locust hang low over delivery trucks, retail frontage, church and school grounds, and property managers who need several sites handled on one schedule. It is the same trade with different constraints — parking spaces to keep open, tenants and customers to keep clear of the drop zone, and often an early start so the lot is usable before the day begins. We are licensed, bonded and insured, and a manager who needs to send proof to a board or an owner can ask for it up front. Send the property details through the estimate form and we will scope the work in writing.
Honestly, no — there is no program here that trims or removes a tree on private property at no cost. PNM clears vegetation around its own distribution lines on a cycle, and the City handles trees in the public right-of-way and in parks through 311, but a tree in your backyard belongs to the property owner and so does the work on it. What does exist is this: our estimates are free and in writing, so finding out what a job costs never costs you anything, and there is often a cheaper path than the one people assume. Taking the deadwood out of a cottonwood is not the same price as removing it, and a limb over the roof can sometimes be reduced instead of the whole tree coming down. Get it looked at before you decide what you can afford.