PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Pads, cut and fill, ranch roads and rock work across Kerr County. Guadalupe river country on limestone, cedar in the draws, and a lot of ground being turned from ranch into homesites.
Kerr County is limestone hill country cut by the Guadalupe, and the useful distinction here is between the river bottoms and everything above them. Down along the water there is real soil and easy digging. Up on the divides it is thin cover over rock, cedar in every draw, and slopes that decide where a pad can practically go. Most properties have both.
Bottom ground digs easily and has material worth using. Uplands are shallow soil over limestone where rock depth sets the day count. The same property can contain both, which is why the site walk matters more than the acreage figure when it comes to pricing.
The Guadalupe floods and it floods hard. Anything built low needs to account for that, and there are rules about what can be done in the floodplain. We will flag it when a site raises the question rather than building something that becomes a problem later.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Kerrville ground.
Cut and fill is the whole job on most sites around Kerrville. 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 kerr 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 Kerrville 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 Kerrville 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.
Around Kerrville the number depends on whether you are working bottom ground or the divides, how deep the rock runs, and whether the site sits anywhere near the floodplain. Access on the older river road properties is the other regular factor.
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 Kerrville 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 Kerrville, 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 guys take a lot of pride in what they do. This doesn't even look like the same property. The operator walked the property with me before he started and the outcome was exactly what I'd hoped for. Will definitely recommend to anyone that asks. Great job guys, much appreciated.
Lance Weston, Google review
I cannot tell you how pleased I am with the work these guys did on my place. I have some very steep slopes and a lot of oaks and cedars. They used great judgement, not turning it into a field, using heavy machinery at a very fair price.
Ivan Allen, Google review
We cleared 5 acres last year near Lampasas ourselves over 6 days with far less cedars than Pierce Land Clearing did in just one single day on a 4 acre parcel near Kerrville. They worked with us to reschedule due to weather no problem.
A.Ron Carmichael, 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 you are on river bottom or upland rock. 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 Kerr 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.
