Land Clearing Rates: What to Charge Per Acre

The short answer. Published national ranges in September 2026 put land clearing at $1,200 to $2,500 an acre for light brush, $2,000 to $3,500 for medium growth, and $3,500 to $6,000 and up for heavy timber with stumps pulled. Forestry mulching runs $150 to $300 an hour, or about $1,800 to $4,000 an acre. Those figures come from Angi, HomeGuide, LawnStarter, and OWNR OPS guides checked September 4, 2026.

Those are the numbers a landowner sees before they call you. They are not your price. Your price comes from what your machine costs to run for an hour, how many hours that particular piece of ground will take, and what the customer wants standing there when you leave. This guide shows you how to build that number so you can defend it on the phone, on the site walk, and against the quote from the guy with one skid steer who charges half.

If you are a landowner trying to understand a quote, skip to the section near the end called “If you are the one paying.” The rest is written for the person in the seat.

Why “per acre” is a fiction the customer needs

Nobody buys land clearing by the hour. They ask what it costs to clear three acres. So the industry answers in acres, and that is fine, as long as you remember that the acre is the customer’s unit and the hour is yours.

Think of it like a barber who prices by the head. A buzz cut and a full beard trim with a hot towel are both “one head.” The barber survives because he knows how long each one takes and charges accordingly. He just quotes it as one number so the customer does not have to think about it.

An acre of pasture with scattered cedar and an acre of 40-year-old hardwood with a creek running through it are both “one acre.” The first is a morning. The second might be three days and a burn permit. If you quote both at the same per-acre rate, one of them is paying for the other, and eventually the wrong one shows up.

So the method is simple. Figure your hourly cost. Estimate the hours. Multiply. Then present it per acre, or per job, because that is what the customer understands.

The four things that set the price

Every land clearing quote is really four questions. Answer all four on the site walk and the number almost writes itself.

1. How thick is it, and how big is it?

Density and stem diameter drive machine hours more than anything else. A rough field guide:

• Light. Grass, brush, saplings under 3 inches. You can see across the lot. A skid steer with a mulching head does 1 to 2 acres a day.
• Medium. Mixed brush and trees 3 to 8 inches, some you have to work around. You can walk it but not drive it. Half an acre to an acre a day with a mulcher.
• Heavy. Trees over 8 inches, dense canopy, deadfall on the ground. You cannot walk it in a straight line. A quarter to half an acre a day for mulching, and once the trees get past 10 or 12 inches you are cutting and pushing with an excavator and dozer, not mulching.

Count stems on a sample. Pace off a 50-foot by 50-foot square, count everything over 3 inches, and multiply by 17 to get stems per acre. Do it twice in different spots. It takes ten minutes and it turns “looks pretty thick” into a number you can defend.

2. What does the ground look like when you leave?

This is the question most new operators forget to ask, and it is the one that changes the price the most. The same acre has four very different finished states:

• Mulched in place. Trees and brush ground into a layer of chips left on the ground. No haul-off, no burning, no stump removal. Fastest and cheapest. The ground is walkable, not buildable.
• Cleared with haul-off. Trees cut, brush piled, everything loaded and hauled to a disposal site or burned on site with a permit. Stumps stay. Common for pasture and fence lines.
• Stumps out. Everything above plus stumps pulled or ground and the holes filled. Now you need an excavator on site and a place for the stumps to go. Required for anything that will be built on or farmed.
• Grade-ready. Stumps out, roots raked, rough grade, sometimes topsoil stripped and stockpiled. This is site prep, and it should be quoted as site prep.

Say the finished state in the quote in plain words. “Mulched in place, chips left on the ground, stumps cut to grade” prevents the phone call three weeks later where the customer thought they were getting a lawn.

3. Terrain, access, and hazards

Walk it and look for anything that slows the machine down or keeps it off the ground entirely:

• Slope over 20 percent. Mulchers work slower and safer across the grade, and some ground cannot be worked at all with a track machine.
• Wet ground, creek crossings, standing water. Rutting, stuck machines, and matting costs.
• Rock. Carbide teeth on a mulching head cost real money, and rock eats them.
• Fence lines, buried utilities, septic drain fields, well heads, irrigation. Anything you cannot see from the seat has to be flagged before the first pass.
• Overhead power lines and the buffer you need to keep from them.
• Where the trailer parks and how far the machine walks to the work. A half mile of walking each way at the start and end of the day is an hour you did not bill.

