T&M or fixed price? How dirt contractors should choose

Every dirt job gets priced one of two ways: a fixed number, or time and materials. Most contractors default to whichever their first boss used, and both camps leave money on the table. The right answer depends on who holds the unknowns.

The one-sentence rule

Fixed price sells certainty; T&M sells honesty. Price fixed when you control the unknowns, T&M when the ground does.

When fixed price wins

• You've done this exact kind of job enough to trust your numbers
• The site is visible and boring: good access, known soil, no water
• The customer is residential. Homeowners want a number, and they'll pay a premium for it
• You're efficient. A fixed price pays YOU for being faster than the other guy, instead of billing fewer hours for the same result

The catch: a fixed price without an exclusions list is a donation waiting to happen. Rock, unsuitable soil, water, buried surprises, disposal of anything unexpected: excluded, in writing, with unit prices for what happens if they show up.

When T&M wins

• Nobody knows what's down there: demo of unknown foundations, old farm properties, anything with "we think" in the description
• Emergency work, where speed matters more than a negotiated number
• Scope that will change weekly, like working under a GC who's still designing
• The customer trusts you and says so. T&M with a trusted customer is the fairest deal in construction

The catch: T&M without daily records is a dispute waiting to happen. Hours per person per day, machine hours, loads hauled, material tickets, and photos, shared with the customer as you go. The bill should be a summary of things they already saw, never a surprise.

The hybrid more dirt work should use

Fixed price for everything you can see, unit prices for everything you can't. The driveway is $X. Rock, if we hit it, is $Y per yard. Unsuitable material hauled off is $Z per load. The homeowner gets a number for the normal case, you're protected from the abnormal one, and nobody renegotiates in a hole with a machine idling.

Whichever you pick, the records are the play

Fixed price needs records so you learn your real costs and bid sharper next time. T&M needs records because the records ARE the invoice. Either way, hours against the job, materials on the job, and photos of what went in the ground are the difference between getting paid what you earned and having a conversation about it.

That record-keeping is most of what TrackOver automates for a dirt crew. But the pricing logic above works no matter what you run it on.