Bank yards, loose yards, and the swell between them
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Calculate the volume in the ground
Length by width by depth gives bank yards — undisturbed material as it sits. This is the figure the drawing supports and the one to dig from.
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Apply the swell factor to get loose yards
Broken material takes up more room than it did in the ground, and how much more depends on what it is. Loose yards are what fills a truck, so this is the figure hauling is priced from.
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Work out how much comes back
Material used as backfill never leaves the site and never enters the haul count. Netting the two before pricing is what separates a job that hauls twenty loads from one that hauls six.
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Price the haul as a cycle, not a distance
A round trip is load, drive, tip, queue and return. It is the queue and the tipping that vary, and a site an hour from a facility that is busy costs more per yard than the mileage suggests.
Access decides which machine, and the machine decides the rate
The same hole costs quite different amounts depending on what can reach it. A machine that has to work from one side, or track through a gate it barely fits, moves less material per hour than the same machine working openly — so the site walk is not a formality, it is where the productivity assumption behind the whole estimate is set.
What has to be excluded
What moves an excavation number up
- Clay or wet ground, which slows loading and can stop trucking entirely after rain
- A high water table, which turns a straightforward dig into a pumping and shoring job
- Utilities crossing the work, which means hand digging where the locate says they are
- Erosion control, silt fence and street sweeping that the permit requires and the drawing does not show
- Importing engineered fill, which is a delivery cost rather than a hauling one and is priced the other way round
Hold the price for twenty-one days
Valid for 21 days, and the reason is fuel: it is a real share of the cost of moving material and it is posted on the day the machine works rather than on the day the estimate was written. State that the haul rate is held for that window and re-priced afterwards, so a job that starts two months late is re-quoted rather than argued about.
Common questions
- What is the difference between bank yards and loose yards?
- Bank yards are material undisturbed in the ground; loose yards are the same material after it has been broken up and swelled. Digging is quoted from the first and hauling from the second, and confusing them undercounts the trucking.
- Should rock be included in the price?
- No. It cannot be seen from the surface, so it belongs in the exclusions with a stated rate. Absorbing it means pricing every job as though it might have rock, which loses the ones that do not.
- Why is haul distance not enough to price trucking?
- Because the cost is the round-trip cycle, and the parts that vary most are queueing and tipping at the facility rather than the drive. Two sites the same distance out can differ substantially per yard.