PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Most contractors will not put a number on a page. We publish ours: $3,000 per day for skid steer mulchers with transport included, and $4,000 per day plus transport for high horsepower dedicated mulchers. Everything below is worked out from those two numbers, so you can check the arithmetic yourself rather than take our word for it.
Not a range somebody typed into a table. These are the per-acre costs of 38 documented Pierce jobs, each one published on its own page with photos, acreage, days, and price. The pattern every landowner should know: small jobs cost more per acre because you are buying a machine day, and big jobs cost less because the transport and setup spread out.
| Job size | Documented jobs | What they cost in total | Real cost per acre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 2 acres | 4 | $5,500 to $6,500 | $3,700 to $7,300 (one machine day, whatever the acreage) |
| 2 to 5 acres | 17 | $4,500 to $12,500 | $1,100 to $3,750, typically about $1,950 |
| 6 to 12 acres | 9 | $8,500 to $19,500 | $950 to $2,250, typically about $1,550 |
| 13 to 40 acres | 6 | $13,500 to $62,500 | $620 to $1,560, typically about $1,150 |
| 100+ acres | 2 | $125,000 to $130,000 | About $1,000 |
Method: the midpoint of the published price range on each project page, divided by its acreage. Every job is linked further down so you can check the arithmetic. Solar farm projects are excluded because those contracts are not published.
Acreage is the wrong unit and everybody uses it anyway. Here is the honest translation from our day rates into the per-acre numbers people actually search for.
| Vegetation | Typical cost per acre | Typical machine |
|---|---|---|
| Light brush and understory (stems under 4 in) | $1,300 to $2,000 | Skid steer or dedicated mulcher |
| Mixed cedar, mesquite and small trees (4 to 8 in) | $1,600 to $2,700 | Dedicated mulcher |
| Heavy cedar thickets and larger stems (8 in and up) | $2,700 to $4,000 | Dedicated mulcher |
Read this table as what an acre works out to once a job is big enough to spread a machine day across it. It is not a menu price. The floor is a full day: $3,000 for a skid steer mulcher with transport included, or $4,000 plus transport for a high horsepower dedicated mulcher. A one acre job costs $3,000, not $1,600, because a day is what it takes to bring a machine and take it away again.
Laid out the way people ask the question rather than the way contractors like to answer it.
| Job size and growth | Typical machine | What it usually runs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 acre or less, mixed cedar and mesquite | Skid steer mulcher | $3,000, the one day minimum, transport included |
| 3 acres, mixed growth, clear cut | High horsepower mulcher | About $4,000, one full day at the published day rate, plus transport |
| 5 acres, light to mixed brush | High horsepower mulcher | $6,500 to $9,500, roughly a day and a half to two days |
| 10 acres, mixed growth | High horsepower mulcher | Around $12,000, about three machine days, plus transport |
Note the first row. One acre does not cost one acre of money, it costs a day, because a day is what it takes to get a machine there and back. The per-acre table above only starts to hold once a job is big enough to spread a day across. Density, slope, access and how much you want left standing move the day count from there. The day counts themselves, by tract size, are laid out in how long does land clearing take.
Find the one closest to your land. Every row links to the full project page with photos and the conditions that set the number.
| Job | Acres | Days | Published cost | Per acre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Horseshoe Bay homesite clearing | 1 | 1 | $6,000 to $7,000 | $6,500 |
| Cleburne selective homesite clearing | 3 | 1 | $4,000 to $5,000 | $1,500 |
| Georgetown flood debris mulching | 3 | 1 | $7,000 to $8,000 | $2,500 |
| Stonewall dead oak removal | 4 | 1 | $4,000 to $5,000 | $1,125 |
| Llano trail and selective cedar clearing | 5 | 2 | $8,000 to $9,000 | $1,700 |
| Elgin selective forestry mulching | 6 | 2 | $9,500 to $10,500 | $1,667 |
| San Marcos homesite prep and clearing | 8 | 4 | $15,000 to $18,000 | $2,063 |
| San Antonio grubbing and land clearing | 12 | 3 | $18,000 to $21,000 | $1,625 |
| Hico full cedar clearing | 15 | 5 | $15,000 to $20,000 | $1,167 |
| Jacksboro cedar clearing | 22 | 7 | $27,000 to $28,000 | $1,250 |
| Bastrop full land clearing | 40 | 17 | $60,000 to $65,000 | $1,563 |
| Elgin LCRA corridor clearing | 127 | 37 | $125,000 to $130,000 | $1,004 |
All 42 documented projects, including the five solar farms, are on the projects page.
