Why bother with the stump
Left alone, a stump is a decade-long project in slow rot. It sprouts suckers all summer, dulls mower blades, trips grandkids, and feeds carpenter ants conveniently close to your foundation. Ash stumps are everywhere in this county now, and a yard with three of them mows like an obstacle course. Grinding takes the stump several inches below grade in under an hour for most sizes; you rake the chips, top up with soil, seed it, and by August you can't find where it was.
What it costs and what changes it
Size sets the base — a stump's price tracks its diameter, and hardwoods like maple grind slower than pine. Access matters: a machine that can drive to the stump is cheap; a stump behind a fence or down a bank costs the extra handling. And count the surface roots, because grinding those flat is part of doing it right. Several stumps in one visit nearly always beats one-at-a-time pricing — if the borer left you a row of dead ash, deal with the stumps as a batch.
Grinding vs. pulling it out
Full stump removal — excavating the root ball — leaves a crater and a torn-up lawn, and it's rarely worth it for a yard tree. Grinding is faster, cheaper, and kinder to everything around it. The honest exception: if you're building or pouring where the stump sits, say so, because that changes the right answer.
