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True Trade Cost

Excavation Estimate Calculator: Price Base and Grading by the Ton

Updated

A 210 x 105 ft gravel lot with 561 tons of compacted class 5 over fabric, at 132.96 crew hours, comes to $23,839.79, or $42.50 a ton, at a $67 break-even rate with 20% profit. Change the yellow boxes to your own job and the bid moves as you type.

This excavation estimate calculator prices base and grading work from tons placed, hours per ton, stone cost and what your machines cost to run. The starting numbers are a simplified version of the parking lot extension in the Excavation Pricing Calculator spreadsheet, so you see a real bid before you enter yours.

1. The job
tons

Cubic yards x about 1.375 for compacted class 5. 408 cu yd is 561 tons.

hrs

Mobilize, grade, fabric, haul, spread, compact and the haul home, every person added up.

$
2. Costs that come with every job

The ones owners leave out most. Put 0 if it doesn't apply.

$
$
3. Your rate and profit
$/hr

What each labour hour has to bring in to cover wages and overhead.

%

On stone and fabric you buy at the pit or supply house.

%

Don't know your break-even rate? Work it out in two minutes with the true hourly rate calculator.

Job price$23,840

Tons placed as the yardstick for a base job

Base work is sold by the area but costs by the ton. Every ton is bought at the pit, hauled, spread and compacted, and the hours follow the loads. That is why the calculator counts tons: 561 tons on the example lot, which is 408 cubic yards of compacted base 6 inches deep.

Convert yards to tons before you price, never after. The pit sells by the ton, the trucks carry tons, and a bid built on yards comes up short by the difference. For a check against the area, the example works out to about $1.08 a square foot of finished lot.

Loader, dump truck and trailer: the $3,576 machine line

The machine line is the number that separates an excavation bid from a labour bid. In the example the compact track loader grades, spreads and compacts for 55 hours, the dump truck hauls for 38 the pickup and trailer move the loader in, and the laser level checks grade. At each machine's own cost per running hour, that comes to $3,576.

Leave it out and the lot drops to $19,548.59, which still looks like a fair price and quietly gives away $4,291.20 of machine wear, fuel and payments. Keep the machines out of the labour rate and in this box, so a job with the big excavator and one with just the loader get priced differently. The overhead and profit guide explains where the rest of the yard costs go.

A pit 30 minutes farther away

Haul distance changes the bid more than the size of the lot. If the pit is farther and the 37 loads take 19 more hours in total, the crew hours go from 132.96 to 152.03 and the truck runs 19 more hours, about $879 more of machine time:

Same 561-ton lot Crew hours Machine line Bid Per ton
Example pit 132.96 $3,576 $23,839.79 $42.50
Pit farther out 152.03 $4,455 $26,428.14 $47.11

Two contractors bidding the same lot can be $2,588.35 apart for this reason alone. Price from your own pit, not from the number the other outfit gave.

What the excavation spreadsheet adds to reach $26,433

Operator time is priced here at $67 an hour, the example dirt outfit's break-even before any machine cost. Your shop, wages and insurance set yours, so run them through the hourly rate tool before you bid off this page.

The spreadsheet then lists each machine with its own payment, upkeep and yearly hours, adds a cushion for the last 10% of grading that always takes longer, waste on the stone, and the trip to load and haul the machine home at the end. It also prints a customer quote with your terms for soft spots and extra fabric, and logs actual hours against the bid. That is why its version of the same lot comes to $26,433 instead of $23,839.79. The excavation pricing guide walks through that bid.

How the math in the Excavation & Site Work calculator is checked

Every version of the excavation & site work spreadsheet goes through an automatic test before it ships. The test rebuilds the file, recalculates it in a separate spreadsheet engine, and fails the release if any of these is off.

  • The example's break-even rate, $66.75 an hour, is worked out a second time outside the spreadsheet and the two have to agree to the cent.
  • The total for the customer has to equal the price plus sales tax, and the customer quote has to show that same total.
  • The example quote ($26,433 total) has to earn more per labour hour than it costs to run the business. It earns $118.71 an hour against the $66.75 break-even.
  • Then the test tries to break it: every yellow box on the quote emptied, nobody on the crew billable, a material price 400 days old, an order of zero. No cell may show an error, and the checks box has to flag the missing customer name and the out-of-date price.
  • The formulas only use functions that work the same way in Excel and Google Sheets.

Last test run: Excavation & Site Work passed, along with 39 of the other 39 trades. The example job and the list of easy-to-miss costs come from research into 9 videos of excavation & site work owners explaining how they price. More on how the calculators are built.

Questions owners ask

How do I use an excavation estimate calculator for a gravel lot?

Enter the tons of base, the crew hours per ton, the stone and fabric cost per ton and the machine running cost, then your break-even rate, markup and profit. The 210 x 105 ft example lot comes to $23,839.79, or $42.50 a ton.

Should machine costs be in my labour rate or separate?

Separate. A loader or dump truck costs the same per hour whoever runs it, so price it by its own running hours. Leaving the machine line out of the example drops the bid by $4,291.20.

How do I turn cubic yards into tons for a base bid?

Multiply by the weight per yard of the stone you are using. The example converts 408 cubic yards of compacted class 5 to 561 tons, about 1.375 tons a yard. Ask your pit for the figure on their material.

What does a longer haul from the pit do to an excavation estimate?

It adds truck and driver hours on every load. In the example, 19 more haul hours raise the bid from $23,839.79 to $26,428.14.