Easy Job To Start Your Excavation and Grading Small Business | DigginLife21

hello youtube and let me just say welcome to the broadcast today is a great day i'm excited you know why i'm gonna tell you why because i am going to show all of you a type of job that is guaranteed to get just about anybody in their start in light excavation and grading you don't even have to own equipment for this type of job and i can almost guarantee you will turn a profit let me uh show you how we do it i would like to also ask that my true fans and patrons of this channel give me a thumbs up if the audio seems better than previous videos i finally made enough money by making my videos for you guys to be able to buy the media mod for my gopro which has a speaker that faces me like now and it also has a speaker from the other side so when i'm doing the first person views for you guys in the excavator and i'm behind the camera hopefully it'll pick up a lot better and it won't pick up as much background noise if it does i'm gonna get what is called a dead cat and it should clarify but only only you guys can tell me how much better the audio is so drop it in the comments and let me know good bad about the same so while we sit here and wait on our loader man to get here to give us a little bit of road bond let me just give you a quick little rundown of what we have going on i have ladies and gentlemen messaging me calling me all the time one advice on how to get started in their own business with excavation and grading and it really comes down to what do you have to start with you've got some costs to starting any business excavation and grading a common misconception is that people think you have to be able to buy huge equipment you have to buy insurance to rent huge equipment it's what are you willing to start out doing a lot of folks are working for somebody else running huge pieces of equipment running huge dump trucks and they just are ready to start their own thing up and you have to swallow your pride a little bit and start doing some stuff on the side that you do have the capabilities to do and sometimes people aren't going to like hearing this but it may start down to just whatever bagged gravel or bagged concrete or cold patch asphalt you can put into the trunk of your kia and your shovel and matic it's what are you willing to start out doing and are you willing to make those small steps and then allow your little business to grow the job i'm going to take you to today is a job that i could do with just a pickup truck a couple of tons of gravel a shovel a matic or a clay spade or something to loosen the ground up and let me also say if i did this job with just my pickup truck bags of gravel or you know a couple of buckets of road bond and hand tools i would make more profit than i would with heavy equipment i will go over how i would do it with hand tools but i've served my time i have worked by hand i have built my way up so i will end up doing it with a machine and of course hauling the material with my dump truck [Music] about eight times doug thank you sir now we're off the lighting of this video is going to be terrible i know i've got the sun coming in on me anyway let me just make the point that for those of you guys and girls out there who are wanting to start a business especially in excavation engraving taking on really really small jobs where you can learn to look at a project and learn your quantities to learn what piece of equipment you need to do a job the smaller the job is the more margin for error you have it seems like your margins get tighter and tighter the bigger the job goes because one big thing going wrong on a huge job can bankrupt a huge company very quickly so i think one thing that gave me a leg up when i started my first true business was that i specifically did bush hogging that was almost a purely service based income now in doing that i didn't have to worry about underestimating for materials that i needed i afforded myself an opportunity to see how fast i could work with a tractor i did do a little bit of you know dirt moving and brush moving around with it but i i focused on getting experience with the machine and then i started gradually taking bigger and bigger driveway jobs and taking on jobs that were just in total disrepair the driveway's really muddy and i didn't even know where gravel came from i had to google it i was that naive i finally you know learned it came from a quarry called the quarry they got me a dump truck driver's number and i still use the guy to this day even though i have my own equipment for those who are new to the channel if you're looking to break out in your own business or even start a side to hustle and excavation grading land clearing demolition just go ahead and hit the subscribe button i cover all of that i put it into terms as if a lot of people have no clue what it's about or the terminology and i wish that i had had that i wish i had had a resource like this when i was learning how to do this types of work driveway work in specific is excellent for you guys who are getting started because there are a blue million property owners not just homeowners but property owners in any area of the world and every one of those properties has to have some kind of an access most times it is constructed by a person it's not a naturally occurring thing now to do a new construction entrance especially a road almost always requires heavier equipment but maintenance of those roads driveways accesses can be done a lot of times by basic hand tools and very little material the second point that makes driveways and road work very convenient for somebody starting in business one of the hardest things for somebody to do is figure out how to find their work where they advertise with driveways in specific you can get on any main road in your area and just start driving and look for a road that's in disrepair and you can pick and choose which driveways you think you're capable of doing or are equipped to do one of the most common things that's