What this page is, and isn't
Worth being exact, because this is a subject where confident-sounding wrong information does real harm.
We're a hauling company. We are not fire professionals, and this page contains no guidance on how much to clear, how far from a structure, or what to prioritise.
That guidance exists and it comes from people qualified to give it — your local fire department, the county wildfire office, and your insurer, who may have their own requirements. It varies by property, vegetation, slope and jurisdiction, which is exactly why a hauling company shouldn't be summarising it.
What we know about is the second half: what happens once material is cut and lying on the ground. That's a genuine problem with real costs, and it's the part almost nobody budgets for.
Why the pile is bigger than it looks
The single most common misjudgement in this work.
Cut branches don't compact. A pile of slash is mostly air held apart by rigid, awkwardly-shaped material that refuses to nest — so the volume you're paying to move is close to the volume you can see, not the volume the wood would occupy if it were stacked timber.
People estimate slash by weight instinct and get it badly wrong. It's light, so it feels small; it's bulky, so it costs like something large. Yard and brush debris prices at $88 a cubic yard for exactly that reason.
The practical consequence: a morning's cutting can generate more material than a pickup will hold, and an afternoon's can exceed what most people imagined the whole project would produce. Photograph the pile before you assume.
Access is the real cost variable
On a wooded lot, this matters more than volume.
If a truck can reach the material, a large pile moves fast. If it can't, every cubic yard is carried by hand to wherever a vehicle can stand — and that distance becomes the job.
The situations that drive cost: material at the back of a treed acre; a slope between the pile and the driveway; a gate too narrow for a vehicle; soft ground that won't take a loaded truck; and mature trees that make the obvious route impossible.
So the most useful photograph you can send isn't the pile — it's the route from the pile to where a vehicle can park. That's the picture that tells us what the job actually is. Same principle as any access-limited removal.
And it's worth knowing before you cut. Where you stage the material is a decision, and staging it near vehicle access rather than where it fell is the cheapest thing you can do for yourself all day.
Stage it toward the truck
The one piece of planning that changes the number, and it costs nothing.
Material gets dropped where it's cut. That's natural and it's usually the wrong place — scattered across a slope, behind the structures, at the far edge of a lot.
If you can move it as you go, even roughly, toward the driveway or a spot a vehicle can reach, you convert the expensive part of the job into the part you were doing anyway. Dragging a branch twenty feet while you're already holding it is free; having someone carry it eighty feet later is not.
One consolidated pile beats six scattered ones, for the same reason. And leave a working gap around it so it can actually be loaded from more than one side.
Everyone does this in the same weeks
A scheduling reality in wildland-urban-interface neighbourhoods.
Mitigation is seasonal work, and neighbours take their cues from each other. When one property on a road starts clearing, several more follow within a fortnight — which means demand for hauling in places like Black Forest, Cheyenne Cañon, Palmer Lake and Monument concentrates into short windows.
Book the removal when you book the cutting, not after you see the pile. The pile is predictable enough to arrange for in advance, and the alternative is slash sitting on your property while you wait for a slot.
Or arrange both for the same week. Plenty of people have a contractor cut and us collect a day or two behind, which keeps the property from spending a month as a staging yard.
What mitigation uncovers
Reliably more than brush, and this is the part that surprises people.
Clearing vegetation exposes what the vegetation was hiding. Old fencing, collapsed decking, a shed that's been quietly failing, tyres, scrap metal, offcuts, buckets, vehicle parts — a decade of things that went behind the treeline and stopped being visible.
None of that is yard waste and it doesn't price like yard waste. Construction debris — fence panels, decking boards, shed materials — is dense and prices at $120 a cubic yard. Tyres are $87 a set. Metal shelving is $71.
Photograph the non-brush finds separately when you ask for a quote. Mixed together they're one confusing picture; separated, they're two clear ones. Construction and demolition debris · the same sorting logic for a garage.
What we won't put on the truck
Stated plainly, because outbuildings are where this material lives.
Propane cylinders. Pressurised, and not something we'll carry. They turn up around sheds and old grills constantly.
Fuel, oil, solvents, pesticides and pool chemicals. Household hazardous waste, all of it, and a general facility won't take it either.
Find the local route in advance. We're not going to name a facility or a programme — we haven't verified one, and directing you somewhere on a guess would be worse than telling you to check. Sort this category out before your clearing day, because it's the one that leaves a job unfinished.
And what we won't do at all
The boundary matters on this job more than most.
We don't fell trees, take down limbs, or work at height. That's a qualified arborist or a mitigation contractor with the training, the equipment and the insurance for it — genuinely hazardous work where the consequences of getting it wrong are severe.
We don't advise on what should be cut. See the top of this page.
What we do is arrive after all of that and make the material disappear, which is a narrower job than some companies claim and the one we can actually stand behind. Our brush and defensible-space removal service.
Talk to the neighbour
The most underused saving on this page, and it exists because of how the pricing works rather than as a favour.
A truck is priced by the load, not by the address. A full 16-cubic-yard truck is $732 whether it fills from one property or two adjacent ones — so two households clearing in the same week and consolidating to a single accessible pile are splitting one price instead of paying two.
That matters more here than it would in a suburb, because mitigation is inherently a shared-boundary problem. Vegetation does not stop at a property line, the material frequently ends up near one, and neighbours on a wooded road tend to be doing this work in the same fortnight anyway.
