Large and Multiple Stump Grinding in Murfreesboro, TN

What counts as a large stump?

There's no official cutoff. For us, a stump starts acting “large” somewhere past 24 to 30 inches across the top. At that size, the root flare at the base gets wide, the wood is heavy, and the grinding takes a lot longer.

In Rutherford County, the big ones are usually:

• Old oaks, with dense wood that wears grinder teeth fast
• Hackberries, with wide flared bases and thick roots running out
• Big cedars that grew for decades on rocky ground
• Maples that took over a front yard years ago

Measure across the top of the stump at its widest spot. Add a few inches if the base flares out below that. That number helps us bring the right machine.

Why do big stumps take more time and cost more?

Because there's more wood to turn into chips, and it all has to go below grade. A stump twice as wide is a lot more than twice the wood. The base flares out, and the main roots near the trunk are as thick as small logs.

Rock makes it slower. A big old tree on thin soil over limestone often has roots wrapped around ledges and rock sitting right inside the root flare. We grind around it carefully so we don't break teeth or throw rock.

A big stump also leaves a big pile of chips. Plan on a lot more cleanup than you'd think. We can haul it for you with cleanup, topsoil and grass seed.

Is it cheaper to grind several stumps at once?

Yes. Most of the cost of a small job is getting a heavy machine to your place and set up. Once it's there, each extra stump costs less than the first one. That's true almost everywhere, and it's true with us.

So if you have one stump you hate and three more you've been ignoring, do them all at once. It's the same trip.

Jobs with lots of stumps we see around here:

• A row of Bradford pears cut down along a drive or property line
• A fence line cleared of cedars
• A yard where the last owner cut trees and never dealt with the stumps
• Storm cleanup after several trees came down at once
• Rental and investment houses getting cleaned up between tenants

If your stumps came from a storm, see storm damage stump grinding.

How long does a big or multi-stump job take?

It depends on size, wood, rock, and access. A normal yard stump might take well under an hour. A large oak stump on rocky ground can take a few hours by itself. A yard with ten medium stumps might take most of a day.

We'll give you a time estimate with your quote so you know what to expect.

Do you grind stumps on acreage and farm property?

Yes. Out past the city limits in Rutherford County, a lot of the jobs are fence rows, pasture edges, and old home sites with stumps scattered around. We do those too.

For bigger properties, it helps to:

• Flag or spray paint each stump so nothing gets missed
• Tell us if the ground is soft or wet
• Let us know about gates, culverts, and anything a machine needs to cross
• Point out where any wells, septic lines, or buried lines might be

What does a large or multiple stump job cost?

It's priced on the total: how many stumps, how big each one is, how hard they are to get to, and how much cleanup you want. Extra stumps on one visit almost always bring the per-stump cost down. For a breakdown of what drives price, read our stump grinding cost guide.

If you want the whole stump gone, ground well below grade, you can also read about regular stump removal. If you manage a property or a build site, see commercial, HOA and builder lots.