PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Austin builds on two different grounds: limestone that argues west of I-35 and blackland that swells east of it. We dig, grade, and pad both every month, with our own iron, quotes in machine days, and documented jobs you can drive past. From half-acre infill lots to hundred-acre tracts, the dirt gets done right the first time.
The Balcones fault runs straight through town, and it decides how your dirt work goes. We plan for the side of it you live on before the first machine loads.
Westlake, Oak Hill, Dripping Springs direction: thin soil over Edwards limestone that shows up fast and does not negotiate. Out here we price the rock from the digs behind us, the quote includes a written rock contingency, and the plan says up front what gets ripped, what gets hammered, and what gets designed around. Pads and roads west of the fault are engineered around rock, not surprised by it.
Del Valle, Manor, Elgin direction: deep black clay that digs easy and moves with the weather. Shrink-swell is the whole game on the east side, so pads get moisture-conditioned and compacted in lifts, grades get set to drain, and fill gets placed like the slab depends on it, because it does. Easy digging is not the same as easy building, and we treat it that way.
The full dirt work menu from our excavation and dirt work page, tuned to how Austin actually builds.
Bulk cuts, basement and foundation digs, and fill placed and balanced on site. In the metro, every truckload of dirt that leaves a property costs real money, so our first move is a cut and fill plan that keeps your dirt home.
Rough and finish grading for lots, acreage, and commercial sites. Austin rain arrives all at once, so every grade we cut starts with where the water goes and ends with ground you can seed, pave, or build on.
House pads on the east side clay get moisture-conditioned lifts. Pads on the west side rock get cut and leveled into grade. Both get compaction a slab crew can trust and elevations that match the plans.
Raw lot to build-ready: clearing, grubbing, rough grade, and base placed, one crew and one invoice. Builders get a site that is actually ready, on our site preparation standard.
Caliche drives and ranch roads that survive the wet spring: corridor cleared, crowned, and compacted, from Hill Country grades to blackland flats. Details on our ranch road page.
The dig behind our pond trade: basins, core trenches, and dams in compacted lifts. Our Austin pond construction page carries the published price list and calculator.
Machine days, on paper, before the iron loads. The number is built from the same published logic as the rest of our site, and Austin adds a few variables worth knowing about.
The iron, the days, and the transport, same as anywhere. What Austin changes is the mix: infill lots price tight on access and haul-off, acreage west of town prices on rock, and east side sites price on how much moisture conditioning the clay needs. Send photos to 512-400-2693 and the ballpark comes back the same day.
Limestone that hammers instead of rips west of the fault. Dirt that has to truck out through city traffic instead of balancing on site. Engineered compaction specs with density testing on builder jobs. Gates, easements, and neighbors that slow the iron down on tight lots. Each one is a written line in the quote, flagged at the site walk, never a surprise on the invoice.
Same disciplined sequence as every job on our excavation page, from Tarrytown lots to Travis County acreage.
A few pictures, the address or area, and what you are building. Austin quotes start the same day with a ballpark in machine days off the published logic.
Machines, days, transport, and any rock or haul-off contingency in writing. Engineered plans priced to the plan; ranch and homestead work designed with you on the walk.
We read the rock line if you are west, the clay if you are east, check access and haul routes either way, and settle where the dirt should go before anyone guesses. None of this happens until you have approved the estimate.
Lowboy in, machines staged, and the job runs start to finish without disappearing to another site. Most Austin digs mobilize within a few weeks of a signed quote.
Clearing first if the lot needs it, then cuts, fills in compacted lifts, and grade. Watch the whole thing from outside the swing radius, most clients do.
Pads, slopes, drainage, and finish checked against the quote with you on the ground. Fixed before we load, not negotiated after.
Real jobs with real write-ups, all within striking distance of town. Every card opens the full project page.
