Excavation cost calculator
What the excavation costs you — and what to bid — on your own rates.
1 · The quantity
Work out the hole before pricing it. What you cost is what you move, which on a sloped excavation is more than the drawing says.
The designed excavation, measured at the bottom. Inches are fine — 18 in converts itself.
Wall treatment
Soil will not stand vertical, so the hole is wider at grade than at the bottom. This is the difference between the volume you are paid for and the volume you move.
Maximum allowable slopes, OSHA 29 CFR 1926 Subpart P App. B, for excavations under 20 ft. Classification is your competent person’s call on site — this is geometry for pricing, not a sloping or shoring design.
Room on every side to form, waterproof and strip. Under US practice this is means and methods — your cost, not usually a pay item.
2 · Your direct costs
Enter the total dollars for the whole job in each line — not an hourly rate, and not a per-yard price. Leave a line blank if it does not apply.
Excavator, dozer, compactor
Operators and laborers, burdened
Base rock, pipe, fabric
Trucking, by load or by hour
Dump fees and tickets
Iron on and off the site
Work you buy in — sawcutting, survey
Permits, traffic control, bonds
Total direct cost
Enter at least one cost above.
How this is calculated
Quantity and cost are kept apart on purpose. The volume of a hole is geometry and is the same for everybody; what it costs to move is a property of your fleet, your crew and your dump. Folding the two together into a dollars-per-yard rule of thumb is how contractors end up bidding somebody else’s business.
Every dollar figure is held as an integer number of cents and rounded exactly once, at the line. That is why the total always equals the sum of the numbers you can read on screen — there is no reconciliation gap between what is displayed and what is added.
- Total direct cost
equipment + labor + hauling + disposal + materials + mobilization + other
A flat sum of the categories you filled in. Blank lines contribute nothing rather than a guess.
- Markup on cost
sell = cost × (1 + markup%)
The percentage is measured against cost. Add 20% to $40,000 and you sell at $48,000.
- Target gross margin
sell = cost ÷ (1 − margin%)
The percentage is measured against the sell price. To earn 20% on $40,000 of cost you have to sell at $50,000.
- Gross profit
sell − cost
Recomputed from the rounded sell price, so the margin shown is the margin you will actually earn on the number you send.
- Cost per cubic yard
total cost ÷ bank cubic yards
Shown only if you enter a quantity. Useful for comparing this job against your own history — not against anyone else’s.
What it does not know
- There are no national averages in here. EARTHVOQ does not know what an excavator costs you per hour, what your operators are burdened at, or what your local landfill charges — and a borrowed number for any of those is a bid you cannot defend.
- These are direct costs. Overhead, bonding, insurance and the cost of money are not included, so gross margin here is not net profit.
- Gross margin is measured against the sell price and markup against cost. They are different numbers, and the calculator shows both so you can see which one you actually asked for.
- A bid price is a decision, not an output. This tells you what a percentage does to your number; whether the market will pay it is a separate question.