Clearing land is not removal multiplied. Anyone can cut everything; the skill is deciding what stays. On a building lot or an overgrown acreage, the trees you keep are worth more than the clearing costs — and choosing them takes an arborist, not a saw.
The build
The house footprint, the drive, the utility runs — cleared completely. Everything else evaluated tree by tree: a mature oak near the foundation is worth real money if it survives construction, worthless if the excavator trenches its roots first.
The lines
Volunteer trees swallow a fence line in a decade here — hackberry, mulberry and elm coming up through the wire. We cut and chip them so the fence crew has a clean run and you are not back in five years.
The windbreaks
The cedar and pine windbreaks planted decades ago are aging out across the metro's acreages — dead rows, shattered tops, deadfall. Usually the answer is thinning the failures and keeping the wall, not flattening fifty years of shelter.
Walk it with an arborist before anything is cut — the trees worth keeping are the whole game.
The sequence
The walk decides everything
An arborist flags the property: what goes, what stays, and which keepers need protection before machines arrive. This hour shapes the price.
Keepers get protected first
Fencing around root zones, routes planned so equipment never crosses them. A kept tree with crushed roots is a removal you paid to postpone.
The clearing runs in passes
Brush and small stems first, then the removals, largest last. Working in order keeps the site navigable and the chipper fed instead of buried.
Chipping happens at scale
Acreage clearing produces brush by the ton, and hauling it whole would double the trucking. It leaves as chips — hauled, or left in a pile if you want the mulch.
Stumps are the fork in the road
Grinding handles stumps where lawn or fence is going. Under a future foundation or drive, stumps must come out entirely — and that is excavation work, where our part of the job hands off.
Fence lines and brush
Days, not weeks
Small stems, high volume, all chipper work. The cheapest clearing there is, and it pays for itself in fencing labor alone.
Selective lot clearing
Priced tree by tree
Removals at removal prices, keepers protected, brush chipped at scale. More thought than a clear-cut, less money than replacing a mature shade tree ever costs.
Clearing after construction starts
The same trees, twice the trouble
Once the site is staked, trenched and half-built, every removal happens around obstacles and other trades. The cheapest clearing finishes before the first concrete truck.
Full removals inside a clearing price from the same published ranges as any removal — $1,000 to $3,000 for smaller trees, $4,000 to $8,000 for large — with brush work quoted by crew time. It all lands in one written number after the walk.
A property walk with an arborist to sort keepers from removals
Root-zone protection for every tree marked to stay
Tree and brush removal, from volunteer stems to full-size removals
Brush chipped on site at scale, hauled or left as mulch — your call
Wood hauled, or bucked and stacked if you want it
Stump grinding below grade where lawn or pasture is the plan
Grading, earthmoving and site prep — an excavation contractor's trade; we sequence with yours
Full stump and root-ball excavation under future foundations or drives
Demolition of structures, old fencing or concrete
Erosion control and seeding after the ground is disturbed
One walk, one written scope — including the work that belongs to your excavator instead of us.
“DJ and his crew came out for three back yard trees to be removed and our front tree to be trimmed. They worked non-stop in the cold and were right back at it the next morning. Beyond excellent service and very reasonable cost.”
There is no honest per-acre number, because the price is the trees — a lot with forty volunteer cedars and a lot with six mature cottonwoods are different jobs on identical acreage. Full-size removals price from our published ranges, and the brush work is quoted by crew time.
We can, and occasionally that is right — a small lot the building footprint takes entirely. But on most properties a clear-cut throws away the most valuable thing on the land: mature trees in the right places are an asset, not an obstacle.
Species, condition, position and what the land is becoming. A sound burr oak clear of the build gets flagged and fenced; a storm-cracked silver maple leaning at the future driveway does not make the cut. You walk it with the arborist and every flag gets explained.
No, and be wary of a tree company that says yes. Earthmoving, grading and site prep are an excavation contractor's trade, with their own machines and insurance. We do the tree side, they do the dirt, and we sequence with them so nobody's work undoes the other's.
Brush gets chipped on site — clearing produces far too much to haul whole. Chips leave with us or stay as a mulch pile. Trunk wood is hauled, or bucked and stacked if you would rather keep it.
Before the excavator, ideally before final staking. Clearing an open lot is straightforward; around trenches, forms and other trades it is slower and priced accordingly. Tree protection also only works before the ground is disturbed.
Usually, and it is almost always better. Taking out the dead and failing rows lets the sound trees fill in, and the shelter keeps working while replacements grow. Flattening a fifty-year windbreak buys decades of open wind.
Free and no pressure
Every estimate is free and comes in writing before anything is booked.
The volume side of clearing, as its own service.
Every stump below grade once the clearing is done.
How the biggest removals inside a clearing are done.
The replacements, chosen for what the land is becoming.
The property walk, bookable on its own before you commit.
Treating every tree the same is the fastest way to clear land and the most expensive mistake available on an acreage. A mature shade tree in the right spot does more for a property's value than almost anything you can build under it, and it cannot be bought back at any price. Since 1997 the most valuable hour on our clearing jobs has been the first one, walking the land and flagging the keepers.
Clearing is a volume trade. Brush that would take weeks to haul whole leaves as chips in days, removals inside the job run to the same rigging standard as in a finished yard, and the keepers get their root zones fenced before any machine moves. A keeper with crushed roots was not kept — it was scheduled for a second, sadder removal.
A boundary we will state plainly: we are not excavators. Grading, earthmoving, digging out root balls under a future foundation — that is a different trade with different machines, and pretending otherwise is how site work goes wrong. We do the tree side completely and sequence with your dirt contractor. If the job you actually need is mostly dirt, we will tell you that on the walk, for free.