Send one photo of the brush you want gone. You get back a realistic preview of your own land cleared and a straight day-rate estimate, usually within minutes. Free, and nobody has to get you on the phone first.
An acre of light brush and an acre of eight inch cedar are the same acre and nowhere near the same job. Days are what actually gets consumed, so days are what we sell. The per-acre numbers above exist because that is how people search, not because it is how the work behaves.
We price by the machine day, not the hour, and it is worth knowing why. Hourly billing charges you for transport, warmup and fuel stops, and it quietly rewards working slowly. A day rate makes careful and quick cost the same. For comparison shopping, our published day rates work out to roughly $375 to $500 per effective machine hour, with transport already inside the skid steer rate.
The smallest job we can run is one day, and that holds on every machine we own. A skid steer mulcher day is $3,000 with transport included. A high horsepower dedicated mulcher day is $4,000 plus transport. It is the same number whether you have a quarter acre or a full one, because a lowboy, a machine and an operator all have to turn up either way. We would rather you knew that before you called than after you had a quote in your hand.
Some of the people who call us do not want a crew, they want the machine. If you run a dirt or clearing outfit and already employ someone who can keep a dedicated forestry mulcher productive from day one, renting is usually cheaper than buying our days. We rent the same class of machines through Pierce Equipment Rentals, and the rental cost breakdown works out what a week actually comes to per acre once transport, fuel and insurance are counted. If you do not have that operator, the day rates above will almost always come out ahead, and we would rather tell you that than rent you a machine you cannot run.
We will not quote a per-acre price sight unseen and then discover the density on your dime. If a bid you are holding has one number and no day count behind it, ask what happens when the growth is heavier than assumed. That answer is the whole difference between the bids.
You will find pages that publish a different price range for every region of Texas. Ours do not, because our rates do not change: the same $3,000 and $4,000 day rates apply in Fort Worth, Kerrville, Conroe, and Brownsville. What changes by region is the brush, and the brush changes the day count. Hill Country cedar runs dense and slow. Blackland mesquite around Dallas goes faster per acre but resprouts without grubbing. East Texas pine understory mulches quickly but comes back every few years. Coastal and South Texas brush, like the 38 acre Brownsville commercial job at $618 an acre, can be the cheapest ground in the state to clear.
The one honest regional variable is transport. Skid steer mulching includes it statewide. High horsepower machines are quoted plus transport from our Austin yard, which is why a Hill Country job and a far West Texas job with identical brush can differ by a few hundred dollars. We put that number on the quote, not in a footnote.
Mesquite is the one Texas brush that mulching alone does not finish, because it resprouts from the root crown. Grubbing, pulling the roots with a dozer rake or excavator, is what ends it, and it is priced per job rather than per day because the variables are roots and piles, not hours. The documented reference: our 12 acre San Antonio grubbing job ran $18,000 to $21,000, about $1,500 to $1,750 per acre, with the piles handled in the same contract. Mesquite grubbing cost per acre on lighter stands comes in below that; dense old mesquite with big root systems comes in above it. The mesquite removal cost guide works through the whole question, method by method. The cheaper path many ranches take is to mulch the whole tract at day rates and grub only the worst stands, which is exactly how we quote it when the goal is pasture rather than plowed ground. The mulching vs bulldozing guide walks the trade-off in detail.
Stem size and how tight the growth is set the pace more than total area does. Ten acres of light understory can be quicker than three acres of mature cedar thicket, and the quote should say which one you have.
Clear cutting takes everything and moves at a steady pace. Selective clearing keeps your oaks and works around them, which is slower per acre but is usually the reason you called. Both are priced in days, so you can see the trade.
A gate the lowboy fits through and ground the machine can walk are worth real money. Steep, tight or wet sites take longer for the same square footage, and remote sites carry more transport.
Sometimes the clearing is the easy half. If there is ledge or caliche under what you are clearing, rock milling is a separate trade with its own day count, and we would rather flag it in the quote than find it on day two.
