Bell Land Services

Loxahatchee, The Acreage, and much of western Palm Beach County sit on 1.25-acre-and-up lots carved out of old flatwoods and Everglades-edge scrub. That means most clearing jobs out here are not a manicured backyard trim — they are Brazilian pepper thickets, Melaleuca stands, slash pine, palmetto, and cabbage palm that have had years to take over. Knowing what is on your lot before the machine arrives is what keeps a one-day job from turning into three.

Do you need a permit to clear land in Palm Beach County? Often, yes — and the answer depends on what you are cutting and where. Palm Beach County protects native and specimen trees, and the western communities frequently have wetland areas, native-vegetation preserve requirements, and drainage easements running through them. Selective clearing of exotic, invasive species (Brazilian pepper, Melaleuca, Australian pine, air potato) is usually encouraged, but removing native pines, oaks, and cabbage palms — or grubbing a lot down to bare dirt — can trigger a land-clearing or vegetation-removal permit through the county's Planning, Zoning & Building department, and wetland-adjacent work can involve the South Florida Water Management District. We walk the lot with you first, flag what needs a permit versus what doesn't, and keep the work inside the lines so you are not the one explaining a cleared wetland to the county later. For the full picture — which desk handles what, the acreage thresholds, gopher tortoises, ITID easements, burning, and a pre-clearing checklist — read our Palm Beach County land clearing permits & regulations guide.

Call 811 before anything digs. Every job starts with a free Sunshine State One Call (811) utility locate so the grapple and any grubbing stay clear of buried power, water, and cable — required by law, and it protects your property from a very expensive mistake.

Haul-off vs. mulch-in-place. Once the material is down you have two roads. Hauling everything to a disposal site leaves the cleanest lot but adds trailer trips and tipping fees. Chipping and mulching the debris in place is cheaper and leaves a layer that suppresses regrowth — a good fit for lots you are not building on immediately. For build-ready pads, most owners want the stumps grubbed and the debris hauled; for pasture, trails, or fire-break work, mulching in place usually wins. We price both so you can see the trade-off.

Wet season matters here. From roughly June through October, Loxahatchee lots hold water, and a track loader working saturated ground can rut a property badly. The Bobcat T740's tracks spread the machine's weight better than a wheeled skid-steer, but for heavy clearing we still watch the forecast and the standing water — sometimes the smartest move is to wait a dry week rather than tear up the ground. Dry-season clearing (November–May) is faster, cleaner, and easier on your lot.

Every clearing job is quoted free and in person. Tell us the address and roughly what is on the lot, and we will tell you honestly whether it is a half-day, a full day, or a multi-day job — and what the permit picture looks like — before any money changes hands. If your property is out here, our Loxahatchee & The Acreage land clearing page goes deeper: the five jobs an acreage lot actually asks for, what clearing runs on a standard 1.25-acre lot, the ITID swale and culvert access problem, and the local numbers worth having.

Hurricane Irma reached the Tampa Bay area in September 2017. In the weeks that followed, Randolph Scott Bell ran storm-debris cleanup through Tampa and Ybor City for Ceres Contractors (Ceres Environmental Services) — one of the largest disaster-debris contractors in the country. This is what the work looked like from inside the cab.

The equipment was the same shape as the equipment that shows up for a Palm Beach County lot today, only there were more of it: Isuzu NPR dump trucks pulling loaded dump trailers, and a Bobcat skid steer fitted with a root-and-brush grapple working downed palm fronds and storm debris curbside, house by house, through residential neighborhoods. Disaster-debris work is measured by the cubic yard and ticketed load by load — the Ceres ticket taped inside the windshield in the photo below reads 14 CY — City of Tampa.

Storm cleanup is the one service nobody shops for in advance. When it is needed, it is needed the same week, and the difference between an outfit that has done it and an outfit that added it to a list after the last hurricane shows up immediately — in whether the truck, trailer and machine arrive together, whether the debris is separated the way the haul-off site wants it, and whether the crew can keep a residential street passable while it works. Bell Land Services brings federal-scale disaster-debris experience to Palm Beach County lots — the same grapple, the same haul-off discipline, on a Loxahatchee or Acreage property instead of a Ybor City block. If a storm has left you with a lot you cannot walk through, that is the number to call. Planning ahead instead? Start with the land clearing cost guide or the Loxahatchee & The Acreage page.