Hello all, We do a lot of residential dirt work wanting to get into larger projects. We charge a lot by the hour, a lot of bid work is by the yard, so I need a little help. Our soils go from nice loam, to sand, to clay. Just wanting to get an idea of what to charge for scraping or excavating dirt on site/yard, transporting a short distance. Also how to u figure compacting, water if needed and grading for final . If you could give a price you charge in your area and what machine rates are so I can compare to my area.thanks
There really isn't a set CY price you could use as there's too many variables from job to job. The only way I know how to arrive at a CY price is to estimate what machines you need to do the job, how long you need them, how much it's going to cost you to run those machines and add in any variables like dump fees, etc. Also include the time to compact and finish it. Add up total cost with some mark up and divide by bid quantity. Experience is the best teacher and it just takes time and a few mistakes in unit price bidding before a person gets comfortable with estimating work that way.
As a general rule, when a contractor is being paid by the hour for a machine the rental rate is higher than he would charge himself in unit price work. For example, you might charge $100 hr for a skidsteer and operator when working hourly. That's called outside rent. When estimating cost for a unit price job, you might charge yourself $50/hr for the machine. That's called inside rent. The reason for this is that when working hourly, your rate includes profit. When doing the unit price work, you would add up strictly COST to do all the work and add your profit on that.
A good rule of thumb for water that I've used is that it takes 25-30 gallons of water per CY to get it to optimum moisture. In my area optimum moisture is around 11%. There's a lot of variables in that too as it just takes experience working with soils in your area to guesstimate how much water is already in it. I've noticed that when working with dirt, add water until you think it's got too much then add a little bit more. Many, many times have I stood there with a tester and engineers looking at a passing density test on really good subgrade only to have them say it's too dry.
The way I've always seen finishing or grading for final estimated is by the square yard. Again just guesstimate how long it's going to take, what machines will do it, etc. I hope that all made sense and good luck.
