PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Pads, barn sites, ranch roads, cut and fill and pond work across Coryell County. We have documented barn site and pond builds on this ground already.
Coryell County is Lampasas Cut Plain country, which means flat-topped divides with limestone sitting close under them and creek valleys cut down between. That geography decides everything. Up on the flats you find rock early. Down in the valleys there is soil depth and usually clay worth using. Most properties here have both, and where you put the work matters more than how fast the machine moves.
On the flat ground the limestone is often a foot or two down. It does not stop a pad or a road, it changes the machine and the day count, and on a lot of jobs it becomes the base material rather than something to haul off. Broken and compacted, it is better road base than most of what you could truck in.
The draws and creek bottoms have real soil and the clay that makes a pond hold. If you are choosing where a tank or a pad goes, the valley usually wins on cost and on outcome. We have built ponds on this county and we will tell you which spot on your place is the good one.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Gatesville ground.
Cut and fill is the whole job on most sites around Gatesville. 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 coryell 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 Gatesville 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 Gatesville 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 Gatesville the number is where on the property the work sits and whether the rock can be reused as base. Divide work is rockier and slower, valley work is faster, and long ranch access to the back of a place belongs in the quote rather than as a surprise.
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 Gatesville 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 Gatesville, 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.
These days it is unusual to find services that are adequate, let alone exceed expectations. We had a very challenging project which required working around hundreds of boats on trailers, preserving legacy trees and navigating steep drop offs.
Bruce McDonald, Google review
I had such a great experience with this team. Not only did they do a marvelous job but they are good people. Taylor is very personable, honest, with an amazing work ethic. His team is hardworking.
Dean Volkman, Google review
Pierce Land Clearing just finished a 2 day job forestry mulching my 10 acre lot. Most of the job consisted of making dead pines and oaks, standing and fallen, disappear.
Grace Dacy, 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 up on a divide or down in a valley. 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 Coryell County more than people expect, we will flag it before we start rather than build something that has to be redone.
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.
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.
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.
