PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Pads, cut and fill, ranch roads and pond work across Bastrop and eastern Travis County. We have more documented dirt work around Elgin than almost anywhere else we operate.
Elgin sits on a seam. West toward Manor the ground is blackland clay that swells and holds water. East toward Paige and McDade it turns to post oak sand that drains and digs easily. The line is not on any map you can price from, and the two behave so differently that a pad built on the wrong assumption is a pad built wrong. This is ground we know well: several of our documented projects are inside twenty minutes of town.
Clay swells and shrinks with moisture and needs compaction to a spec. Sand drains and digs fast but will not bind on its own. Both need testing rather than assuming, and on a lot of properties around Elgin you get both inside the same fence line.
The 127 acre LCRA corridor job and the 125 acre pasture reclamation are both Elgin projects, and the pond builds around town are ours as well. That means we know where the sand starts, which is worth more on a quote than any amount of general experience.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Elgin ground.
Cut and fill is the whole job on most sites around Elgin. 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 Elgin 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 Elgin we will tell you honestly whether your ground will hold water before you commit.
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.
Around Elgin the number depends on which side of the seam you are on. Sand is faster to move, clay needs compaction and weather timing, and if the site straddles both it needs pricing as two jobs rather than averaged into one.
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.
We probe, 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.
Machines, days, transport, and any rock or haul contingency, all in writing. The number you sign is the number you pay.
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.
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 Elgin 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 Elgin, 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 called them after having bad service with another company. Preston explained the cost of everything up front. He answered all my questions and concerns. I emailed a Google map of the area and he got back with me within hours.
Dustin Crumbliss, Google review
I think when people undergo such a large project, they have an unrealistic expectation of how it is going to turn out. This was not the case, it turned out to be exactly as I hoped it would. Everybody I have dealt with so far in this company has been great.
Richard Franco, Google review
I have nothing but great things to say about Pierce Land Clearing. They were punctual and professional. Bobby was an artist on his machine. Great folks and great work.
Cory Cox, 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 which side of the blackland and sand seam your place sits on. 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.
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.
