Beyond a Single Tree
Brush, saplings, and small trees across a whole lot or acreage, cleared and dealt with the way the city allows.
What Makes This Different
In Jacksonville, Texas, land clearing doesn't start with a permit, because there isn't one. It starts with two other questions: how thick is the growth, and what happens to it when it's cut. The Piney Woods reclaim a lot fast. Leave a back lot alone for five or six years and you get a wall of yaupon under the pines, sweetgum saplings coming up as thick as a hedge, privet along the fence line, and greenbrier tying it all together. That's the job we see most inside town: a wooded lot behind an older home being opened up for a shop, a pool, or a garden, or a corner parcel somebody bought to build on. Out toward Gallatin, New Summerfield, and Reklaw, where the acreage gets bigger, it's pasture edges losing ground to brush every year and building sites that need to be clean to the dirt before a slab goes in. What separates the estimate is the debris rule. Under § 7-126 of the city code, you can burn cut trees and brush outdoors only on a lot of 2 acres or more, and only material 9 inches or smaller that came off the property, in daylight, 300 feet from any structure, with someone watching it. Under 2 acres, or anything bigger than 9 inches, it has to be mulched on-site or hauled off. We price both, and we run the equipment for either: a skid steer with a forestry-mulcher head, a grapple, and the chipper, not just chainsaws.
Where We Work
Land clearing is available anywhere we do tree removal. The 2-acre burn rule is Jacksonville's; outside the city limits, county burn rules and any burn ban in effect apply instead, and for the smaller towns we'll tell you to check with the city office. See all the areas we serve →
Clearing brush, saplings, and small trees ahead of a new house, shop, pool, driveway, or fence, cut to whatever footprint the project needs. Large pines and hardwoods inside the footprint come down as removals and are priced per tree; the stumps can be ground in the same visit so the site is ready for dirt work.
Reclaiming a backyard, a pasture edge, or a lot that's been left alone a few seasons and is now thick with yaupon, sweetgum saplings, privet, and vines. The mulcher head shreds it in place and leaves a layer of chips that holds the sandy loam and slows the regrowth.
When a spring storm or a winter ice event takes down more than one tree across a property, we clear the whole affected area in one pass instead of one tree at a time, sort out the firewood if you want it, and haul or chip the rest.
Cost Planning
| Job size | Typical cost range |
|---|---|
| Light brush (per acre) | $1,500–$3,500 |
| Wooded (per acre) | $3,500–$8,000+ |
| Single lot under ½ acre | $1,200–$4,000 |
Ranges are typical for East Texas based on published industry cost guides; your written estimate reflects your specific tree and site.
Land clearing prices swing more than a single removal. Density is the big one: a pasture edge gone to yaupon and a lot with 40-foot pines and hardwoods mixed into the brush are different jobs on the same acre. Wet ground matters here too; the clay under the sand holds water in spring and can keep a skid steer off a lot for a week. And the debris plan matters. Mulching in place is usually the cheapest finish, burning is cheap where the city allows it, and a full haul-off costs the most but leaves bare ground. These are planning figures, not a quote. Every job gets an on-site walk-through and a written estimate before work starts.
Forestry mulching and skid-steer clearing move faster and leave a cleaner finished grade than hand-clearing an acre one sapling at a time, and the chipper and grapple truck handle what the mulcher shouldn't.
Before the estimate is written, we tell you whether your lot qualifies under § 7-126 and what that does to the price. If it's under 2 acres, or the material is too big to burn, we don't pretend otherwise; the number on your estimate already reflects mulch or haul.
Mulch it in place, haul it off, stack a burn pile where the rule allows, or leave usable firewood. We ask what you want done with the material instead of deciding for you. Nothing gets buried on site.
The same coverage that backs every job we run, scaled to the heavier equipment a clearing job uses.
No. Jacksonville has no tree-removal permit and no clearing permit for private property, and Cherokee County has no county tree rules. What the city does regulate is what you do with the debris: outdoor burning of trees and brush is allowed only on lots of 2 acres or more, for material 9 inches or smaller generated on the property, in daylight, at least 300 feet from any structure, and attended the whole time (§ 7-126). Anything else is mulched or hauled. If the clearing is tied to new construction, your builder's permit is a separate matter with the city. Bullard has no clearing permit either; for the smaller towns, confirm with the city office. Our permits guide has the rules by town.
Both, and on a qualifying lot, a third option. Mulching on-site is usually the cheapest route and leaves a chip layer that holds the soil and keeps the yaupon from coming straight back. Full haul-away costs more but leaves a completely clean site. On 2 acres or more, we can stack brush under 9 inches for you to burn under the city's rules, and take the bigger wood with us. We price the options during the estimate so you can decide.
Tree removal is priced per tree. Land clearing is priced by area and density: how much ground is covered, how thick the growth is, and how big the trees mixed into it are. The equipment and the time scale with the footprint, not the tree count, and the debris plan is its own line on the estimate. If your lot is under half an acre, we price it as a single lot rather than by the acre.
Get a free, on-site estimate for the whole area, with the debris plan worked out up front.
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