Our Story
Central Montana tree removal, storm-ready.
A Local Crew That Learned Trees on the Line
Cole Hagberg grew up on a ranch outside Belt and spent four seasons on a utility line-clearance crew across Cascade and Chouteau counties, plus three winters of storm cleanup. That work shows you how a chinook gets into an old cottonwood crown, and how a boulevard ash loads up under wet October snow with its leaves still on.
In 2015 he opened Electric City Tree Co. in Great Falls, Montana with a bucket truck, a chipper and a stump grinder, and he still lives here. We are a crew of four now. Every job starts with an on-site look and a written price, and ends with the trunk, brush and chips gone.
The name comes from the Missouri's five falls, each with a hydro dam. Our work is the green ash and American elm on the boulevards, more than 33,000 public trees in the City's care, plus river cottonwood and willow, splitting boxelder and Siberian elm, yard spruce and ponderosa, and shelterbelt Russian olive and caragana. Dutch elm disease is here; the emerald ash borer is not, yet.
Four Services
Four jobs: tree removal, stump grinding, tree trimming and land clearing. No mowing, bed mulching or landscaping, and no commercial contracts that would pull the crew away from the homeowners and ranch owners who call us. If your job falls outside those four, we will tell you.
Our Why
Cole kept seeing Cascade County homeowners stuck between a big outfit rolling up I-15 after a windstorm, quoting high and leaving the brush, and a pickup-and-chainsaw operator with no insurance who drops a cottonwood and hopes it misses the garage. Line work had shown him a better way: take the tree apart in sections and rig every piece that could hit something, whether it hangs in a service drop or over a backyard shed.
Cottonwood, boxelder, Siberian elm, green ash, spruce and a diseased American elm all fail differently, and a frozen winter before a wet April changes how roots hold. We check root flare to crown, and whether the tree is the City's.
We never skip rigging to save an hour, and Cole or Ramon walks every property before a plan is set. When the wind is up the way it gets here, the climber stays on the ground.
A written estimate comes before any work. If a diseased elm needs to come down, we say so; if a leaning ponderosa has stood that way for decades and is fine, we say that too.
Burning is banned inside city limits, a county brush pile needs a burn permit, and bark-on elm has to be debarked or destroyed. So trunk, limbs, brush and chips all leave on our truck.
We are a crew of four on purpose. Meet the crew behind every job.
Call or request a free written estimate.
Type your town or ZIP, say Belt or 59405, and see whether the Electric City truck runs there.