About Us
The contractor nobody could find
J Schleis Services is Justin Schleis — a one-man forestry mulching and land clearing operation working out of Manitowoc, WI.
How this started
Justin Schleis sat in on a round table about red pine reforestation and listened to people describe the same problem from every seat at the table: the work was planned, in some cases the money was there, and there was nobody available to come do it. Not a shortage of interest. A shortage of contractors.
That is a strange thing to hear in a room full of people who want to spend money with you, and it stuck. He went out, bought a skid steer and a forestry mulching head, and started J Schleis Services in 2026 to go fill that gap — starting with private landowners and working toward county, DNR and eventually U.S. Forest Service projects.
The whole operating idea is that the owner runs the machine. There is nobody to send instead, which means there is nobody for your instructions to get lost between. You point at a tree and say leave that one, and the person you said it to is the person at the controls three days later.
We are new, and we would rather say so
J Schleis Services opened in 2026. There is no twenty-year story here, no wall of reviews yet, and no list of past contracts to point at. Anybody in this trade who tells you otherwise in their first year is telling you something you should check.
What there is: owned equipment rather than rented, general liability insurance, a 2-year workmanship warranty on the work, and an owner who will tell you when a job should wait for frozen ground instead of taking your money in a wet October. If you want to see what the work looks like, the job photos are here, and they get added to as jobs finish.
Credentials, stated plainly
This table is written for two people: the landowner who wants to know we are insured before we drive on the grass, and the county project manager who needs to know in ten seconds whether we can even bid. What is not held is listed alongside what is.
Fully insured — general liability. Certificate on request. Bonding, SFI certification and public procurement vendor registration are in progress. We do not hold a pesticide applicator license and do not perform any chemical work.
Where we work
Seven counties across Northeast Wisconsin — Manitowoc, Brown, Kewaunee, Calumet, Sheboygan, Door and Outagamie — from the lakeshore through the Fox Valley. We are a service-area business: there is no yard to visit, we come to the property. See the whole service area.
Got a piece of ground that needs work? Call or text and you get the owner, not an office.