PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Pads, cut and fill, drives and pond work across western Bastrop County. Lost Pines sand on one side, Colorado bottom clay on the other, and we have documented builds on both.
Cedar Creek sits on the western edge of the Lost Pines where post oak sand starts running into the Colorado bottoms, and which side of that line your place falls on decides the build. Up in the sand it drains, digs easily and will not hold water without help. Down toward the river the clay is already there and the work is shaping and compacting it properly rather than importing anything.
On the sand side a pond needs a clay core and often a sealed basin, and a drive needs base rock to carry a load. On the clay side the material you need is usually under your feet. The difference is a few hundred yards in places, which is why test pits beat assumptions.
This corridor has been filling in for a decade, so alongside the ranch work there are homesites, shop pads and drives going in on small acreage. Those want tighter finish grading and drainage that actually works, and they want the trees that made the lot attractive left standing.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Cedar Creek ground.
Cut and fill is the whole job on most sites around Cedar Creek. Material comes off the high side, goes onto the low side, and gets compacted as it goes rather than pushed into place and hoped over. Balancing a site so nothing has to be hauled in or out is the cheapest version of this work, and where the ground allows it we will tell you.
Grading is what separates a site that drains from one that ponds. We shape positive fall away from every structure, tie it into somewhere the water can actually go, and finish to a surface that reads as landform rather than machine tracks. On bastrop county getting this wrong shows up the first wet season.
A pad is only as good as what is under it. Subgrade gets prepared, fill goes in compacted lifts to a spec, and the finished elevation is set against the drainage plan rather than the existing dirt. Barn pads, shop pads and house pads around Cedar Creek all get built the same way because the failure mode is the same.
Site prep is where our clearing side and our dirt side meet. Trees down, stumps and root balls out of the building footprint, ground cut to rough grade and handed to a builder ready for survey and permit. Doing both halves with one crew is faster and there is nobody to blame in the middle.
Ranch roads and driveways get built to survive rain, not just to look right on the day. Crown for shedding water, base rock spread and compacted to a real depth, and crossings where the water already wants to run. A road built without those three costs more in the second year than it saved in the first.
Ponds and stock tanks are dirt work with a water problem attached. The dam gets keyed into undisturbed ground and built in compacted lifts, the basin gets cut to depth, and the spillway goes in at the right elevation. Around Cedar Creek we will tell you honestly whether your ground will hold water before you commit.
We price the way ranchers think: what iron, how many days, what it costs to get it there. Everything else is a named line item you saw coming. The same published day-rate logic runs our clearing, pond, and dirt quotes, which keeps everybody honest. Send photos to 512-400-2693 for the ballpark today.
Around Cedar Creek the number is which soil you are on and how much material has to be brought in because of it. Access on wooded small acreage is the other factor, and clearing is frequently part of the same job.
Send photos and your town, get an honest range the same day. No pressure funnel, no waiting week for a callback.
We find what the ground is hiding, rock, water, soft spots, before it can find your budget. The design happens here, in person.
Machine days on paper: dig, fill, grade, transport, contingencies. You can check the logic against our published rates.
Usually a few weeks out from signing. We need a gate the iron fits through and a place for the trailer, and we handle the rest.
Watch the ground change daily from outside the swing radius. Topsoil saved, fills compacted, grades cut to move water.
A slow lap around the finished work together, against the quote. Fixed on the spot if anything misses. Then it is yours.
A pond is a dirt job with a water problem attached, and it is the same crew, the same machines and the same compaction standard as a building pad. The difference is that a pad fails slowly and a dam fails all at once.
Everything that matters happens in the dam. It gets keyed in so water cannot slide underneath it, built in compacted lifts rather than pushed up in one pass, and given a bank shallow enough to mow. Ponds almost never fail in the middle. They fail at the dam.
The spillway is the other half. Somewhere for overflow to go that is not across the dam, cut into undisturbed ground at the right elevation.
Around Cedar Creek that question gets answered with test pits, not optimism. If the ground will not hold water on its own we will say so and price the fix, whether that is a clay core, imported select fill or a sealed basin.
Depth beats width every time. Six feet at center is the baseline we build to, and it is why our pond pricing is quoted that way.
Real projects with full write-ups and photos. Every card opens the project page.
Every number on a dirt job comes back to what is under the surface, and the only honest way to know is to open the ground. We dig test holes on the site walk. It costs an hour and it is the difference between a quote you can rely on and a change order later.
Fill placed in one lift and tracked over looks identical to fill placed in compacted lifts, right up until something is built on it. We build to a spec and we are happy to have it tested. The pads that fail in Texas nearly all failed at this step.
Most dirt work that goes wrong went wrong because of water, not dirt. Where it comes from, where it sits and where it leaves are questions we answer before the first cut around Cedar Creek, because retrofitting drainage after concrete is the expensive way to learn it.
We clear the trees and we move the dirt, which means the stumps come out of the pad footprint properly instead of being someone else problem. On a site that needs both, that is usually days off the schedule and one less contractor to coordinate.
I cannot say enough good things about my experience working with Pierce Land Clearing. We have a large piece of very heavily wooded and overgrown property and their equipment was able to clear a clean, wide road and open several acres.
Jenna Kelly-Landes, Google review
Jonathon came out and did a great job. Had 8 to 10 large piles of brush that he was able to mulch in a couple of hours. He walked the property with me so I could point out more areas I wanted cleaned up.
Freddy Huser, Google review
A great investment for our property. Showed up exactly when Preston said he would, worked hard all day long without a break with a beast of a machine. He had a very good understanding of what I wanted to do, and did it. The results are fantastic.
Karl Wendler, Google review
Priced by the machine day rather than by guesswork. Dozer and excavator work is $3,000 per day plus transport, with a one day minimum on every machine. What sets your number is how much material moves, whether fill has to be imported, and whether you are in the sand or down on the Colorado clay. Send photos and we will give you a real figure.
Yes, and it is usually cheaper to have one outfit do both. Trees down, stumps and root balls out of the building footprint, then straight into cut and fill with the same crew. On a site that needs clearing and dirt work, splitting it across two contractors adds days and a blame line in the middle.
Yes. Bring the plan set and we build to it, including compaction spec and finished elevations. If the plan and the ground disagree, which happens in Bastrop County more than people expect, we will flag it before we start rather than build something that has to be redone.
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.
Yes, that is the operation: clearing, grubbing, excavation, grading, and pads under one plan and one invoice. The gaps between contractors are where budgets die, so we removed the gaps.
Most jobs see iron within a few weeks of a signed quote. The machines arrive together, stage on site, and run the job continuously to the finish instead of splitting weeks across other work.
Photos and a rough scope get a same-day ballpark. A site walk gets a written number in machine days that does not move after you sign.