Mulching takes growth down to the ground. Getting the root out is grubbing, which is a different machine and a different line. Which one you need depends on what is going on that ground afterwards.
Inside the $3,000 skid steer day rate, separate on the high horsepower mulcher. Distance from our yard is the whole of it, which is why jobs near Austin and Williamson County price better than jobs three counties out.
Traditional clearing means a dozer to push, an excavator to pile, a loader to load, trucks to haul, and somewhere legal to put it. Forestry mulching is one machine that turns the growth into mulch where it stands. Every machine you remove from the job is a day rate you stop paying.
Haul-off is the line that grows after the quote. No trucks means no load counts, no disposal, no gate torn up, and no argument about how many loads there really were.
A mulch layer holds soil through a Texas downpour and slows the regrowth coming back. Bare pushed ground does the opposite, which is why burn-and-push sites often need work again sooner than the invoice suggested.
If the roots have to come out for a slab, a road bed or a tank, mulching alone will not do it and we will say so. That is grubbing or dirt work, priced on its own terms. Anybody who tells you mulching is always the answer is selling one machine rather than solving your problem.
Between roughly $1,300 and $4,000 an acre once the job is big enough to spread a machine day across. Below that the one day minimum governs: a single acre costs $3,000 with a skid steer mulcher, not the per-acre figure. Light understory sits at the bottom of that range and heavy cedar thicket with eight inch and larger stems sits at the top. Those numbers come from our published day rates rather than a survey, so you can work back to them yourself.
The same range, because forestry mulching is how we clear. On a job big enough to spread a day across, light brush runs $1,300 to $2,000 an acre, mixed cedar and mesquite $1,600 to $2,700, and heavy thicket $2,700 to $4,000. Under that size the one day minimum governs, so a single acre is $3,000 with a skid steer mulcher rather than the per-acre number.
$3,000 per day for a skid steer mulcher with transport included, and $4,000 per day plus transport for a high horsepower dedicated mulcher. Those are published rates, not a starting point for negotiation.
Grubbing is a different trade to mulching because the root comes out rather than the top going down, so it carries its own day count. Our grubbing page covers what moves that number.
No, by the machine day. Hourly billing charges you for transport, warmup and fuel stops and quietly rewards working slowly. For comparison, our day rates work out to roughly $375 to $500 per effective machine hour.
Because days are what the job actually consumes. An acre of light brush and an acre of mature cedar are the same acre and a completely different job. Quoting acres hides that until somebody has to absorb the difference, and it is usually you.
Yes, one day, and it applies to every machine we run. A skid steer mulcher day is $3,000 with transport included. A high horsepower dedicated mulcher day is $4,000 plus transport. That is the floor regardless of acreage, so a quarter acre and a full acre cost the same.
There is nothing to haul. Mulching turns the growth into a mulch layer that stays on your ground, which is most of why it costs less than dozing and trucking. If you specifically want material removed, that is a separate conversation and a separate line.
Yes. Send a photo through the estimate tool on this page and you get a preview of your own land cleared plus a day-rate estimate by email, usually within minutes. No phone call required.
Our documented one acre jobs ran $5,000 to $7,000. Under two acres you are buying a full machine day with transport, so the per acre number looks high and the total is what matters. A single day usually finishes a lot up to two acres. If the lot is for a build, the clearing land for a house guide covers what to clear, what to keep and the pad and driveway sequence.
Three documented five acre jobs ran $8,000 to $13,000, or $1,700 to $2,500 per acre, depending on brush density and whether tree piles were part of the job. Two machine days is typical.
Per usable acre, forestry mulching at published day rates: one pass, nothing hauled or burned, no finish dirt work. The expensive mistakes are cheap methods that leave piles or roots you pay to deal with later.
Our day rates do not; the brush does. Dense Hill Country cedar takes more days per acre than blackland mesquite or coastal brush. Transport is the only true regional line item, and it is on the quote.
Better than one. The free estimate tool on this page takes a photo of your brush and returns a preview of your land cleared plus a day rate estimate, usually within minutes, with no phone call required.
Curious which machine drives which line item? Our land clearing equipment guide walks through the mulchers, dozers, excavators, and rock mills behind these numbers, with real photos from our fleet.
Send photos and a rough scope to 512-400-2693 and you will have a ballpark in machine days the same day, from the published rates on this page.