Each of these is a line item or a percentage on top. Do not bury them in the per-acre number and hope.

4. Where does the material go?

Disposal is the cost that surprises people. Mulching solves it by leaving the material on site, which is the main reason mulching wins so many residential jobs. For everything else:

• Burning needs a permit, a burn day, and someone watching it. In some counties it is a phone call. In others it is not allowed from spring through fall.
• Grinding needs a tub grinder or a horizontal grinder, which is a rental or a sub for most small outfits, and a truck to move the chips.
• Hauling needs a truck, a trailer or dump box, a disposal site that takes wood, and the tipping fee. Green waste fees vary from nothing at a rural burn site to $40 or more a ton at an urban landfill.

Find out the disposal answer before you price, not after.

The number under the number: what your hour actually costs

Here is where the guy down the road goes wrong. He charges $150 an hour because that is what someone told him the going rate was, and he never sat down to find out what his hour costs. He is fine until the head needs a rebuild or the loan payment and the slow season land in the same month.

Build your own cost per hour. Below is an example for a compact track loader with a forestry mulching head. The numbers are illustrative and rounded. Yours will be different, and that is the point. Put your own in.

Two things to notice.

First, 100 productive hours a month is optimistic for a one-machine outfit. Between site walks, moving, weather, and the day the head goes in for teeth, many operators bill 70 to 90. At 80 hours, the fixed costs above push the number to about $175 an hour. Your cost per hour goes up as your hours go down, which is exactly backwards from what feels fair when you are slow.

Second, that number has no profit in it. Profit is what you keep after the machine, the truck, the operator, and the office are paid. It is what buys the next machine without a loan. Add 20 to 30 percent on top of cost for a healthy outfit. In this example that puts your rate at $195 to $230 an hour, which sits inside the published $150 to $300 range and now you know why.

If your number comes out higher than the published range, you are not wrong. You may have a newer machine, a higher-cost market, or fewer billable hours. What you cannot do is charge under your cost and make it up on volume. There is no volume of losing hours that adds up to a profit.

Turning hours into an acre price

Now put the two halves together. Rate times hours, plus the line items.

Example 1: three acres of light brush, mulched in place, flat, good access. Production about 1.5 acres a day at 8 hours. That is 16 hours. Add 2 hours of mobilization and cleanup. 18 hours at $210 is $3,780. Per acre that is $1,260, right at the bottom of the published range, which is what a landowner expects for easy ground.

Example 2: five acres of medium growth, cleared with haul-off, stumps left. Cut and pile with a skid steer and grapple, about 0.75 acre a day, so 53 hours. Loading and hauling to a green waste site 12 miles away: 20 loads at 1.25 hours each with the truck and trailer, 25 hours. Tipping fees, 60 tons at $28, $1,680. Total labor 78 hours at $210 is $16,380, plus fees, about $18,060. Per acre, $3,600. Above the published medium range because haul-off is not what those published numbers assume. Explain that in the quote and the customer understands. Do not explain it and the customer thinks you are high.

Example 3: one acre, heavy hardwood, stumps out, for a house pad. Cut and push with an excavator and dozer, 2 days, 16 hours. Stump removal and hole backfill, 8 hours. Burn on site with permit, 6 hours of tending across two days. Total 30 hours at a blended $240 for two machines, $7,200. Plus permit and the extra mobilization for the second machine, $600. About $7,800 for the acre. That is above the published heavy range, and it should be. The published number is a national average that includes a lot of easier “heavy” acres. This one is a house pad and the customer needs it done right.

Notice that in every example the per-acre number is the last thing you calculate, not the first.

The site walk checklist

Walk every job before you price it. A quote from a satellite photo is a guess with your name on it. Bring this list.

1. Property lines flagged or shown. Which side of the fence is the work.
2. Finished state, in the customer’s own words. Then say it back in yours.
3. Stem count in two sample squares.
4. Largest trees and what happens to them. Cut and leave, cut and haul, or leave standing.
5. Stumps. Stay, cut low, ground, or pulled.
6. Slope and any spot the machine cannot go.
7. Wet areas, creeks, drainage, standing water, and what time of year it dries.
8. Utilities, septic, well, irrigation, buried lines. Call 811 before any stump work.
9. Overhead lines and the buffer.
10. Where the trailer parks and the walk-in distance.
11. Disposal: burn, grind, or haul, and who pulls the permit.
12. Timeline, and whether the customer is waiting on a builder, a survey, or financing.

