You may have already met the tree guys somewhere, hanging out having a beer or even hanging upside down from a tree in your yard.

But it seems that the guys who pulled into my friend’s driveway to remove a few trees are local celebrities – the kind of guys who walk into a bar and everyone shouts “It’s the tree guys!” and then everyone buys them a beer.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: these guys are good looking. If there were calendars featuring tree removal guys, they might be on the cover.

In some of their marketing material they are pictured with their shirts off and you can’t really blame them for taking that approach. These guys don’t have bucket trucks and big toys; they show up with a saw and a muscle shirt and can take down a 60-foot tree with sheer skill and determination, so muscles are in their job description.

But once you get past the visuals you begin to appreciate what they’re up to here. They’re that brand of entrepreneur that you truly appreciate – very little overhead, genuine, local and fair. They do what they say they’re going to do and they put on a show while they’re doing it – something in the line of Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.

It’s a bit like ballet: They climb trees, hang upside down, dangle from ropes, make a tree land where they want it to land, and then instead of leaving you a tree stump in your yard, tree cutter Vince Liuzzo will carve you an angel or a deer.

It’s no wonder all the neighbors descend on the yards to watch. A lot of them say, “This is way better than TV.”

Liuzzo and Justin Miller formed the Tactical Tree Solutions company after they were laid off from another tree removal company. But everyone knows them as “the tree guys.”

They were both brought up in Jamestown, graduated from Jamestown High School and spent some time in college.

Liuzzo was a Division 1 athlete in college, then worked as a model, did a bit of acting on TV and is now active in the Jamestown arts community. Miller joined the army for a bit and then became a family man.

“Then I lured him in,” he says of Liuzzo, referring to the tree business.

“Our first job we had a Buick Riviera, three used chain saws and no money,” Miller says. And after it went well they both thought, “I think we can do this,” and now these two guys do the work of five.

First Miller had to convince Liuzzo that he could learn to climb if he was willing to go up a tree.

“What he lacked in technique he could make up for in physical domination,” Miller said.

The truth is the biggest part of the job is developing a consciousness about how your body works – its strength and its limits. These guys do things we wouldn’t do, but they know their own capabilities. And they make a good team because they’ve learned to read one another’s minds.

But the true crux of the story is how much these guys get done with so little – that great things are possible without a corporation behind you, without a million dollars in equipment, without a secretary.

Miller tells me that most tree removal businesses show up with bucket trucks, chippers, cranes and 20 employees.

“We compete with them because we don’t need all of that,” he says. “We’ve got a chipper and a pick-up, some ropes, some saws, and brute force.”

One time they had to clear a large swath of woods to make room for a pipeline and their client asked them how they were going to carry out all the trees they felled without equipment, which wouldn’t have fit in the area anyway.

“We’re going to pick them up and move them,” they told their bewildered client – as in carry it all away by hand.

I think they baffle people.

What’s clear is that you can’t help but stop and watch when they’re working. They’re like the Indiana Jones of tree removal. You’ll see Liuzzo hanging from a rope upside down 50 feet in the air, and Justin yanking on a rope below.

It’s not likely they’ll ever be replaced by machines. They might just be irreplaceable because what they’ve got is this intuition about the laws of nature, about how gravity works. And most of all they know how to live in the moment because anything short of that could spell their demise.

It’s the kind of local business that makes our town more interesting.

I’m seeing a reality show in their future, aren’t you?

How about “The Axemen of Chautauqua County.”