Excavation Cost in Portland, OR: 2026 Price Guide

Excavation cost in Portland, OR runs $100 to $300 per hour for an excavator and operator, $2.50 to $15.00 per cubic yard to dig ordinary soil, and $5 to $40 per linear foot for most trenches before any pipe goes in. Excavation is the digging, loading, and hauling of soil and rock to make room for foundations, utilities, roads, and graded building sites. Contractors price small jobs by the hour, bulk earthwork by the cubic yard, and utility runs by the foot.

The digging is usually the smaller part of the bill. Where the dirt goes after it leaves the hole, how deep the cut runs, and whether the work happens in January or August move a Portland excavation bid more than the hourly rate does. Our crews dig foundations, utility trenches, and commercial building pads across the metro area. This guide covers each pricing unit, the local conditions that push it up or down, and how to compare bids line by line.

Portland Excavation Cost at a Glance

Each pricing unit fits a different kind of job. These are the ranges to expect on Portland metro bids in 2026.

Pricing unit	Typical Portland metro range	Where it gets used
Excavator and operator, per hour	$100 to $300	Small digs, repairs, and jobs with unknown ground
Operator only, per hour	$50 to $150	Owner supplied or rented equipment
Minimum charge	$500 to $800, often a full 8 hour day	Jobs small enough to finish in a few hours
Digging ordinary soil, per cubic yard	$2.50 to $15.00	Foundations, basements, ponds, and pads
Bulk earthwork, per cubic yard moved	$4 to $12	Commercial cut and fill and mass excavation
Breaking and removing rock, per cubic yard	$50 to $200 or more	Bedrock and large boulders
Hauling soil off site, per cubic yard	$8 to $25, plus dump fees	Any job where the spoil cannot stay
Shallow trench in open soil, per linear foot	$5 to $12	Conduit, irrigation, and low voltage lines
Trench in hard or obstructed ground, per linear foot	$13 to $40	Clay, roots, cobble, and tight access
Sewer lateral replacement, open cut, per linear foot	$50 to $200	Pipe, trench, and backfill together

The hourly and per yard figures pay for the machine and the operator. Trucking, dump fees, imported rock, shoring, permits, and surface restoration are separate lines on most Portland bids. On a job that exports soil, those lines can add up to more than the digging.

Have plans or a rough scope ready? Request a proposal and we will walk the site and price each line separately.

Excavation Cost Per Hour in Portland

An excavator with an operator costs $100 to $300 per hour in the Portland metro area. Mini excavators, backhoes, and skid steers sit in the lower half of that range. Full size excavators sit in the upper half, and they finish bulk work in fewer hours.

Hiring an operator without equipment costs $50 to $150 per hour, and renting a mini excavator without an operator costs $200 to $700 per day. Most contractors charge a minimum of $500 to $800 or a full eight hour day. Getting a machine to the site takes the same effort for a two hour job as for a two week job.

These items change the hourly number on a Portland bid:

• Mobilization. Larger excavators travel on a heavy haul trailer, and the trip to and from the site is billed as its own line.
• Trucking. A dump truck and driver bill by the hour or by the load, separate from the excavator.
• Prevailing wage. Oregon public works projects over $50,000 that use public funds pay wage rates set by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. The rates vary by trade and county, and they raise the labor share of every hour.
• Traffic control. Work in a street needs flaggers or a lane closure plan, priced by the hour or the day.
• Off hours work. Night and weekend shifts, common on busy commercial sites and arterials, carry a premium.

Public works contracts add costs of their own. On the Southwood Park ADA ramp project for Clackamas County, the contract required Oregon prevailing wage and bonding. It also set lane closure penalties of $500 per 15 minutes and $700 a day in liquidated damages for late completion. Terms like those shape a public works price as much as the digging does.

Excavation Cost Per Cubic Yard

Digging ordinary soil costs $2.50 to $15.00 per cubic yard, and the soil type decides where a job falls in that range. Breaking rock with a hydraulic hammer costs $50 to $200 or more per cubic yard.

Soil or material	Cost per cubic yard to dig
Light, loose soil	$2.50 to $6.00
Average soil	$6.00 to $10.00
Heavy or wet soil, or loose rock	$10.00 to $15.00
Rock that has to be broken	$50 to $200 or more

Much of the Portland metro digs like heavy, wet soil for most of the year. Wet clay and silt stick to the bucket, slow every load, and add hours to the job.