It also solves the access problem for whichever property has the worse route. If one driveway takes a truck comfortably and the other doesn't, staging both piles at the good access point is worth more than any pricing discussion.
Worth raising before you book, not after. We would rather send one truck to a shared pile than two trucks to two half-loads, and it is straightforwardly cheaper for both of you.
What it costs
| Material or scope | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Minimum | $75 |
| Yard and brush debris | $88 / cu yd |
| Construction debris — fencing, decking, shed material | $120 / cu yd |
| Small pile | $82 |
| Medium pile | $129 |
| Large pile | $208 |
| Quarter truck | $241 |
| Half truck | $431 |
| Three-quarter truck | $587 |
| Full 16-cu-yd truck | $732 |
| Each additional truck | Same flat rate |
| Set of tyres | $87 |
| Metal shelving | $71 |
| Propane cylinders, fuel, chemicals | Not accepted |
No sales tax on the service in Colorado; quoted from photographs before anyone travels. Full price list.
A worked example
A weekend's clearing on a treed lot, with the finds that came with it.
The brush: roughly six cubic yards of slash once piled, at $88 a cubic yard — $528.
The finds: a section of collapsed fencing and some rotten decking, about two cubic yards of construction debris at $120 — $324. Plus a set of tyres at $87.
Total $939 — and worth comparing against truck tiers, because at that combined volume a full load at $732 may well be the better number. We run both and quote the lower, which on mixed mitigation jobs usually means the truck rate. How the two methods compare across job shapes.
The point of the example isn't the total. It's that the brush was only about two thirds of it, and the owner had budgeted for brush.
Cheat sheet
Slash and brush, already piled
$88 / cu yd. Photograph it — volume is routinely underestimated.
Material scattered where it fell
Consolidate first if you can. Carrying distance is the cost.
Pile at the back of a treed lot
Send a photo of the route, not the pile.
Standing trees or limbs
Not us — arborist. Book separately.
Old fencing or decking
$120 / cu yd, dense, not yard waste.
A collapsed shed
Construction debris. Photograph separately from the brush.
Tyres found in the undergrowth
$87 a set — mention them when booking.
Scrap metal
Separate it — a scrap collector may take it free. Free routes.
Propane cylinders
We can't take them. Find the local route.
Fuel, oil, chemicals
Household hazardous waste. Sort before the day.
A whole season's clearing
Multiple loads, same flat rate each. Full truck $732.
Neighbours clearing at the same time
Book early. Demand concentrates into short windows.
The golden rule
Book the pile before you make it. The cutting is the part that gets planned — the weekend, the equipment, who is helping — and the material afterwards is treated as something that will sort itself out. It won't, and it is the larger job: slash does not compact, so the volume is close to what you can see; access decides the price far more than quantity does; and mitigation reliably uncovers a decade of fencing, tyres and scrap that nobody budgeted for. None of which is a reason to postpone the work. It is a reason to arrange the removal in the same conversation as the cutting, stage the material toward wherever a truck can stand, and settle the propane and chemicals in advance — so that when the cutting is finished, the job is actually finished, rather than becoming a pile you look at until autumn.
Serving Colorado Springs & El Paso County
Frequently asked questions
What does brush and slash removal cost in Colorado Springs?
Yard and brush debris is priced by volume at $88 per cubic yard, and volume is the thing people misjudge — cut branches do not compact, so a pile that looks modest from the house is frequently several cubic yards of mostly air that still has to be carried and loaded. Larger clearing jobs price by truck load, from $241 for a quarter to $732 for a full 16-cubic-yard truck. We quote from photographs before anyone travels, and there is no sales tax on the service in Colorado.
How much should I clear, and where?
That is not our question to answer and we are not going to guess at it. Defensible-space guidance is published by fire authorities, it varies by jurisdiction, property, vegetation and slope, and it is worth getting from the people whose job it is — your local fire department, the county wildfire office, and your insurer, who may have their own view. We are a hauling company: our part starts once material has been cut and is on the ground.
Will you cut the trees or do the mitigation work?
No. Felling, limbing and any work at height or on a slope belongs to a qualified arborist or a mitigation contractor with the right equipment, training and insurance — it is genuinely hazardous work and it is not what we do. Book that separately, and book us for what it leaves behind. Many people arrange both for the same week so the property is not left with a slash pile waiting.
Why does access change the price so much?
Because on a wooded lot the loading is usually the whole job. If a truck can get near the material, a large volume moves quickly. If the pile is at the back of a treed acre, down a slope, or behind a gate too narrow for a vehicle, every cubic yard has to be carried by hand to wherever the truck can stand — and that distance, not the volume, becomes the cost driver. Photographs of the route from the pile to where a vehicle can park are the most useful thing you can send us.
What else comes out during mitigation?
Almost always more than brush. Clearing around a property uncovers old fencing, collapsed decking, a shed nobody has opened in years, tyres, scrap metal and general accumulation that had disappeared into the vegetation. That material is not yard waste and prices differently, so it is worth photographing the non-brush finds separately when you ask for a quote.
Can you take propane tanks?
No. Propane cylinders are pressurised and are not something we will put on a truck, and the same applies to fuel, chemicals and other household hazardous material that turns up around outbuildings. Those need a proper local disposal route, which is worth identifying before your clearing day rather than discovering mid-job. Check what options are available locally.