Brush piles, clearing debris, downed trees, old fencing, construction scrap and years of accumulated property junk, loaded out and gone. I bring the machine and the trailer, so you are not making eleven trips with a pickup and a tarp. If the brush is still standing, that is land clearing, and it is a different page and usually a better buy. This page is for material that is already on the ground and has to leave, and for getting the hazard trees down before the next storm puts them down for you.
Free estimateCall (352) 932-3653
What I haul out
- Brush piles and burn piles somebody started and never finished
- Land clearing debris, stumps, root balls and windrows left by a previous job
- Downed and leaning trees, and the limbs and tops that come with them
- Old fencing, wire, posts and gates, including the buried wire nobody remembers
- Construction scrap, demolition debris, broken concrete, block and roofing
- Metal, appliances, old machinery and equipment carcasses
- Furniture, general property junk and the contents of a shed that has given up
- Spoil piles and dirt piles left in the wrong place
- Storm debris after the fact, and hazard material before it becomes storm debris
What I will not haul, and I would rather say it up front
No asbestos. No chemicals or fuel. No paint. No medical waste. No household hazardous material. No unlimited tires.
That is not squeamishness, it is where the material can legally go. If it cannot be accepted at the other end, it cannot go on my trailer, and a truck that shows up and then leaves half of it is worse for you than a straight answer on the phone.
If you are not sure what you have, send a photo. I would rather tell you before the truck comes out. And if part of your pile is something I cannot take, I will tell you who does take it, so the job still gets finished.
Storm cleanup: the work worth doing before the next one
Everybody thinks about this in October, standing in the yard. The work that actually pays for itself gets done in February.
Here is the honest version of storm cleanup. After a storm, everybody in three counties calls the same small number of people on the same afternoon, prices go up because they always do, and the wait is measured in weeks. Before a storm, the same work is a normal job on a normal schedule at a normal number.
What is worth doing ahead of time:
- The dead and leaning trees you already know about. Everybody has one. The one that leans toward the house, the one that lost its top two years ago, the dead pine at the corner of the barn. Those are the trees that come down, and they come down onto something.
- Limbs over the roof, the drive, the power drop and the well house. Not a tree job, an access job. If a limb takes out your driveway you are stuck at home before you are inconvenienced by the yard.
- The brush pile you have been meaning to deal with. A pile of dry brush beside a building is fuel in a wildfire and a projectile source in a wind event, and out here on the forest edge both of those are real.
- Clearing back around the buildings. The Florida Forest Service wants clean space around a home, and more of it where you are up against heavy wildland fuel, which describes most of Altoona, Paisley and Astor. That work is on the land clearing page and it is the same trip.
- Making sure a truck can get in. A drive too narrow or too soft for a loaded trailer is a drive too narrow for a fire truck and too soft for a utility bucket truck. See driveways and access roads.
Clear the hazard trees before the next one. That is the whole pitch, and it is not a scare tactic. It is that the same work costs less and happens sooner in February.
Tree work over a house is not mine. If a tree has to come out of the air above a structure, that is a tree service with a bucket or a climber and the right insurance for it, and I will point you at one. Once it is on the ground, the loading and hauling is me.
What FEMA actually pays for, because most people have this backwards
This one is worth reading twice, because assuming otherwise costs people money every single season.
FEMA does not reimburse a homeowner for clearing debris off his own property. That is not how the program works. FEMA money goes to the local government to collect debris from the public right of way. Getting your material out to the right of way, off your pasture, off your drive, off your building site and out to the road, is on you.
So the decision is yours to make with real information: haul it to the right of way yourself and wait, hire it done and wait, or hire it done and be finished.
Waiting on the county, honestly
Waiting is free and it is slow, and sometimes free and slow is the right answer. I am not going to pretend it never is.
Here is the local record, because it is better information than any promise I could make. After Hurricane Milton, Lake County was still hauling debris nearly two months out, having not secured a debris hauling contractor until early November. Unincorporated areas waited the longest, and Altoona is unincorporated.
So the question is not really "is the county going to come." It is "what does the wait cost you." If it is a brush pile at the end of a lawn, the wait costs you nothing and you should take it. If it is your driveway, your pasture, your access to a barn with animals in it, or a building site with a crew scheduled, the wait costs you a great deal and that is when this becomes private work.
I will tell you which one I think you have got, including when I think you should wait.
Documentation for your insurance claim
If there is a claim attached to this, tell me before I start rather than after.
I will shoot dated photographs of everything before it moves, keep them organized by area, and send you the whole set along with the invoice, with the scope written in language an adjuster can match to what he is looking at.
It costs me ten minutes and nobody around here offers it. It is worth far more than ten minutes to you on the day an adjuster asks what was actually there.
Where it goes, and what that changes
Material leaves your property one of three ways and they do not cost the same, which is why I ask what you want before I quote.
Off the property entirely. Loaded and hauled to a facility that will take it. Cleanest outcome, highest cost, because disposal is a real charge somebody pays and I am not going to hide it inside a line item and call it something else.
Onto your own ground, where you tell me to put it. Windrowed at a treeline, stacked in a back corner, or piled somewhere out of the way. Cheapest by a distance, and the right answer on acreage where a brush row at the back is genuinely fine. Not the right answer near a building, because of fire.
Ground or processed on site, where that suits the material and the property.
