Leaning, cracked, hollow, or storm-damaged — our ISA-certified crews bring down the trees other companies won't touch, safely and cleanly.
A big tree in decline isn't just a landscaping problem — it's a hazard hanging over your roof, your car, your family, and your neighbors. Metro Atlanta is called "the city in a forest," and Sandy Springs sits under one of the densest urban canopies in the country. That beauty comes with risk: when a mature pine or oak fails, it can weigh several tons and fall in a direction you never expected. Removing a large or hazardous tree is precision, high-stakes work, and it's exactly what Hank's Tree Pros is built for.
Our ISA-certified arborists handle the removals most crews avoid — trees leaning over houses, cracked trunks beside driveways, hollow giants near power lines — across Sandy Springs, Buckhead, Dunwoody, Roswell, and the wider metro Atlanta area. Every job is fully insured, carefully rigged, and cleaned up completely.
A tree becomes "hazardous" when a structural defect meets a target it could hit. Any one of these signs is a reason to call us for an assessment:
Not sure how serious it is? Our certified arborists give you a straight answer — and our guide to the signs of a hazardous tree walks through the red flags in plain language.
The species that dominate our canopy are also the ones most likely to fail. Tall loblolly and shortleaf pines snap and drop in storms and fall prey to pine bark beetles that kill them from the inside. Water oaks — everywhere in Sandy Springs and Atlanta — grow fast, rot early, and become notoriously hazard-prone while they still look full on top. We also remove failing white and willow oaks, tulip poplar, sweetgum, hickory, and pecan. Georgia's saturated red clay soil, summer thunderstorms, occasional ice storms, and remnants of tropical systems all conspire to uproot trees that a homeowner would never suspect. A trained eye reads the whole tree — root plate, trunk, unions, and canopy — before anyone climbs.
You can't simply fell a large tree that's leaning over a house — there's nowhere safe for it to land. Instead, our crews dismantle it piece by piece. A climber or bucket operator sets rigging lines high in the tree, and each section is cut, controlled with ropes and friction devices, and lowered gently to a clear spot on the ground. Done right, a multi-ton tree comes apart over a roof, a pool, or a fence without a single limb touching them.
The bigger the wood and the tighter the target, the more the physics stack against a rope-and-climb approach. That's when we bring in the crane. Crane-assisted removal lets us lift entire sections straight up and out, over the house and away, with zero drag across your yard — the safest, fastest option for the largest and most dangerous trees.
Tree work is consistently ranked among the most dangerous jobs in America, and a compromised tree multiplies every risk. Decayed wood doesn't hinge the way sound wood does, so a tree can fail in an unexpected direction. Ladders and consumer chainsaws put an untrained homeowner directly under the load, where kickback and falling limbs cause life-changing injuries. And a single mistake near a house or a power line can turn a $1,500 removal into a five-figure repair — or worse. Professional removal brings the training, the rigging, the crane support, and the full liability and workers' compensation insurance that keep the risk off your shoulders.
Every hazardous removal starts with a plan, not a chainsaw:
In Sandy Springs, dead, dying, diseased, or hazardous trees may be removed without a permit — but the city requires documentation (photos or an arborist report) to the City Arborist first. Healthy hardwoods and pines 18″ in diameter or larger do need a permit. We handle both — see our tree-removal permit help.
Because these jobs vary so much, we price each one on-site — for free. As a general guide, large or hazardous removals in the Sandy Springs and Atlanta area typically run $800–$2,500 or more, and very large or extra-difficult trees can reach roughly $4,700. The main cost factors are height and trunk diameter, the severity of the lean, access for equipment, proximity to the house and power lines, and whether crane assistance is required. For a firm number specific to your tree, request a free estimate — and see our overview of tree removal costs in Atlanta.
We take down large and hazardous trees throughout Sandy Springs, Marietta, Vinings, and across Atlanta. Storm just cracked a giant? Our 24/7 emergency & storm-damage team can be on the way — and for the toughest of these, we escalate straight to crane-assisted removal.
Don't wait for it to fall. Get a free, no-pressure assessment from ISA-certified arborists who remove hazardous trees safely — with crane support when it counts.