super easy to fix on a gravel driveway is a clogged ditch line especially in the fall time you're driving up down these roads and you look over and you see a driveway with a little cut starting in it and especially in my area in the mountains of north carolina you can almost bet that there is a blocked ditch line and all it's going to do is take a little bit of shoveling raking leaves out or a backpack blower to clean the ditch out there you go quick easy money so once you identify something like that you just walk up to the front door knock and tell them that you notice that they have a clogged ditch or whatever issue you've spotted and you ask them if for 50 bucks would you like for me to clean your ditch line out or 100 just depending on how big the job is a good portion of my viewers haven't even ever used a piece of equipment this is true story i have lots of people message me they've never run a piece of equipment they're learning from my channel from some of my earliest most basic videos about how to operate excavators tractors and such by taking these really really small jobs and working by hand you will start to develop an idea of how you move dirt how you compact it you move it from over here where you don't need it to a place where you do need it in small amounts and you can work slowly and methodically eventually you will build your way up to a micro mini excavator or a midi excavator on up to large excavators from a shovel so you start out with a shovel doing small jobs if that's the best that you can do and there's nothing wrong with that i still have to work with a shovel time to time i don't like it but i do it you will graduate from using a wheelbarrow to even skid steer and eventually your wheelbarrow or your bucket becomes a dump truck you will just be able to scale up slowly don't try to scale up too fast that's where people they just try to force the business to grow and they pour tons and tons of money into advertising that may or may not work those guys and gals who push their company to grow they push push push and they are buying is the biggest equipment as many employees as they can get on board and keep busy as much work is coming in well as soon as there is just a tiny little drop in the economy it implodes it just sucks itself in and instead of all that stuff breaking even or maybe making a little bit of money it starts to cost you money all those people who aren't working all those machines that aren't running they start sucking up your savings if you even have any and then you end up back where with nothing you've got to be realistic you've got to let the company almost for me i've let my company grow itself when it gets to a point to where it's just taking way too long to do something or i'm renting and i'm spending tons of rent per month then it's time to upgrade or make that first big purchase to me i'm kind of lazy so if you want my true advice just as kind of a side note i would get a deposit for the job that you're going to do you know even if it's small job you'll rent a little three or four thousand pound micro mini excavator to make life easier on yourself and you don't break you have to break your back that's what i would do get that deposit and let that money work for you now you guys and gail stick around because i promise at some point during this video i'm going to tell you exactly what i charged and what i'm getting paid to do this specific job with the equipment i'm using but i will also tell you what i can charge if i was just fixing the smallest amount and using hand tools and i guarantee you if you pressed it at it almost assuredly in my area you would get the job and you would make profit is it just mayors m m's and coffee go great together it's like a chocolatey party and every taste bud is invited and yes this is a ziploc baggie my wife and i try to save money where we can so instead of spending like a dollar however much the bags are at the store we buy the gigantic family fun sized bags of mlms and then we get these neat little snack bags and my wife measures out one cup of them so i don't eat too many it makes them for me to pack my own punch penny saved his vineyard and if any that i don't have to make all right guys so here we are a pretty good sized pothole it's not huge maybe five feet three feet wide and just a little bit of water in it but people absolutely hate those things and you know what you're just the person to fix them so not only is this video a little bit about business and how to get started with the bare minimum stuff i'm gonna also go over the proper way to fix a pothole in a gravel road currently it is 2020 and we are in december in the mountains of north carolina so everything's wet nothing wants to dry out it's down the 30s right now you do not want to break the bottom of a pothole up when there's water in it and to truly fix a pothole in a gravel road you have got to break the bottom and the sides of that bowl shape up otherwise it's just gonna be like putting cheerios into a bowl and punching it cheerios are gonna fly out gravel is gonna fly out the fines if there's road bond every time somebody drives through it splashes and the fines come out and that's why usually in the bottom of a pothole if it's not mud it's just bare gravel there's no fines which is the grit that holds rhode bond together so now bare bones folks you can take your shovel and just flip this water out bear with me this video is going to be valuable to those who are in the beginning stages of trying to start a business with bare minimum tools i'm not going to use a shovel i've served my time doing that i'm going to use hurricane in a backpack [Applause] let's get trying to get dark on us quick so i'm gonna have to speed things up that worked pretty good didn't it so now what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna grab the tractor and i'm gonna put the rippers down on the box blade and i'm just gonna rip this pothole starting at the middle and work my way all the way across just breaking it up i don't really want