Forestry mulching, brush clearing, excavation, pond construction, and site prep — handled start to finish by a family crew that owns its own equipment. We work from Dallas up to Durant, Oklahoma, and from Denton east to Paris.
3L Land Services is a family business in the most literal sense. Jim Lester runs the office and the decisions after more than 40 years in construction, his son Colton runs the field and has been on equipment since he was 16, and Colton’s younger brother works alongside them full time. We opened the doors in September 2024 out of Ivanhoe, Texas, and we built the company on our faith and on the simple idea that the person who quotes your job should be the person standing on your property when the work gets done.
Today we provide land clearing services, forestry mulching, excavation and dirt work, pond construction, site prep, grading, demolition, fencing, and wildlife management across North Texas and southern Oklahoma — roughly half residential landowners and half commercial and contractor work. We own our equipment rather than renting it, which means your schedule depends on us and not on a rental yard. We are locally owned, fully insured, and we answer the phone, including the calls that come in well after five o’clock.
You call or fill out the form, and we come look at the property. Every estimate we give is free, and we give it after we have walked the ground, not from satellite imagery. You will get a straight number and an honest answer about what your land actually needs, even when that answer is that you need less work than you thought.
We walk the acreage with you and agree on exactly what stays and what goes — which treelines to keep, where the drainage runs, where the equipment can get in. This is also where we sort out permits, utility locates, and any goals beyond the clearing itself, like preparing a house pad or setting up a property for a wildlife management valuation.
We haul our own machines to your property on our schedule. Because we own our equipment instead of renting it, we are not waiting on a rental yard to free up a mulcher, and you are not paying a markup for one. For most jobs we are on site within days of the estimate being approved.
The crew clears, mulches, digs, grades, or builds according to the plan you signed off on. Forestry mulching grinds the material in place and leaves it as a ground cover, so there are no burn piles and no haul-off. Heavier clearing, dirt work, pond excavation, and demolition are handled with the right machine for the job rather than whatever happens to be on the trailer.
We clean the site up, smooth out the tracks, and walk the finished work with you before we pull off. Nothing gets called complete until you have seen it and agreed that it is what you asked for. A typical mulching job runs four to five days; larger clearing and dirt work projects are scheduled and quoted individually.
3L Land Services handles the full arc of land work — from the first pass of the mulcher through the finished pad, pond, driveway, or fence line. We serve residential landowners, commercial clients, and general contractors across North Texas and into southern Oklahoma, and because one family crew runs the whole job, you are not coordinating three different companies to get a property finished.
When land needs to be opened up, we clear it. Our crew takes wooded lots, overgrown pasture, and neglected acreage down to workable ground — removing trees, brush, underbrush, and stumps so the property can be built on, farmed, fenced, or simply used again. We handle residential lots and larger commercial clearing jobs, including site cleanup work for contractors, and we clear only what you tell us to clear so the treelines and specimen trees you want kept stay standing.
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Forestry mulching clears heavy brush and small trees in a single pass and grinds the material into a mulch layer right where it stands. There is no burning, no hauling, and no pile of debris left behind — the ground cover it leaves actually helps hold soil and slow regrowth. It is the fastest and least invasive way to reclaim overgrown acreage, cut trails, open up a fence line, or thin undergrowth without tearing up the topsoil, and it is the service Colton runs most days of the week.
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Dirt work is half of what 3L does. We handle excavation, trenching, and general earthmoving for residential and commercial projects — digging footings and utility trenches, cutting drainage, moving and hauling material, and shaping ground before anything gets built on it. Colton has run equipment since high school and Jim has four decades on job sites, so the machine work comes with the judgment to know where the dirt actually needs to go.
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Before a house, shop, or barn goes up, the ground has to be right. We build house pads and building pads, cut and rock driveways, and install driveway culverts and drainage pipe so water goes where it should instead of across your new gravel. Site prep is where a project either starts clean or starts fighting itself, and we would rather spend an extra half day getting the pad and the drainage correct than watch a slab crack two winters later.
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Uneven ground causes standing water, washed-out driveways, and pasture you cannot run equipment across. We level and grade land for new construction, drainage correction, pastures, yards, and commercial sites — cutting the high spots, filling the low ones, and setting the fall so water leaves the property instead of pooling on it. Grading is often the last step on a clearing job, and doing both with the same crew means the finish work actually matches the plan.
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We dig new ponds and bring tired ones back. That covers laying out and excavating a new stock, fishing, or bass pond, building and repairing dams, and dredging out ponds that have silted in or grown over. A pond is one of the few improvements that adds value, holds water for livestock, and gives you somewhere to fish all at once — and it is worth having pond construction contractors who understand how North Texas clay actually holds water before the first bucket comes out.
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Old structures come down safely and the site leaves clean. We demolish barns, sheds, outbuildings, mobile homes, houses, and small commercial structures, break out and remove concrete, and haul the debris off so you are not left with a pile to deal with. Because we run our own excavation equipment, demolition and the dirt work behind it — backfilling, leveling, and prepping whatever goes in next — happen as one job instead of two.
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Once the line is cleared, we can fence it. We install fence for pasture, property lines, livestock, and residential yards, set gates and corner posts, and clear the fence line first so the run is straight and the posts go where they belong. Fencing pairs naturally with clearing and grading work, which means one crew handles the whole boundary instead of you waiting on a fence company to follow behind somebody else.
