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Question:

How many acres per hour can a bulldozer clear?

It is level bottom land with about 7 stumps per acre and some low spots that are wet. I want the land cleared and leveled to drain for pasture. I need to know how many hours per acre a dozer will take to do this.

Answer:

A bulldozer can do the leveling of about 10m x 100m area in an hour provided it is free from tree stumps and is dry and no big rocks, If any of these are present then add 30 percent more time. With these in mind estimate the time required for your land leveling. Important you have not mentioned how many bulldozers will be used and what make and is the operator skilled? All these do affect the speed. The speed mentioned above is with the skilled operator. Wet land will not reduce the speed considerably unless it is marshy and with black soil.
Too many variables to give you an answer. Good sized, solid stumps that had the tops removed recently are hard to remove because there's no leverage or weight of the top to help get them out. Depending upon the size of the machine, such a stump could take 30-60 minutes each to remove depending upon the size of the machine. A trackhoe will be faster, but it's still going to be expensive. Can you just work around some of the bigger ones? Also consider that if you're getting any kind of government ag benefits such as counter cyclical payments, real estate loans, CRP, WRP, commodity loans, etc, clearing bottomland that's considered a wetland will kick you out of all those programs. Doing so will also exclude you from ever taking advantage of those programs in the future. Go talk to the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) folks before you screw up.
look under dozer operater in the phone book most will run $400.00 for a 8 hour day. i am a equipment operator myself but i dont run dozers mostly backhoes and skidloaders. but expect to pay 4 hundred easy oh ok about an acre an hour with an 8 hour minimum im sure. depends on the size of the dozer.
it all depends on how big the stumps are how far you have to push them and how much dirt you need to move to fill in low spots my suggestion is that if it's going to be pasture is to take a trackhoe and dig the stump then take another bucket or two of dirt out of the hole turn the stump upside down and cover with the dirt this is much faster than pushing stumps out with a dozer also instead of hiring by the hour get bids for the job then it doesn't matter about the size of the equipment how long it takes or the skill of the operator unless you are doing yard work the bigger the dozer the cheaper it is it will cost more per hour but you will get more work per hour the cost per hour on a D6RXL is $125 per hour 8 hour min. 345B trackhoe is $125 per hour 8 hour min. both of these machines weigh about 45000LBs each
You can grub one to two acres an hour of mesquites depending on size and thickness on a D6 Cat. How big are these stumps? Regular old stumps should come out as fast as the dozer can move to them. I use to grub trees at the rate of maybe one every 20 seconds but they were thick. You grub them and then come back and rake them. Raking is as fast as the dozer can sweep the ground in 1st gear and back up to take another swath. If you are going to hire a dozer ask for a bid by the job and you will know the price. Pay after its done or 10% down and so much after each section. Get referals if you don't know the man.

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