Commercial earthwork prices a little differently. Bulk cut and fill on a building site in the Portland market typically runs $4 to $12 per cubic yard moved, and haul distance decides most of that spread. A site where the cut balances the fill stays near the bottom. A site that exports unsuitable soil and imports structural rock runs past the top. Our mass excavation and earthwork crews price that work from the grading plan.

Bank Yards and Truck Yards

Soil grows when it comes out of the ground. A cubic yard measured in place is a bank cubic yard, and once it breaks apart in the truck it becomes more than one loose cubic yard. Caterpillar’s earthwork tables list a load factor of 0.80 for wet clay, so every bank yard leaves the hole as about 1.25 loose yards. Sand and gravel swell less, at about 1.12 loose yards per bank yard.

The gap matters because digging is priced in bank yards and hauling is priced in truck yards. A 30 by 40 foot basement dug 8 feet deep holds about 356 bank cubic yards. In wet clay that becomes about 445 loose yards, or 32 to 45 loads in a 10 to 14 yard dump truck. Ask every bidder which yards their price uses.

Trenching Cost Per Linear Foot

Trenching in open soil costs $5 to $12 per linear foot, so a 100 foot trench for conduit or a water service runs about $500 to $1,200. Hard ground, roots, cobble, buried debris, or tight access push the price to $13 to $40 per linear foot. Pipe, bedding, and surface restoration come on top of those figures.

Trench work	Typical cost per linear foot
Shallow trench in open soil	$5 to $12
Trench in hard or obstructed ground	$13 to $40
Gas line, trenched and installed	$15 to $50
Water line, trenched and installed	$30 to $50
Sewer lateral replacement, open cut, Portland	$50 to $200
Digging along a foundation for repair or waterproofing	$100 to $250

Sewer work has its own guide. Our Portland sewer line replacement cost guide covers per foot rates by method, City permit fees, and restoration.

How Depth Changes the Price of a Trench

Every extra foot of depth adds dirt to dig, haul, and replace, and at 5 feet the safety rules add cave-in protection. Under OSHA 29 CFR 1926.652, a trench 5 feet deep or more needs a trench box, shoring, or sloped walls unless it is cut entirely in stable rock. Oregon OSHA adopts the same rule for work in this state. A shallower trench can go without protection only after a competent person has examined the ground and found no sign of a cave-in.

Sloping is the cheapest protection to set up and the most expensive in dirt. OSHA’s slope table allows a 3/4 to 1 slope in Type A soil, the strongest class. Type C soil, the weakest class, can be sloped no steeper than 1.5 to 1, and it includes gravel, sand, and any soil with water seeping out of it.

Trench, 100 feet long	Bank cubic yards	Loose yards to haul if exported	Cave-in protection
18 inches wide, 2 feet deep	11	14	Required unless a competent person finds no cave-in hazard
2 feet wide, 4 feet deep	30	37	Required unless a competent person finds no cave-in hazard
4 feet wide, 6 feet deep, inside a trench box	89	111	Required, provided by the box
4 foot bottom, 6 feet deep, sloped 1.5 to 1	289	361	Required, provided by the slope
4 feet wide, 10 feet deep, inside a trench box	148	185	Required, provided by the box

Loose yards in the table assume wet clay at 1.25 loose yards per bank yard. The sloped 6 foot trench moves more than three times the soil of the same trench dug inside a box, and it opens a cut 22 feet wide at the surface. On a tight lot or in a street, a box is often the only option that fits.

Our utility trenching crews set trench shields on deep runs to keep the cut narrow. Trenches 5 feet and deeper are usually priced from the plan sheets, because protection, pumping water, and backfill specs drive the number more than footage does.

What Moves Excavation Cost in the Portland Metro

Two sites with the same dimensions can get bids thousands of dollars apart. These local conditions explain most of the gap.

Haul Distance and Dump Fees

National cost guides put hauling excavated dirt at $8 to $25 per cubic yard. In the Portland metro, the dump fee alone can run higher than that. One Portland area landscape supply yard charges $36 per cubic yard to take dirt, gravel, and sand. It charges $25 per cubic yard for rock, concrete, and asphalt, and the truck that brings the load is paid for separately.

