(317) 555-0142

I can't see the road when I back out — what should I do?

You have to push the nose of the car past the end of the driveway and into the travel lane before you can see oncoming traffic. Low limbs hanging into the line of sight, a crown that starts at chest height, foliage that was fine in April and is a solid wall by July. A corner where you have started relying on hearing rather than seeing. Delivery drivers and the mail carrier swinging wide around it. This is a geometry problem, and it is almost always solvable without losing the tree. What blocks a driver is the band of foliage roughly between a seated driver's eye height and the height of a truck's mirrors — everything above that band is irrelevant to visibility. So "the tree is in the way" almost always means "about eight feet of the tree is in the way," and the remedy is to lift the crown clear of that band, not to take the tree out.

What to do about it

Within weeks. Normally a tree trimming job, $250–$1,400 around Indianapolis depending on size and access.

Can the tree be kept

Nearly always. Crown raising — removing the lowest limbs and shortening others to lift the canopy clear of the sight band — resolves most driveway sightlines in a single visit, and a healthy tree tolerates it well provided the work stays inside limits: keep the live crown to a clear majority of the tree's total height, avoid removing more than roughly a quarter of the living canopy in one season, and cut back to the branch collar rather than leaving stubs. Topping is the wrong tool and makes the sightline worse within a few years, because topping cuts provoke dense clusters of weakly attached sprouts precisely where you just cleared. Removal is the right answer only when the trunk itself, rather than the branches, stands in the line of sight.

Related

Get it done

Talk to someone(317) 555-0142