Land clearing, grading, septic systems, drainage, and demolition for homes, camps, and businesses across Lycoming County.
Call (570) 555-0134Tell us what you're planning — a cleared lot, a dry basement, a new driveway, a septic replacement — and we'll walk the site, explain your options, and put a real number on it. Call (570) 555-0134.
One local crew for every kind of dirt work — from clearing a wooded building lot in Trout Run to drying out a soggy backyard in Loyalsock Township. Every service below has its own page with process details, real price factors, and answers to the questions homeowners actually ask.
Wooded lots, brush, and overgrown acreage cleared for building, pasture, or access.
Land Clearing →Brush and small trees ground in place — no burn piles, no hauling, topsoil preserved.
Forestry Mulching →Building pads, yard leveling, and finish grading that sends water away from the house.
Grading & Site Prep →Wet yards, standing water, and basement seepage fixed at the source.
Drainage →Sand mounds and conventional systems — perc tests, permits, and honest pricing.
Septic Systems →New installs, regrading, and washout repair for lanes, drives, and camp roads.
Gravel Driveways →Water, sewer, and electric lines trenched to depth and backfilled right.
Utility Trenching →New ponds sited and dug right, plus dredging and cleanouts for existing ones.
Pond Digging →Sheds, garages, barns, and mobile homes torn down and hauled away — slab included.
Demolition →Basements, footers, and additions dug to spec — below frost, on grade, on schedule.
Foundation Work →What clearing actually costs per acre in Pennsylvania — and why quotes vary 3×.
See Clearing Costs →Conventional vs. sand mound pricing in PA, and what drives the difference.
See Septic Costs →Digging in Lycoming County is not like digging anywhere else. The county is the largest in Pennsylvania by land area — nearly 1,229 square miles of ridge-and-valley terrain where the West Branch of the Susquehanna cuts along the foot of Bald Eagle Mountain. Most of the upland soil here is what the USDA classifies as channery silt loam — Weikert and Berks series soils weathered straight out of shale. On the Weikert soils that cover our hillsides, bedrock can sit less than 20 inches below the surface. An out-of-area contractor quotes your job like it's soft loam, hits ledge on day one, and suddenly the price isn't the price.
We plan for this ground because we work it every week: shallow shale on the slopes, heavier wet soils on the valley floors, and slopes that run 25% or steeper on wooded lots. It changes how a driveway gets crowned, how deep a footer trench really needs to go, why your perc test failed, and what it takes to keep a cleared hillside from washing into the neighbor's yard the first time Lycoming Creek country gets one of its storms.
Water is the other half of every job here. Williamsport averages over 40 inches of precipitation a year, and this valley's history is written in floods:
The short answer: published national ranges run $100–$250 per hour for an excavator with operator, and typical residential projects land between roughly $1,700 and $6,700. Land clearing runs about $500–$5,600 per acre depending on how heavily wooded it is. A conventional septic system nationally runs about $3,600–$12,500 installed, while the sand mound systems common on our shale soils typically run $10,000–$20,000. Those are published industry ranges, not quotes — every real number depends on your soil, slope, and access, which is why estimates here start with a site walk, not a phone guess.
What moves the number: rock (shale ledge adds hammer time), slope (machines work slower and erosion controls get mandatory), access (a tight backyard means smaller machines and more hours), disposal (grinding brush on site is cheaper than hauling it), and permits. If your project disturbs 5,000 square feet or more of earth, Pennsylvania requires a written erosion-and-sediment plan; disturb an acre or more and an NPDES permit comes into play. We build all of that into the estimate up front — it's the difference between a $3,500 quote and a $12,000 one covering the same work.
Every project runs the same five steps: walk the site (we look at soil, slope, access, and water before pricing anything), itemized estimate (stumps, hauling, rock handling, and permits are line items, not surprises), PA One Call (we file the 811 request and wait the legal 3 business days for utility marks — our job, not yours), do the work (and leave the site graded, stable, and clean), and walk it again with you before we call it done.
Based in the Williamsport area, we work the whole county: South Williamsport and Duboistown across the river, Montoursville and Loyalsock Township to the east, Cogan Station and Trout Run up the Lycoming Creek corridor, Linden and Jersey Shore to the west, and Muncy, Hughesville, and Montgomery down-county. Camp and cabin owners in the northern tier: yes, we come to you — septic replacements, access lanes, and pad work at hunting camps are a regular part of the schedule.
Clearing, grading, septic, drainage, or demolition — call now and get a real answer today, not a voicemail you never hear back from.
(570) 555-0134No. A surprising amount of our work is small residential jobs — a drainage trench, a shed pad, a driveway regrade, a stump or two. Small jobs get scheduled between larger projects, so they often happen faster than you'd expect. Call and describe the job; you'll get a straight answer about timing and a free estimate.
Published national ranges run roughly $100–$250 per hour for machine plus operator, and typical residential excavation projects land between about $1,700 and $6,700 depending on scope, access, and soil. Rocky ground — common on Lycoming County hillsides — can add cost, which is why we quote from a site visit, not over the phone. See our cost guide for the full breakdown.
Yes — Pennsylvania law requires notifying PA One Call (811) at least 3 business days before any excavation, at any depth. When you hire us, that's our responsibility, not yours: we file the location request and wait for utility marks before a bucket touches the ground.
Two quotes on the same lot can differ by thousands because contractors assume different things: whether stumps are removed or left, whether debris is hauled or burned, how they handle rock, and whether erosion controls and permits are included. Our estimates itemize all of it, so you can compare line by line instead of guessing.
Most one-crew operations are running a machine all day and the voicemail fills up. We built our office process around answering — calls to (570) 555-0134 get a same-day response, and quote requests through the form are called back fast. If a project is outside what we do, we say so immediately instead of leaving you hanging.
Much of upland Lycoming County sits on shale bedrock that can be less than 20 inches down, so we plan for it instead of surprising you. During the site visit we assess soil and ledge risk, explain how rock is handled and billed if we find it, and put it in writing in the estimate.