Land Clearing Services in Ohio: Forestry Mulching, Lot Clearing and Brush Removal Statewide

Land clearing services here cover six tasks, and most lots need three. Our services include forestry mulching, dozer grubbing, stump grinding, haul-off, rough grade and selective tree removal. The tasks of land clearing stack in that order. Mulch what will mulch, grub what the pad needs, haul what cannot stay.

• Mulching: honeysuckle, brush and stems to 8 inches, chipped in place. The chip layer sits 2 to 4 inches deep and holds the clay.
• Grubbing: dozer or excavation of stumps and root balls, $160 an hour with operator. OUPS 811 is called 48 hours ahead. Tile lines are not marked, so we find them with the bucket.
• Stump grinding: $4 per inch of diameter, $150 minimum per stump.
• Haul-off: $600 to 1,100 per 10-yard load. Excavation services and removal services bill by the load.
• Rough grade: knock the grubbed ground flat enough for a surveyor to shoot it. Finish grading is a dirt contractor's job.

What we do not do: concrete, wells, septic or house demolition. I know people who do. We do not offer a wide range of trades. We offer land services and dirt work services for residential and acreage lots, and one crew runs the job from start to finish. Send photos and I will tell you which three tasks your lot needs.

A quarter-acre infill lot is $1,700 flat, and a half-acre township lot is one day, $2,500. That is residential land clearing on most new construction in Delaware County, Warren County and the Columbus suburbs. The Census Building Permits Survey counted 1,637 single-family units in Delaware County in 2025. Each one started as honeysuckle under maple.

A homeowner usually needs the same four things. Pad footprint cleared to dirt, driveway cut, leach field area mulched, property lines walked and flagged. We hold property boundaries by the survey pins, not by the fence. Community of homeowners rules and the Dublin and New Albany landscape codes limit what you may cut. Read those first.

Half an acre in a day assumes honeysuckle and stems to 8 inches. Last winter on a lot in Powell we did it on frozen ground, no ruts. Site prep for the pad follows once the stumps are out. Send the plat and the photos for a quote today.

Acreage clearing runs 1 to 15 acres and density sets the price, not acres. The 15-acre fencerow and pasture reclaim we did in Knox County is the model. Multiflora rose and autumn olive had taken the fence lines 40 feet wide. Three days with the 300-hp machine, $11,700 plus transport. The owner kept CAUV because the field went back to hay.

Clearing overgrown pasture is a late-fall job, after harvest and before the thaw. High horsepower forestry mulchers clear multiple acres per day on open fencerow, capable of clearing 3 to 5. A woodlot understory runs 1 to 2 acres a day around the crop trees.

Land management on a farm woodlot is selective. Honeysuckle, grape vine and dead ash go. Oak, hickory and walnut stay. On a farm in Knox County I learned the fencerow is where invasive species start. NRCS EQIP brush management is a cost-share program a landowner can apply for before we start.

Commercial land clearing is where I spent the pad years: warehouse pads and subdivisions along I-71 for 14 years. Clear to dirt, grub the stumps, rough grade to the SWPPP, hand it over ready for construction. We handle any sized job from a two-acre outlot to a 40-acre tract, with two decades of experience on this clay.

Three rules drive a site clear. At 1 acre of disturbance the state construction general permit applies, with silt fence and a stormwater plan the county SWCD reviews. Trees over 3 inches on tracts over 1 acre are cut October 1 to March 31 for the Indiana bat unless a USFWS survey clears the site. Columbus and Hudson have tree preservation rules on development sites.

Along the Intel corridor in Licking County and the Honda retooling in Union County, property for construction gets cleared in winter and graded in summer. A 10-acre site is 3 to 4 days of mulching, then a week of grubbing. Send the civil set and I will price the clearing line.

Four methods, and the right one depends on what the ground is for next. Mulching is the first choice on honeysuckle and brush: one machine, no burn pile, no truck. Traditional clear and grub is for pads. Haul-off is what you pay when burning is out, which is inside every corporation limit. Selective clearing takes the understory and leaves the oaks.

The drum rides frozen ground in January without a mark. A dozer in April cuts ruts a foot deep in Crosby silt loam. The same logic comes to land clearing a woodlot for a house: mulch the lot in winter, grub only the pad in summer. No machine can mulch any sized tree; the 300-hp stops at 12 inches. Tell me what the lot is for and I will pick the method.

