Excavation & Dirt Work

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Moving and shaping ground so the next thing you build on it sits right.

The range of it

Excavation is the widest category we work in and it covers most of what people mean when they say dirt work. Grading and leveling ground. Building pads for a house, shop, barn, or trailer. Stump removal. Pond digging and pond repair. Cutting in access where there is not any. General dozer work on anything that needs to be pushed, shaped, or smoothed.

A lot of this ends up attached to something else. Clearing a piece of ground frequently turns into leveling it. Building a driveway frequently turns into a culvert and a ditch. Once the equipment is on site, the incremental cost of doing the related work at the same time is usually much lower than bringing it back out later, which is worth thinking about while we are standing there.

If it is something a machine can do to dirt, ask. The answer is usually yes or a straightforward no.

Grade is the whole job

Most dirt work lives or dies on whether the finished grade is right, and grade is almost entirely about water. Ground that does not drain correctly causes problems for as long as the structure on it exists. A pad that holds water, a building site that sheds runoff toward the foundation, or a field that ponds in one corner every spring are all grade problems and all expensive to fix after the fact.

Our dozer runs laser grade control, which means we are cutting to an actual reference rather than eyeballing it off the seat. On a pad, a pond bank, or a long run of ground that has to fall a specific direction, that is the difference between close and correct.

So the conversation usually starts with what is going on the ground and where you want water to end up. A shop pad, a house site, a pasture that needs smoothing for equipment, and a pond all want different things from the finished surface, and it is a lot cheaper to establish that before we start moving dirt than to discover it afterward.

Pricing and planning

Dozer work is priced by the hour or by the day. Other excavation depends on volume, access, soil, haul distance, and what the finished result has to be, which is why we look at it in person before quoting. Digging in rock is not the same job as digging in loam, and two properties that look similar from the road can be entirely different once you are standing on them.

Timing matters more on dirt work than on most things we do. Wet ground is slow, makes a mess, and produces a worse result, so there is a real advantage to scheduling this work when conditions are reasonable rather than pushing it through weather that is fighting you.

We own a skid steer, trackhoe, mini excavator, and the dozer, and we rent in whatever else a job calls for, including larger mulching equipment. Being a two-person operation does not limit what we can put on a property. It just means the two people you talked to are the ones who show up with it.

We also handle stump removal, land leveling and grading, pond digging and pond repair, and general dozer work.

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