Write the answers down on the spot. Take photos with your phone from the same four corners so you can show the before later.

Writing the quote so the customer says yes

A land clearing quote is a description of a finished piece of ground with a price under it. The price is the easy part.

• Say what done looks like. “Approximately 3 acres shown on the attached photo mulched in place. Trees up to 8 inches ground to chips and left on the ground. Trees over 8 inches, roughly 14 of them, cut and left in log lengths at the north fence line for the owner. Stumps cut to ground level. No haul-off. No grading.”
• Say what is not included. Stump removal, hauling, grading, permits, utility locates beyond 811, anything the customer might assume.
• Give one price, and a fallback. “Total $3,780. If we find buried debris, rock, or wet ground that stops production, work continues at $210 per machine hour with your approval before we go past the quoted total.”
• Put the mobilization in the open. Customers accept a $350 mobilization line. They resent finding it inside the acre price.
• Show a similar finished job. One photo of mulched ground that looks like what they are buying beats a paragraph. If you have a page on your site for that kind of job, link it.
• Put your name, your phone, and when you can start. The quote that answers “when” wins more often than the quote that is $200 cheaper.

Why the guy down the road charges less

You will lose some jobs to a lower number. Here is what is usually behind it, so you do not chase it.

He is not counting the machine. The payment comes out of the same account as the fuel, so it feels like overhead that will take care of itself. It does not. Every hour under cost is an hour borrowed from the day the machine needs a $9,000 head rebuild.

He is not counting his own time. He pays himself what is left. Some months that is nothing.

He is between jobs and needs the cash this week. That is a real reason, and it is why you will never win every bid. It is also why he will not be there in two years, and the customers who hired him will need someone to fix what he left.

You do not need to match him. You need the customer to have a reason to pay you $800 more, and that reason is usually the same one: you look like the outfit that will still be there. Which brings us to the part that has nothing to do with the machine.

If you are the one paying

If you are a landowner reading this to check a quote, here is how to compare two of them fairly.

1. Make both contractors describe the finished ground in writing. If one says “cleared” and the other says “mulched in place, stumps cut to grade, no haul-off,” they are not quoting the same job.
2. Ask what happens to the stumps. It is the single biggest hidden difference.
3. Ask what happens if they hit rock, wet ground, or buried junk. A per-hour fallback with a cap is normal. “We’ll figure it out” is not.
4. Ask for one photo of a similar finished job and one name you can call.
5. Look them both up. Read the reviews. Look at the website on your phone. A company that has bothered to show its equipment, its finished work, and the towns it serves is telling you something about how it runs a job.

A quote that is 30 percent lower with none of those answers is not 30 percent cheaper. It is a different, smaller job with the same name on it.

Looking established is a pricing tool

Here is the part most pricing guides skip. Two quotes go out for the same five acres. One is $16,000 and one is $12,500. The landowner does what everyone does: types both company names into Google at 9 p.m.

One company has a site that loads in about a second on a phone, a photo of a mulching head on a track loader with the operator’s name under it, 40 reviews, a list of the towns it works in, and a page that explains the difference between mulching and clearing with haul-off in plain words. The other has a Facebook page and a site the nephew built in 2017 that takes nine seconds to show up.

The $16,000 quote just became the safe choice. Nothing about the work changed.

That is what a website does for a land clearing company. Not “leads.” It lets you hold your price. Shepard Excavating in Laporte, Minnesota launched a new site August 10, 2026. In the 28 days ending August 31, Search Console showed the site in 2,050 Google searches and 81 people clicked through, including searches for services nobody used to find them for. The old site scored 64 on Google’s mobile speed test. The new one scores 95 or better. The numbers are early and small, and they are dated and sourced on our results page.

If your site does not do that job for you today, I will look at it and tell you the three things I would fix first. It takes me two business days and it costs nothing. Show me what you would fix.

Related guides

• Starting a land clearing business
• Forestry mulching rates and how to start a mulching business
• Land clearing leads: how to get your own calls instead of buying shared ones