Del Valle: cleared, graded, and stoned, 20 minutes out
San Marcos: 8 acre homesite, pad and driveway, 35 minutes
Elgin: 127 acres for the LCRA, 30 minutes east
Bastrop: 40 acres back to pasture, 35 minutes
Evant: D61 homesite grading on 18 selective acres
Leander: pond cut in progress, our other dirt tradeAsk anyone who has dug a pool in Westlake: the Edwards limestone starts inches down in places, and it does not care about your schedule. Our west side digs get priced from ledge we have already hit nearby, quoted with a written hammer contingency, and planned so the rock becomes benches, pads, and road base instead of a fight. The worst version of Austin rock is the one nobody priced. That version does not happen here.
East side clay swells wet and shrinks dry, and a slab poured on a pad that ignored this will crack on schedule. The fix is not mysterious: strip the topsoil, condition the moisture, place fill in thin compacted lifts, and grade so water leaves the pad instead of soaking the perimeter. It is a few extra machine hours that buys decades of a slab that stays flat. Every east side pad we build gets it.
Dirt is cheap to move around a site and expensive to move across town. Trucking spoil through Austin traffic can cost more than the dig that produced it, so our first design pass always looks for balance: can the cut become the pad, the berm, the driveway base? On most acreage jobs the answer is yes and the haul-off line goes to zero. On tight infill lots we say exactly how many loads leave and what each costs, before we start.
Austin storms drop a season of rain in an afternoon, and finished dirt work either handles that or becomes the reason you call someone again. Grades get crowned, water gets a designed route off pads and roads, swales carry storms where they can do no harm, and low corners get filled instead of ignored. When we walk a finished site, the last check is always the same: where does the water go, and would we bet the callback on it.
A lot of Austin dirt bids assume someone else already cleared, or someone else will grade after. We run the whole line ourselves: clearing and mulching, grubbing, excavation, grading, pads, and even rock milling when the limestone needs to become usable surface. One plan, one crew, one number, and nothing lost between contractors, which is exactly where most dirt budgets go to die.
The Pierce guys rocked our project out of the park! We had a commercial property that needed some grading and redesign of drainage for future development. They brought in a huge dozer and made light work of our needs.
Chris Neighbors, Google review
They did an amazing transformation on our property. We had a jungle and we were left with a beautiful future homesite. They showed up with newer equipment which lessens the chance of breakdowns. Very personable and professional.
Tyson Griffin, Google review
Never easy to write a big check, but well worth it. After two days they completely transformed a ten acre holly-choked mess into an open and inviting forest. Taylor bid the job and recommended the larger dozer-sized forestry mulcher.
Geoffrey Mitchell, Google review
Dirt work rarely travels alone. These are the Austin pages for everything else we do, most jobs combine two or three.
Austin dirt work is scope priced in machine days: the iron, the days it runs, transport, and any contingency for rock or haul-off. West of I-35 the rock contingency matters, on infill lots the haul-off does, and on the east side clay it is moisture conditioning. Photos to 512-400-2693 get a same-day ballpark, and a site walk turns it into a written number that does not move.
West of I-35, regularly, and we plan for it instead of discovering it. We price the rock from the digs behind us, the quote includes a written hammer contingency billed by the day, and where the limestone is millable we can turn it into usable surface with our rock milling service instead of hauling it away.
Yes. Tight-access work is its own discipline: smaller iron matched to the gate, a haul-off count in writing, and neighbors kept sane by a crew that shows up, works, and leaves. The quote reads exactly like the big-acreage version, just scaled to the lot.
That is the standard we build to. Pads go in as moisture-conditioned lifts, each compacted before the next, cut and filled to plan elevations. If your builder or engineer requires density testing, we build to the spec and support the testing schedule.
That is the whole company. Clearing, grubbing, excavation, grading, and pad, one crew and one invoice, with our Austin land clearing and site preparation services feeding straight into the dirt work. No gaps between contractors, which is where schedules and budgets usually leak.
Every month, and it is its own trade with its own page. Our Austin pond construction page carries the published price list, the cost calculator, and the documented builds. The short version: basins cut to a sealing plan, dams raised in compacted lifts, spillways sized for Austin storms.
Photos and a rough scope get a same-day ballpark. A site walk gets a written number in machine days, rock and haul spelled out, no surprises after.