Honeysuckle density sets the per-acre price more than anything else on a woodlot. Light honeysuckle under maple runs 2 acres a day. A 20-year thicket drops to three quarters of an acre. Dead ash is the second driver. An emerald ash borer kill is brittle, drops its top before the trunk is touched, and comes down in pieces. A hazard-tree job, priced as such.

Honeysuckle resprouts from the crown. A bush hog alone fails because it leaves the crown alive. We grind the crown to the clay and lay 3 inches of chips over it, which starves most of the regrowth. Callery pear and tree-of-heaven get cut-stump treatment within minutes of the cut or they sucker. Multiflora rose and autumn olive on old pasture need a second pass the next winter.

Ohio has two seasons, frozen and mud, and a week of dust in between. Honeysuckle does not care. It holds leaves into December, which is how we find it on a winter walk. I have cleared it on roughly 400 acres since 2017, and a clean woodlot shows on your next land appraisal.

December to February is the clearing season, and it is the cheapest. Frozen ground carries the 300-hp machine without a rut, the bat window is open, and there is no mud surcharge. On our jobs in Medina County last February the clay was frozen 14 inches and the crew did 3 acres a day. March and April add a day or we wait.

Summer is dust and hard clay, normal rate. Grubbing and pads run June to September because the clay holds a truck. The bat window closes March 31 for trees over 3 inches on tracts over 1 acre, so a wooded clear that misses February waits until October or pays for a USFWS survey.

Honeysuckle and brush mulching runs $1,200 to 2,000 per acre by density. Average costs and key cost factors as they land on real invoices:

• Skid steer: $2,500 a day, transport included within 60 miles of Delaware or Lebanon. Stems to 8 inches.
• Dedicated 300-hp machine: $3,900 a day plus transport. Stems to 12 inches.
• Mixed woodlot understory, honeysuckle under maple and oak with dead ash: $1,800 to 2,600 per acre.
• Full clearing to dirt with the stumps out: $2,800 to 5,000 per acre.
• Quarter-acre infill lot $1,700 flat. Half-acre lot one day, $2,500.
• Stump grinding $4 per inch, $150 minimum. Haul-off $600 to 1,100 per load.

Three acres of honeysuckle woodlot outside Sunbury ran a day and a half, $3,800. A half-acre lot in Plain City was one day, $2,500. Learn average prices from those two. Tips to save: clear in winter, mulch instead of haul, leave stumps where no pad is going. Permit filing fees to align with the county schedule, no markup. Call (740) 729-8625 or send the form with photos. I email you a budget range and two dates before the end of the day, and a free on-site estimate within 60 miles of a yard.

Clearing itself on acreage needs no permit here, but five rules decide how we do it. Open burning is out inside any corporation limit. Outside, land-clearing waste burns only more than 1,000 feet from a neighbor's inhabited structure, with written notice to the Ohio EPA district office, and never 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in March, April, May, October and November under the ODNR rule. Translation: mulch or haul.

Isolated wetlands run through the state EPA in three tiers. Level 1 covers up to half an acre of Category 1 or 2 wetland; the second tier runs to 3 acres, and anything bigger or any Category 3 goes to the top tier. Streams and connected wetlands go to the Corps, Huntington District south of the divide and Buffalo District on the Lake Erie side. We ORAM the wet spot before a machine touches it. Fill triggers the permit, not clearing.

A pad needs the county building department permit plus a township zoning certificate. Agriculture is exempt from township zoning under ORC 519.21. Drainage off a cleared lot still has to reach the county ditch without silt, the SWCD's concern at 1 acre. Inform your neighbors before a survey is happening on the line. I handle the Level 1 wetland filing with you; you sign as the applicant.

Transport is included within 60 miles of Delaware or Lebanon, which covers Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati. The central region runs from the Delaware yard: Franklin, Delaware, Union, Licking, Fairfield and Madison counties. Southwest runs from Lebanon: Warren, Butler, Hamilton, Clermont, Montgomery and Greene. Northeast (Lorain, Medina, Summit, Stark) and Northwest (Lucas, Wood) carry a transport line from Delaware, 95 to 130 miles.

Lot clearing services, professional land clearing and forestry mulching on acreage run the same price in every region. Only the transport line changes. If you need a pro for your land clearing project outside those counties, send the form anyway. I will tell you the number of jobs we run that far. Call (740) 729-8625 for a budget range the same day.