About

GT TREE Company began in the forests of British Columbia, where Gene Teele grew up among towering cedars and firs and was running a chainsaw before he was ten years old. His father was American and his mother Canadian. In his twenties, Gene followed his father’s roots south, and for more than twenty years he has called Middle Tennessee home.

Here he found a very different forest to learn: the magnolia, the tulip poplar, the pecan. He studied how each species grows, weakens, and fails, and that curiosity became the foundation of the company’s expertise.

Trees weren’t his first career. Gene worked as an EMT, certified in IV therapy, and was training to become a firefighter. In 2011 he bought a stump grinder as something to do on his days off. He liked that grinding left nothing unfinished: no stump, no trace, just ground ready for whatever came next. Before long, the days off became the work. As Gene puts it, he didn’t go looking for tree work; it found him, because it had been part of him all along.

An early job showed what the company could become: removing a massive red oak at one of Tennessee’s most storied distilleries to make way for a new parking lot. The tree was large and dangerous, and the job demanded precision, careful planning, and close coordination of many moving parts. It proved what the crew was capable of, and that there was a real need for tree work done to that standard.

That standard became the company’s. As the business grew, Gene invested ahead of demand, adding equipment before the need arrived, so the crew is always more than equipped for the job in front of them.

What kept him going was the people. Sometimes a tree has become unsafe or diseased, or hangs over a home. Sometimes it simply stands where a family wants a pool, a fence, or a new view. Either way, helping clients get the property they want, safely and completely, is the most satisfying part of the work.

Gene met his wife, Julie, after he moved to Tennessee. With a background in media and events, Julie brings a gift for building teams, growing brands, and earning lasting trust. Together they share a joy in developing people and serving clients well, and they built GT TREE Company as a family business on exactly that.

Fifteen years later, the standard hasn’t changed: every job is seen in person, every price is honored, and every property is left as if we were never there.