Excavation crews are first on site and most exposed to everything that goes wrong before it. The number that decides whether the fleet pays for itself is one many owners cannot produce on request: a true, fully loaded cost per machine hour, with idle time, transport, maintenance, and the note all counted in.
That gap is expensive because the balance sheet is the business here. Excavators, dozers, loaders, and haul trucks are financed over years, usually on the terms the dealer offered, and a machine on a lowboy between jobs or idling while a permit clears carries its note every hour it is not cutting. Owners feel that as busy-but-broke and go looking on the jobsite, when the problem sits in the financing and the schedule.
Underground is where the rest of the margin is won or lost. What is actually below grade drives the change orders, and change orders done under time pressure and billed under dispute are where good jobs turn bad. The operators who make money here price the unknown on purpose instead of discovering it after the dig.
What makes it hard
- A fully loaded cost per machine hour the business cannot currently produce
- Equipment financed on the dealer's terms rather than against real utilization
- Idle and transport time that still carries the note every hour
- Underground unknowns driving change orders performed before they are approved
- Fuel and hauling costs that move independently of the contract price
How we partner
We start by building a real cost per machine hour and an honest utilization picture, because equipment financing and the next bid both depend on it. From there we restructure the equipment debt against how the fleet is actually used, not how the dealer wanted to sell it, and free the cash that idle iron has been quietly eating.
Where it fits, we work alongside the team on the estimating and change-order discipline that decides underground margin, and we tie our fee to the result. The goal is a fleet that earns its keep and a business that is not held hostage by its own equipment note.
Who this is for
Excavation and site work contractors who cannot produce a true, fully loaded cost per machine hour.
Owners whose equipment debt was structured by the dealer rather than against how the machines actually get used.