Lot and land clearing
Built for builders and developers first, acreage owners second: a crew that quotes by the lot, knows what your county's tree ordinance actually requires, and shows up on the day your schedule says grading starts.
Who this page is for
If you're clearing a half-acre new-construction lot in Indian Trail or forty acres for a subdivision phase outside Harrisburg, the job looks different from a homeowner taking down three trees in a backyard. You're working against a permit timeline, a grading subcontractor booked for a specific week, and a county inspector who's going to check the tree-save line before you pour a footer. This page is about that job.
We work directly with builders and developers across Union, Cabarrus, and south Charlotte — Waxhaw, Weddington, Indian Trail, Harrisburg, and unincorporated acreage on either side of those lines. If you're an individual owner with a few wooded acres and no permit involved, everything below still applies, just without the tree-save paperwork.
How we price a lot
Per-tree pricing stops making sense once you're past a handful of trees. For lot and land clearing we quote by the lot: acreage, canopy density, and what "cleared" needs to mean for your specific site. A wooded quarter-acre infill lot in a built-up part of Matthews prices differently than open pasture edge in Cabarrus County with a treeline to knock back — density and stump count drive the number more than raw acreage does. You'll get one flat number for the lot, not a running tab per tree, and it's good for 60 days from the site visit.
What "cleared" means — pick one
Say the word to three different clearing outfits and you'll get three different results. We nail this down on the estimate call:
- Chipped on site. Brush and small wood go through the chipper and stay on the lot, usually pushed to a corner or spread as mulch. Cheapest option, leaves material on the property.
- Hauled off. Everything — brush, logs, chips — leaves the site. Cleanest handoff to your grading crew, costs more in truck time.
- Stumps ground vs. grubbed. Grinding leaves the root mass in the ground, chewed down below grade — fine for landscaping, not for a footprint that's about to be graded and compacted. Grubbing pulls the stump and root ball out of the ground entirely with an excavator, which is what most grading plans actually require under a building pad or driveway.
Tree-save areas and the county ordinance
Mecklenburg, Union, and Cabarrus each administer their own version of a tree ordinance, and it bites hardest on commercial and new-construction lots — it mostly doesn't touch what a homeowner does in their own backyard. The common thread: a tree-save area gets flagged on the site plan before land disturbance starts, and it has to survive construction intact, with protective fencing around the drip line, not just marked on paper. We work off your civil engineer's site plan and flag the tree-save boundary with fencing before any equipment starts cutting, so what's supposed to stay standing is protected from the first day, not an afterthought once someone parks a skid steer under it.
Erosion control and silt fence
Clearing removes the root systems holding red clay in place, right before grading exposes bare soil to Charlotte's summer thunderstorms. Silt fence and erosion control aren't our subcontract, but we coordinate timing with whoever's installing it — either working after silt fence is already up, or leaving buffer strips uncleared until it is, so your site doesn't get a stop-work notice over a muddy creek two properties down. Red clay moves fast once it's bare and wet; a lot cleared on a Friday ahead of a weekend storm with no silt fence up is exactly the situation county inspectors write citations for, so we'd rather hold a day than hand you that problem.
How the job runs
Timeline
A straightforward half-acre residential lot with light canopy typically clears in a day, sometimes two with stump grubbing. Multi-acre subdivision phases run longer and usually get scheduled in sections that match your grading sequence, so we're not sitting on a cleared lot for three weeks waiting on the next construction milestone. Tell us your target grading start date when you call — we'll work backward from it, not the other way around.
Get a lot quote
Send us the address or the plat and we'll set up a site walk. For a single residential lot you can also start with the Job Sizer, though multi-acre and commercial sites are better quoted in person.
Questions about this
Do you handle the county tree-save permitting, or just the physical clearing?
We flag and fence the tree-save area to match your engineer's approved site plan and keep it intact during our work, but the permit itself comes from your site plan submission through the county — that stays with your civil engineer or the builder of record.
Can you clear around a tree-save area without disturbing it?
Yes — that's the normal case on a commercial or new-construction lot. We fence the drip line first, before any cutting starts, then clear right up to that boundary and stop, leaving the protected trees and their root zones untouched for the inspector to check.
What's the difference in cost between grinding and grubbing stumps?
Grubbing costs more — it's excavator work that pulls the whole root ball, versus a grinder chewing the stump down below grade and leaving roots in place. Grading plans under a building pad or driveway almost always call for grubbing.
Can you work around our grading contractor's schedule?
That's how we prefer to run these jobs. Give us your target start date for grading and we'll schedule the clearing to finish just ahead of it, breaking a large phase into sections if that keeps the site moving instead of sitting cleared and idle.
Do you clear raw acreage that isn't tied to a building permit?
Yes — pasture edge, treeline knockback, and general land clearing for owners in Union and Cabarrus who aren't building yet and have no site plan or permit involved. Pricing works the same way: one flat number for the parcel based on acreage and canopy density.
Get a written number, on the spot.
Free on-site quote, usually within 48 hours. The number we write is the number you pay.