PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Colorado River bottom and post oak sand. Pads, drives, pasture reclamation and tank work on ground that runs from river alluvium to sandy ridge inside one property line.
Columbus sits where the Colorado River cuts through the Post Oak Savannah. Post oak and hackberry hold the ridges, yaupon fills the understory, and huisache moves into any pasture that has been rested too long.
The Colorado bottoms are deep, soft and worked over by the river. They dig easily and they do not hold a shape without help, so anything built down there gets compacted in lifts and given somewhere for water to go. What floods is not a surprise here, and we build around it rather than through it.
Up off the river the ground is sandy loam over clay and it carries a pad well once it is properly keyed. The recurring job out here is pasture that has gone to yaupon and huisache. Mulching opens it in a day, but huisache comes back from the root, so where it needs to stay clear we grub with the excavator.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Columbus ground.
Cut and fill is the whole job on most sites around Columbus. 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 colorado 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 Columbus 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 Columbus we will tell you honestly whether your ground will hold water before you commit.
Every quote is built from machine days: which machines, how many days, plus transport to your gate. No unit-rate mysteries and no allowances that balloon later. The logic is published across our site, so you can check our arithmetic. A few photos texted to 512-400-2693 get you a same-day range.
Columbus is an easy reach off I-10 for us and most jobs are one to three machine days. We quote the days and the transport up front rather than settling it after the work.
Photos and a rough idea of scope get a same-day range in machine days. If the range works, we put a site walk on the calendar.
Rock gets probed, soil gets read, gates get measured. The whole plan is built standing on your ground, which is why our quotes hold.
The quote lists machines, days, transport, and every contingency by name. Nothing lives in fine print because there is none.
Iron arrives on the lowboy, stages where you point, and works the job continuously to the finish.
The sequence never changes because the physics never change. Fills go in as compacted lifts, grades finish to drain.
You inspect the pads, slopes, and drainage against the plan with us. We load the machines when you are satisfied, not before.
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 Columbus 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 Columbus, 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.
They did a phenomenal job cleaning up my 80 acres in Bellville of tree damage from the straight wind storm. Steve surveyed the property and gave me a quote that week, and Dustin worked diligently for 9 days to complete the project. Throughout, I got frequent updates. Outstanding team, outstanding job.
Doug Abbott, Google review
We were extremely pleased with the results on the land clearing that was done to our property. I had called around to several other companies for bids and PLC was the most reasonable, responsive, and customer oriented.
A Arevalo, Google review
These guys are fantastic! They are extremely knowledgeable about their craft and are great to work with. These are my go to guys if I need to get land cleared quickly, professionally, and efficiently! Thanks for being there for us! See you soon!!
J.r. Marquez, 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 the work sits in the river bottom or up on the sand. 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 Colorado County more than people expect, we will flag it before we start rather than build something that has to be redone.
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.
Both ways: cut and fill to the civil plans with grade staking respected, or design-build for ranch and homestead work where the plan gets made on the site walk. Either way the quote says exactly what is being built.
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 site walk turns it into a written number that does not move after signing.
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.
