PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Ranch roads, pads, cut and fill and rock work across Blanco County. Working ranch country on limestone, where the drive to the back of the place is often the job.
Blanco County is working ranch country and the ground shows it. Limestone under thin soil across the uplands, cedar in every draw that has been left alone, and the Pedernales cutting through the middle of it. Tracts are big, the machines have to travel a long way inside the property, and the dirt work is as often about getting to a place as it is about the place itself.
On a lot of Blanco County jobs the limestone is what you build the road out of. Milled or broken to grade and compacted, it makes better base than anything you could truck in. That turns rock from a cost into a resource, and it is worth asking about before assuming a site needs imported material.
Ranch tracts here run to hundreds of acres and the work is often a mile from the county road. Machine walk time, temporary access and where water crosses the route all belong in the quote, because on a big place they are a real part of the day count.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Johnson City ground.
Cut and fill is the whole job on most sites around Johnson City. 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 blanco 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 Johnson City 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 Johnson City 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 Johnson City the number is distance and rock. How far inside the property the work sits, whether the limestone can be milled and used as base rather than hauled off, and how many low water crossings the route has to survive.
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 Johnson City 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 Johnson City, 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.
Fair price. Awesome work! Machine starts in the morning and doesn't stop until quitting time. Very impressed with the final result.
Aaron Payne, Google review
Pierce land was a pleasure to deal with and they do a great job. Don't make the mistake of hiring a skid steer to make a mess and then hiring the big boys (Pierce) to come clean it up. My place looks fantastic now!
Wes Ripley, Google review
I'm so glad I found Taylor and Bobby to help me clear our land. We were tired paying to rent wood chippers, tractors, shredders, chain saws, etc, and still not being done with the project. Then came Taylor and Bobby. Not only did they do a better job than we could, they did it fast, efficiently, and saved us TIME and MONEY. They did a BEAUTIFUL job and now our land gives us bragging rights. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
Chuck Town, 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 how far inside the property the work sits and whether the rock can be used as base. 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 Blanco 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.
