PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
The Cowboy Capital sits on thin Hill Country soil over honest limestone, and dirt work here is ranch work: tank pads that hold stock, roads that survive the Medina River bottoms, homesites cut into hillsides without scarring them. We bring our own iron, quote in machine days, and leave ground you can be proud of at the gate.
Between the Medina River and the divides, almost every Bandera dirt job is a slope job, and the rock is never far down.
Bandera hillsides carry a skin of caliche and thin soil over solid limestone, which means benching, not wishful digging. Homesite pads get cut into the slope and keyed level, roads get grades a truck can climb wet, and no depth gets promised that this country has not already shown us. Rock contingency goes in writing on nearly every job out here.
Down along the Medina and the creek bottoms the soil deepens and digs easy, but it also floods. Bottom-land pads get elevation and drainage designed first, tanks get spillways sized for hill country rain, and anything built near the river gets planned around where the water goes when it rises, because here it does.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Bandera ground.
Hillside cuts, tank digs, and fill benched and balanced on the slope it came from. Bandera dirt stays on Bandera ranches whenever the plan allows, because hauling spoil up FM 173 is money nobody needs to spend.
Slope grading that respects the hill: benches, crowns, and drainage that keep a wet spring from taking your work downhill. Finish grades ready for grass, gravel, or slab.
Homesite and barn pads cut level into hillside country, compacted in lifts, with the uphill water routed around instead of through. The view is the point out here, and the pad should earn it.
From cedar brake to build-ready: clearing, grubbing, rough grade, and base, one crew and one plan, on the same standard as our site preparation work.
Ranch roads that climb Bandera grades in the rain: corridor cleared, crowned, ditched, and built with compacted base. Details on our ranch road page.
Stock tanks and ponds dug to hold: basins cut to the clay, dams keyed and compacted. The full trade lives on our pond construction page.
The iron, the days, and the transport set the base. From there the site speaks: how much cut and fill, what compaction spec, what finish. Our day rates follow the same published logic as our clearing and pond work, so the quote can be sanity-checked against our own website. Photos to 512-400-2693 start the clock on a same-day ballpark.
Slope work and rock set the tone in Bandera County: hillside cuts run slower than flat digging, solid limestone can mean hammer time, and river-bottom jobs add drainage work worth doing right. Access down ranch roads is rarely a problem, and spoil almost always stays on the place. Each factor is a written line, flagged on the walk.
Pictures, a rough scope, and where the property sits. The ballpark comes back the same day, in machine days, off the same published logic as the rest of our site.
Machines, days, transport, and any rock or haul contingency, all in writing. The number you sign is the number you pay.
We read the soil, check the access, and settle where the dirt should go while standing on it. No plan gets drawn from a satellite photo. None of this happens until you have approved the estimate.
The lowboy delivers within a few weeks of a signed quote and the machines stay until the dirt is finished. No vanishing to other jobs mid-build.
Clearing first if the ground needs it, then cuts, compacted fills, and grade, in the order the finished site requires.
The last step is a lap around the work, checked against the quote. Anything short gets fixed before the machines load.
Real projects with full write-ups and photos. Every card opens the project page.
A hillside pad done wrong is a slide waiting for a wet year. Done right, the cut keys into the slope, the fill compacts in lifts on a stepped bench, and the uphill water gets a route around the whole thing. Bandera holds more of our slope-cut pads than any county we work, and the method is why they stay put.
Stock tanks here live or die on finding the clay. The draws that feed the Medina carry pockets of it, and the site walk is about locating enough to seal a basin and key a dam. Where the pocket runs thin we say so and price the fix, because a tank that will not hold water is just a hole with a fence around it.
A Bandera ranch road earns its keep the week it rains four inches. That means real crowns, ditches that carry water off the grade, and compacted base on the climbs instead of loose caliche scattered on rock. We build the road for the wet year, and the dry years feel like a gift.
Most Bandera dirt jobs start under cedar, and we started as a cedar crew. Clearing and grubbing run as our own Bandera clearing operation, so the stumps are gone before the blade arrives and nothing gets buried in your pad that will settle later.
They did a fantastic job clearing our lot in Whitney this past week. The machine just mulched up all the trees and growth on our lot. It was amazing not to deal with piles and piles of brush to be burned or hauled off.
Christopher Ables, Google review
The Pierce Land Clearing team did an excellent job on our property near Gonzales, Texas. Johnathan arrived, started, and finished on time. When the machine had a hydraulic issue, they sent a mechanic on-site, and still managed to complete the work as scheduled. We recommend them and plan to use them again.
J T viewer, Google review
We cleared 5 acres last year near Lampasas ourselves over 6 days with far less cedars than Pierce Land Clearing did in just one single day on a 4 acre parcel near Kerrville. They worked with us to reschedule due to weather no problem.
A.Ron Carmichael, Google review
That is the signature job out here. The pad gets benched into the slope, keyed and compacted in lifts, with uphill drainage routed around it. Rock is priced in writing before the first cut, from what the ledge has done on the digs behind us.
Yes, and the site walk is mostly a clay hunt: finding enough seal material in the draw to hold water. Where the ground runs thin we design the fix up front, bentonite or borrowed clay, instead of letting the tank prove the problem.
About 50 minutes from two documented San Antonio projects, and our crews run the 46 corridor regularly. Transport is a line item on the quote, not a surprise, and for most Bandera scopes it is a small one.
Scope priced, in machine days: the iron, the days, transport, and any flagged contingency. Send photos to 512-400-2693 for a same-day ballpark, then a written number in machine days, with rock carried as a flagged contingency billed by the day.
It gets planned for, not discovered. We have dug enough of this country to know where the ledge sits, and the quote carries a written contingency for ripping or hammering, billed by the day. The difference between outfits shows up at the first hard bucket, and ours is in writing.
We build pads in moisture-conditioned compacted lifts to plan elevations. If your engineer requires density testing we build to the spec and support the schedule, and if there is no engineer we build like there was one.
Photos and a rough scope get a same-day ballpark, then a written number in machine days with rock flagged as its own contingency before you sign.
