Land Clearing

From a business standpoint, pricing for land clearing can be all over the place. However, if you’re like me, as a consumer you will want to have SOME idea of what to expect going into the project.

Some business’ may offer hourly or weekly rates. In my opinion, this can be very misleading to the consumer unless they have a really good idea of how to run machinery and what to expect as the production rate. Sadly, very few business owners fully comprehend their operation well enough to offer a daily/weekly rate that would be fair for the business and consumer alike.

We prefer to look at the project and offer a complete price package. This offers the consumer a full understanding of what they are purchasing and what to expect as a final outcome for the project.

Additionally, any down time for repairs or maintenance isn’t being charged to the consumer on an hourly bases, so we feel this is the best “value”.

All that being said, how much does it cost to clear a small area? Naturally, there can be a TON of variables that determine the final cost, but let’s break it down to help get a basic understanding.

First, let’s define “small”. We’re often called out to clear a few acres to increase pasture land for livestock. These typically can range from 1 to 20 acres in size. A single acre is a generic measurement for price comparison, so we’ll use a 5 acre tract with that as our project size.

Secondly, what type of terrain will we be clearing? Small saplings and underbrush? Large timbers? Clean areas (i.e. not a lot of trash like metal, old building, debris, etc)? Freshly cut over/timbered property? Our most common is freshly cut over or timbered properties that have several stumps, limbs, and general wood debris that needs to be removed for future pasture or homesite.

For this type of project, we would use our excavator and bulldozer to clear the land.

A typical 5 acre project like this would take approximately 2 weeks, costing approximately

$19,850.00. This is broken down $ 3,970.00 per acre (for small acre tracts). Large acre tracts (50-100 acres or more) costs are around $ 1,100.00 per acre.

For single day projects, our daily rate is $2,500.00 for land clearing using either the bulldozer or excavator.

What do you get for $19,850.00?  We would grub (remove) all of the stumps using the excavator  from the selected area. Then we would follow that with the bulldozer and root-rake to fill in stump holes and create a fairly smooth surface.  Stumps, brush and leftover timbers would be pushed,   piled and burned. What doesn’t burn would be buried in a specified area. Finally, we would go back across the area with a finer blade (either slowly w/ bulldozer or hydraulic grade blade on skid steer)  to create a finer, smoother surface with very little debris. The area would then be ready for tillage/ planting or construction.

We hope this information has been helpful. We hope that you will give us a call to discuss your specific details and allow us to provide a quote for your project.

Thanks
Brad & Terry