Turner Land & Pine

Turner Land & Pine is a family-owned land clearing company in Houston, Texas. Hollis Turner runs the machines. His daughter Janine reads every request and keeps the crew calendar. Before starting the company, Hollis spent nineteen years on drainage and detention pond jobs, and he has cleared lots, pasture and pad sites around Houston since 2018. The equipment yard is in New Caney, off US-59.

Two machines, two prices. The skid steer mulcher costs $3,000 a day with transport included and takes anything under 8 inches. The dedicated high-horsepower mulcher cuts an 11-foot swath, takes anything standing and costs $4,000 a day plus transport. Half an acre of tallow and yaupon is one day with the skid steer. The skid steer clears 1 to 3 acres a day, the big mulcher 4 to 8.

What we do. Land clearing takes trees, brush and roots down to bare dirt. Forestry mulching grinds everything where it stands and leaves a 2 to 4 inch chip layer, with no burn piles and nothing hauled away. Lot clearing opens a small residential lot for a new home, usually in one day. Brush and underbrush clearing takes out the yaupon and privet under the canopy and keeps the trees you want. Stump grinding takes each stump 8 inches below grade. Site prep and dirt work covers grubbing, cut and fill, the slab base, the drive and the culvert at the ditch. Tree clearing handles pine and hardwood by the acre, cut, mulched or hauled. Fence line clearing opens an 8-foot path, about 2,400 feet a day with the skid steer.

Prices are written down before the work starts. Clearing to dirt runs $1,500 to $2,000 an acre in light brush, $2,500 to $3,500 in medium brush with yaupon, tallow thickets and small pine, and $4,000 and up for dense timber or a clear-cut with haul-off. Mulching runs $1,000 to $2,500 an acre, depending on how thick the growth is. Stumps are $150 to $400 each by diameter, and a lot full of them is priced by the day. The minimum trip is $1,200 to $1,500 for one machine on a short day. Haul-off is $600 to $1,200 a load. Wet ground adds a day and so does a tallow thicket, and you hear about both before we start, not on the invoice.

How a job goes. Send the address and three photos of the lot. Janine reads every request and you have a number by tomorrow: a price, not a range. If the number works, Hollis walks the lot, draws a pencil sketch, you flag the trees that stay and we set the date. The on-site estimate is free inside Greater Houston. Then the crew shows up with the right machine. Every job gets a sketch before and after, and the invoice matches the quote.

The ground decides the method. FM 1960 is roughly the line. South of it the lots grow Chinese tallow, yaupon, privet and hackberry on gumbo clay. North of it you get loblolly pine, sweetgum and water oak on sand. From November to March the clay south of FM 1960 stays soft, and a mulcher keeps working where a dozer sinks to the belly pan. Tallow sprouts back from the root crown, so a tallow lot gets a second pass the next spring. Pine chips hold sand through the first storm, which is why builders in Montgomery County like a mulched pad area.

Permits and burning. Before every quote we pull the floodplain map for the address. Clearing your own land outside the mapped floodplain usually needs no permit. Inside the Harris County floodplain, Harris County Engineering issues a development permit before any dirt moves. Inside Houston city limits open burning is not allowed at all, and outside the city TCEQ rules and county burn bans apply. We mulch instead, so there is no pile to burn.

Who calls us: homeowners with a wooded lot and a house plan, builders who need a lot ready before the slab crew arrives, acreage owners with pasture going back to tallow, developers with larger sites near the Grand Parkway, and hunters who want shooting lanes and a road in before November. Residential and commercial jobs get the same operators and the same day rate. After Harvey we cleared storm debris for a year, and we still take storm jobs every spring.

What we do not do: pour concrete, set septic, demolish houses, trim trees or take down a single dead tree over a garage. That is tree service work, and we can point you to people who do it. Our crews are insured.

Service area. Seven counties around Houston: Harris, Montgomery, Fort Bend, Waller, Liberty, Brazoria and Galveston. That covers Katy, Cypress, Tomball, Spring, Conroe, Magnolia, Montgomery, Willis, New Caney, Crosby, Dayton, Waller, Hockley, Fulshear, Richmond, Rosenberg, Pearland, Manvel, Iowa Colony, Alvin and League City. Past that ring, transport is added to the quote and we say so up front.