Burning is usually not on the list, and the reason is geometry rather than attitude. Florida's open burning rules set how far a fire has to sit from an occupied building, and a land clearing burn never qualifies as yard trash no matter how neat the pile is. On a small homesite the required setback is often more clear space than the property has. On top of that Lake County has gone to countywide burn bans in each of the last two springs. If your plan is to burn it, the plan has a hole in it, and the full explanation is on the land clearing page.
What it costs
I price a cleanup after I have looked at it, and the number I write down holds unless you change the scope.
I do not publish a per-load or per-yard number for debris, and here is the honest reason: debris pricing is driven by volume and by what the material is, and both of those are almost impossible to judge from a description. Everybody underestimates a brush pile, including me, which is why I look at it instead of guessing. What is in it matters as much as how big it is, because clean vegetation, mixed construction debris and concrete all go to different places at different rates.
What I will do instead is give you a real number the same day. Send me photos with something in frame for scale, a vehicle, a five gallon bucket, a person, and tell me roughly what is in the pile. You get a number back.
What makes it cheaper: one pile instead of six, clean vegetation with no trash mixed into it, dry ground, a gate and a drive a loaded trailer can actually use, and material that can stay on your own property.
What makes it more: mixed piles that have to be sorted, buried and half-buried material, wire and fencing tangled through it, wet ground, a long carry from the pile to where the trailer can sit, and anything that has to go to a facility rather than to a treeline.
Small jobs carry a minimum, because the trailer, the fuel and the drive cost the same whether it takes one load or four.
Good fit for me, and what to call somebody else about
Good fit
brush and burn piles, land clearing debris, stumps and root balls, downed and leaning trees once they are on the ground, hazard trees taken down away from structures, old fencing and wire, construction and demolition debris, concrete, metal, appliances, general property junk, spoil piles, and pre-season cleanup around buildings on the forest edge.
Call somebody else for
tree work over a house, over a power line, or anything that needs a climber or a bucket truck, which is a tree service with insurance written for that work. Asbestos, chemicals, fuel, paint, medical waste and household hazardous material, which go to a licensed abatement or disposal outfit. Whole-house cleanouts and hoarding situations, which are a specialty. Roll-off dumpster rental, if what you actually want is a container to fill at your own pace, which is sometimes the cheaper answer and I will say so. Standalone stump grinding.
When a job is bigger than one machine and one trailer, I bring in people I have worked with for twenty years and I stay the one accountable for it.
What usually comes next
Questions I get
What will you not haul?
No asbestos, no chemicals or fuel, no paint, no medical waste, no household hazardous material, and no unlimited tires. Vegetation, land clearing debris, downed trees, construction scrap, concrete, metal and general property junk are all fine. If you are not sure, send a photo and I will tell you before the truck comes out.
After a storm, should I just wait on the county to pick it up?
Waiting is free and it is slow. After Milton, Lake County was still hauling debris nearly two months out, having not secured a debris contractor until early November, and unincorporated areas waited the longest. Altoona is unincorporated. If your pasture, driveway or building site has to be usable now, that is private work. If you can live with a pile at the road for a couple of months, waiting is the cheaper call and I will say so.
Will FEMA pay me back for clearing my own property?
No. FEMA money pays the local government to collect debris from the right of way. It does not reimburse a private property owner for the cost of getting debris off his own land and out to the curb. That part is on you, and it is worth knowing before you assume otherwise.
Can you document the work for my insurance claim?
Yes, and tell me before I start rather than after. I will shoot dated photographs of everything before it moves, keep them organized by area, and send you the set along with the invoice. Nobody around here offers that and it costs me nothing but ten minutes.
Can you take the stumps and root balls too?
Yes. The root rake grapple pulls them out roots and all rather than grinding the top off and leaving the wad in the ground, and they go on the trailer with everything else. Standalone stump grinding is not something I offer, so if grinding specifically is what you want, that is a different machine and I will point you at somebody who runs one.
Can I just burn it instead?
Usually not, and the reason is geometry rather than attitude. A land clearing burn never counts as yard trash no matter how tidy the pile is, and the required setback from an occupied building is often more clear space than a small homesite has. Lake County has also gone to countywide burn bans in each of the last two springs. Hauling does not wait on a burn window and it does not wait on the county. The full explanation is on the land clearing page.
How fast can you get out after a storm?
Honestly, slower than you want and slower than I want, because after a storm everybody in three counties calls the same afternoon. I book in the order calls come in, I do not price-gouge a storm, and I will tell you a real week rather than the week you want to hear. Which is exactly why the hazard trees are worth dealing with in February, when they are a normal job on a normal schedule.
Do you do this for property managers, realtors and estates?
Yes, and it is a decent share of the work. A lot that has to be presentable for a listing, a property the county has started writing letters about, an estate where nobody has been on the ground in years. Tell me the deadline you are working to and I will tell you straight whether I can hit it.
Tell me what needs to go
Call (352) 932-3653, or send the form. Photos help more than anything else here, because everybody underestimates a pile, including me. Put something in frame for scale: a vehicle, a bucket, a person. Tell me roughly what is in it and how close a truck and trailer can get.
Free estimate, on site, no pressure. If waiting on the county is the better buy for your situation, I will tell you that instead of selling you a load.
Free estimateCall (352) 932-3653