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Texas landowners pursuing a wildlife management valuation have to actually manage the habitat, and that takes equipment. We build and plant food plots, dig and shape duck sloughs and water features, clear and thin for habitat improvement, and carry out the ground work behind a 1-d-1 wildlife management plan. We handle the dirt and the habitat side of it — your appraisal district and your wildlife biologist handle the paperwork and the plan itself.
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Jim quotes it, Colton runs it, and his brother is on the crew. There is no salesman handing your job off to a subcontractor you have never met, and there is no call center between you and the person on the machine. If you have a question at seven in the evening about tomorrow’s work, you are calling the man who will be there tomorrow.
Jim has spent more than 40 years in construction and Colton has been running equipment since he was 16 — better than five decades of job sites between them. That experience is why the estimate you get reflects what the ground will actually do, and why problems like poor drainage or unstable fill get caught during the walk-through instead of after the concrete is poured.
Our machines are ours. We rent only when a job calls for something specialized, which means your schedule is not hostage to a rental yard’s availability and you are not paying a rental markup buried in the quote. It is also why we can start most land clearing services and mulching jobs within days of an approved estimate.
Most companies do one piece of this. We clear the land, dig the pond, cut the driveway, build the pad, grade the finish, and set the fence — so nobody is standing around waiting on the last contractor to leave. For general contractors and homebuilders, that means one number to call and one crew responsible for the whole site.
Every estimate is free and every number is the real number. We will tell you when your property needs less work than you were quoted elsewhere, because we would rather have the next job and the referral than the extra day. First responders, military, and veterans receive a discount on every service we offer.
3L Land Services provides land clearing services, forestry mulching, dirt work, and pond construction across a wide stretch of North Texas and into southern Oklahoma. Our territory runs from the north side of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex up to Durant, Oklahoma, and from Denton in the west across to Paris and Sulphur Springs in the east — with Ivanhoe, Texas at the center of it.
Areas We Serve
Do not see your town on the list? We travel for the right project — call us at (903) 227-2884 and we will tell you straight whether it makes sense.
Cost depends on how thick the growth is, how big the trees are, and how easily equipment can reach the area. Light undergrowth on open ground moves quickly; heavy timber with large-diameter trunks takes several passes and costs more per acre. A typical job for us runs four to five days of mulching, and we price the job rather than guessing by the acre from a satellite image. The only way to get a number you can plan around is to have us walk the property, and that visit is free.
The main drivers are acreage, tree density and size, what has to be hauled off versus mulched in place, and how much grading you want afterward. Clearing that can be mulched in place is usually the most economical option because there is no haul-off or burn cost. Clearing that requires removing stumps and trucking out debris costs more. We give free on-site estimates across our whole service area, and we will tell you honestly if your property needs less work than you were expecting.
Forestry mulching grinds brush and smaller trees into mulch right where they stand and leaves that material on the ground as cover. Traditional land clearing removes the vegetation and the root systems entirely, then hauls the debris away or burns it. Mulching is faster, cheaper, and far less disruptive to the soil, and it is the right call for overgrown acreage, trails, and fence lines. Full clearing is what you need when a foundation, pond, or driveway is going where those roots are. We do both, and on the estimate visit we will tell you which one your project actually calls for.
Pond cost comes down to size, depth, how much dirt has to be moved, and whether the soil on your property will hold water without help. North Texas clay is generally good pond ground, but every site is different and a soil check is part of the estimate. Building a dam, adding a spillway, or restoring a silted-in pond all change the number. We dig new ponds and restore existing ones across North Texas and southern Oklahoma, and we will give you a firm quote after seeing the site.
A typical residential building site takes several days to a week once we are on the ground, depending on tree size and how much of the lot you want opened up. If you are clearing for a house, we usually handle it as one project — clear the footprint, remove what has to come out, build the pad, cut the driveway, set the culvert, and grade the finish — so your builder walks onto a site that is genuinely ready. That sequence is faster than hiring it out piece by piece, and it avoids the standing-around time between contractors.
A 1-d-1 wildlife management valuation in Texas requires you to actively manage habitat, and several of the qualifying practices involve real ground work — brush management, selective clearing, food plots, and water features. We do that physical work: food plots, duck sloughs, habitat thinning, and brush control. What we do not do is file your paperwork or advise you on the tax side. Your county appraisal district and a wildlife biologist handle the plan and the application; we handle the equipment work that makes the plan real.
If your driveway crosses a ditch or a natural drainage line, you almost certainly do — without one, water either backs up onto your property or washes the driveway out from underneath. The right pipe size depends on how much water the ditch carries in a hard rain, and county requirements vary, so we check that before installing anything. We install driveway culverts, drainage culverts, and pipe as part of our site prep and driveway work, and we grade the approach so the whole entrance drains the way it should.
Site prep means getting the ground level, stable, and draining correctly before anything is set on it. For a shop or pole barn, that usually involves clearing the footprint, cutting and compacting a pad, bringing in and grading base material, and setting the fall so water runs away from the structure instead of under it. Access matters too, which is why driveways and culverts often go in at the same time. Getting this stage right is the cheapest insurance there is against settling, cracking, and standing water later on.
