How to price trucking and haul-off on excavation jobs

Hauling is where a lot of excavation bids quietly lose their margin. The digging gets priced carefully, and then the trucking gets a round number that felt right. The trucks cost what they cost regardless of what you wrote down, so it is worth building that number the same way you build the rest of the bid.

This covers the three common ways to price trucking, the cycle-time math underneath all of them, and the costs that most often get left out.

Should you price trucking per load, per hour, or per ton?

Each method puts the risk in a different place.

• Per hour. You are paid for the time the truck works for the job, usually with a minimum. The customer carries the risk of slow loading, traffic, and long lines at the dump. This is common when trucks work for someone else's operation and the hauler does not control the pace.
• Per load. You are paid a fixed amount for each load that leaves the site. You carry the risk of the cycle time. If loading is slow or the dump has a line, you lose. If your trucks run efficiently, you win. Per load needs a clear definition of what a load is, especially on dense material where weight limits the load before the box does.
• Per ton. You are paid by scale weight, which is common for material sales and at disposal sites that charge by weight. It is precise, but only if you have a scale ticket for every load, and it shifts moisture risk around: wet material weighs more.

Many contractors quote per load or per ton to the customer and track their own costs per hour. That works, as long as the per-load number came from the hourly math and not the other way around.

Start with the cycle time

Every trucking price comes back to one number: how long a truck takes to go around once. A full cycle has four parts:

1. Load. Time under the bucket, from the truck pulling in to pulling out. This depends on the loading machine, the bucket size, and the operator.
2. Haul. The loaded drive to the dump site. Loaded trucks are slower, especially on hills and site roads.
3. Dump. Time at the disposal site, including the scale, the line, and the tailgate. This part varies the most and gets underestimated the most.
4. Return. The empty drive back, plus any wait before the truck gets under the bucket again.

Time it on a real run when you can, and drive the route at the time of day the job will run. A dump that is a ten-minute drive at 6 a.m. can be twenty-five minutes at 3 p.m.

Count the loads in loose yards

Dirt out of the ground takes more room than it did in the ground. That is swell, and it is one of the most common ways trucking gets underbid: you measure the hole in bank yards and forget that the trucks carry loose yards. Our page on bank vs loose yards explains the conversion, and the dirt calculator handles volume, tons, and loads.

Check weight too. On heavy material a truck hits its legal weight before the box is full, so the real load is smaller than the box suggests. Our article on how many yards fit in a dump truck goes through it by truck type.

A worked example

These are made-up round numbers to show the math. They are not market rates. Use your own costs.

Say you need to haul off a job's spoil, and the numbers look like this:

• Truck cost, all in (driver, fuel, insurance, payment, maintenance): $100 per hour
• Cycle time: 10 minutes to load, 25 minutes to haul, 15 minutes to dump including the scale line, and 20 minutes to return. That is 70 minutes a load.
• Dump fee: $60 per load
• Loads needed, figured on loose yards and checked against weight: 30

The trucking cost per load is 70 minutes of truck time, about $117, plus the $60 dump fee, for roughly $177 a load. Thirty loads come to about $5,300 before markup.

Now change one thing. The dump line is longer than you thought, and the dump step takes 35 minutes instead of 15. The cycle is now 90 minutes, the truck cost per load is $150, and thirty loads cost about $6,300. Twenty extra minutes at the dump added roughly a thousand dollars. If you priced per load, that came out of your margin. If you priced per hour, the customer paid it.

That is why dump time deserves a real number, not a guess.

The costs that get left out

• Dump and disposal fees. They vary by site and by material. Clean fill, mixed debris, concrete, stumps, and anything suspected of contamination can each be priced differently, and some sites will not take some materials at all. Call before you bid.
• Tickets. Keep every scale and disposal ticket. They back up per-ton billing, prove where the material went, and answer the customer who questions the load count. Photograph them the moment they are handed over.
• Wait time. Trucks waiting on a slow loader, a blocked road, or an inspector are still costing you. Say in the quote how wait time is handled.
• Minimums. A two-load job still ties up a truck for a good part of the day once you count getting to and from the site. Set a minimum charge and state it.
• Site conditions. Mud, tight access, and flaggers slow every cycle. So does cleaning tires before trucks hit a public road, if the site requires it.
• Fuel. Price it at what it costs now, and consider a fuel clause on longer jobs.

Write the terms down

Whichever method you choose, the quote should answer these questions before anyone asks them. What counts as a load? What happens if the dump is closed or the line is long? Who pays for wait time? What material is excluded? What is the minimum? A clear page up front saves a long argument at the end.

If you run trucks as a business of their own, our page for trucking and hauling companies covers more of the day to day. TrackOver was built inside a working excavation company, so load counts and ticket photos sit on the job record where the invoice can use them. If that sounds useful, start a free account.

Common questions

Should I charge per load or per hour for trucking? It depends on who controls the pace. Per hour puts the risk of slow loading and long dump lines on the customer. Per load puts that risk on you, and pays you for running efficient trucks. Many contractors quote per load but track their own costs per hour.

How do you calculate truck cycle time? Add the four parts of one trip: time to load, the loaded haul to the dump, time at the dump including the scale and the line, and the empty return. Time a real run at the hour the job will actually run.

Why do trucking costs come in higher than the bid? The usual causes are measuring the hole in bank yards and forgetting swell, underestimating time at the dump, and leaving out wait time, minimums, and disposal fees. In the made-up example in this article, twenty extra minutes at the dump added roughly a thousand dollars across thirty loads.

Do I need to keep dump tickets? Yes. Scale and disposal tickets back up per-ton billing, prove where the material went, and settle disputes about load counts. Photograph them as soon as they are handed over.