to stir it up and cause mud also while i'm at it and this is good advice for anybody who's doing gravel driveway repairs anytime you have a big lip like this up high on the side of a driveway just go ahead and take your load or your box plate and break that off to the downhill side that way water can drain off the road and you don't have to use as much new material to build the road bed up to get it to dry for those of you guys who are new to the channel this is an everything attachments extreme severe duty box blade and the shanks on them are the real deal these things are bad to the bone they will rip up about anything [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] now let's get some road bond down so that's going to bring the road bed way higher than it needs to be to shed water off to the sides so the first pass i'm going to make with the box blade is straight down the middle to make it even and to cut it down a little bit and then the next two passes you'll see me go off to either side and i'll drop the tires off the sides that way it pinches the tractor to one side or the other and that way you'll have a crown in that road and that way when it does rain water is going to run off to the sides [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and that friends is how you fix potholes in a gravel road now if you were starting out with bare hand tools what i would have used is a pickaxe or a matic or something just to take my time bust up those potholes i would have went to the quarry got maybe two to three five gallon buckets of road bond filled those suckers up pack it in with whatever car you're driving easy 450 bucks all day long people hate potholes and they're willing to pay you to fix them so hopefully you guys got something out of that i'm sorry i didn't get to finish up on site a guy in a tractor trailer actually tried to get up that mountain where i was working at and it took me two hours and 45 minutes to get him back all the way down to the bottom of the mountain so i just wanted to give a special thank you to my viewers and subscribers you guys are amazing and you've helped me grow this channel faster than the average channel grows for the number of videos we just passed over 300 videos and i've had a really good time making them for you and as you know i am monetized so i make a little bit of money on views that i get so every view you guys view and every time you comment it helps me so i just wanted to show you what i've used a little bit of that money for and this is the gopro media mod it has a speaker system right here and on the back i'm not sure how this works on the side but i know for a fact i can select which speaker it uses and i can hook up external microphones right there and i should be able to plug a lapel mic in right there so when we're in the excavator i'm clipping on you guys can be first person and we can fix the sound issue i know i've had a lot of people commenting about not being able to hear me too well especially when i'm in a machine so i'm really hoping this helps so all the other audio from this video besides what i'm talking about here was done with the media mod modification um so drop it in the comments and don't think that your comment will not be read or they will not help me um because it will it will help me and it will help me be a better creator for you guys so this is it's really cool um like the gopro this is the back of it the gopro just slides in here and then it closes it's just it's a super cool little thing you know we can clip on like external lighting here and i can clip on like external microphones you know they plug in here but they have to have a place to clip in so i'm really excited about this you guys comment let me know how the audio quality is i hope it's better and i will continue to reinvest some of the funds that we make from youtube and being monetized to make these videos better for you i'd say i'll always use gopros because they're very small and they hold up like i i haven't had trouble with a damaged gopro they're just really tough i don't know how well this mod is gonna hold up but um i'm hopeful it seems really well built um and if you're a fellow youtuber um let me know your experiences with this and which microphone works best or what types of cameras you use but as far as my general viewers just tell me if you got something out of this video hopefully i gave you a little bit of guidance and those of you who are wanting to start an excavation grading that you're not afraid to start with these really small jobs that are very labor intensive because not all of us can afford to go right into it i do encourage you guys again to get a deposit at least then you know that the customer is serious about having you do the work and once you've got deposit in hand you've got some kind of funds to work with and depending on the big deposit you can get might depend on whether you got to use that shovel or you can just go rent a little mini excavator to make your life a lot easier and your back well thank you so thank you guys for watching i really do mean that from the bottom of my heart so it's 8 30 it's way past my time to put youtube down and be done working for the day it's time to be a family man thank you guys for watching hopefully you're having a great day i know i have and a big part of that is because of you thanks again we love you guys we'll see you on the next one

Channel: DigginLife21

Views: 194,381

Keywords: Easy Jobs To Start Your Excavation and Grading Small Business, how to repair potholes in gravel driveway the right way, how to repair potholes in gravel driveway videos, how to repair potholes in gravel driveway youtube, excavation business start up without money, excavation business start up without much money, business ideas that dont take a lot of money, business ideas that don't take a lot of money, easy startup business with no money, easy startup businesses that make money

Id: j5ERc1NtJIc

Length: 24min 8sec (1448 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020