Clean soil that a nearby project can use as fill sometimes leaves for the cost of trucking alone. Soil that fails Oregon DEQ’s clean fill criteria has to go to a permitted landfill or another DEQ approved site, which costs more and usually requires lab testing first. On older commercial and industrial sites, test the soil before digging so the disposal price is known before the first truck leaves.

Travel time sets the trucking cost. A truck that spends an hour on I-205 or Highway 26 between the site and the drop bills for that hour. The same yard of dirt costs more to haul from a site far from the nearest dump.

The Wet Season

Portland International Airport averages 36.91 inches of precipitation a year, and 30.21 inches of it falls between October and April, according to National Weather Service climate normals. July and August together average about an inch. Earthwork prices follow that calendar.

From October 1 through April 30, the City of Portland adds wet weather erosion control rules. Bare soil has to be stabilized within two days of disturbance. The site’s erosion control manager has to inspect at least weekly and within 24 hours of any rain over half an inch. Ground disturbance is barred during those months in the environmental zones of the Balch Creek and Forest Park subdistricts.

Wet ground also raises the price of the dig itself. Silt and clay dug in winter often hold too much water to compact back into a trench or under a slab. The native soil leaves on a truck and crushed rock comes in to replace it, so the same hole gets paid for twice. When a schedule allows, we move mass grading into the dry months.

Ground Conditions

The Missoula Floods left large sand and gravel bar deposits across the Portland basin, and many valley floor sites dig through those sands, gravels, and cobbles. Cobble slows production, and loose sand and gravel count as Type C soil under OSHA, which calls for the flattest slopes or a trench box.

The West Hills are mantled in wind-blown silt, and the U.S. Geological Survey records hundreds of landslides there from a single February 1996 storm. Hillside cuts in that silt take more planning and more protection in the wet season. Rock shows up in pockets across the metro area, and breaking it moves a yard from the $10 range into the $50 to $200 range. Our guide to hydro excavation covers local ground conditions in more detail.

Permits and Erosion Control

The City of Portland requires a site development permit for earthwork, excavation, or fill over 10 cubic yards, which covers almost any foundation or building pad. Work in the street needs a street opening permit. A street paved within the last five years also carries extra pavement restoration, which our hydrovac vs traditional excavation cost comparison covers in detail. Projects that disturb an acre or more also need coverage under Oregon DEQ’s 1200-C construction stormwater permit.

Every dig starts with a locate request. Oregon requires excavators to notify the Oregon Utility Notification Center at least two full business days and no more than 10 full business days before work starts. Clearing trees from a development site has its own City fees, which our land clearing cost guide breaks down.

Buried Utilities and Surface Restoration

Crowded utility corridors slow a machine down. Oregon requires hand tools or other non-invasive methods within 24 inches of a marked line, so crossings get exposed by hand or by hydrovac before the excavator digs through. On the Multnomah County B425 project for Christenson Electric, we trenched about 100 feet at depths of 3 to 6 feet at an active county building. We used hydrovac wherever the live lines were congested. Our guide to how deep utility lines are buried covers the depths to expect.

Putting the surface back often costs more than owners expect. On a storm line repair in Beaverton, we replaced 125 feet of failed storm pipe and patched asphalt and sidewalk to City specifications. The right of way inspector added a 4 by 5 foot sidewalk panel during the job. Restoration is priced separately on most bids, and rebuilding a driveway alone runs $2,000 to $4,000.

A Portland Building Pad Priced Three Ways

Here is one scope run three ways. A 10,000 square foot building pad needs 2 feet of soft soil removed before structural rock goes in. That is about 741 bank cubic yards, which loads out as about 926 loose yards in wet clay, or 67 to 93 truckloads.

The figures assume wet clay at 1.25 loose yards per bank yard and the $4 to $12 bulk earthwork rate. Hauling uses the national range of $8 to $25 per yard, and the dump fee uses the $36 per yard dirt rate one Portland area yard posts.

Line item	Spoil placed elsewhere on site	Exported, no dump fee	Exported to a paid dump
Dig and load, 741 bank yards	$3,000 to $8,900	$3,000 to $8,900	$3,000 to $8,900
Hauling, 926 loose yards	None	$7,400 to $23,200	$7,400 to $23,200
Dump fee, 926 loose yards	None	None	$33,300
Total before replacement rock	$3,000 to $8,900	$10,400 to $32,100	$43,700 to $65,400

The digging line is the same in every column. Sending every yard to a paid dump adds $40,700 to $56,500 to the same pad.

That is why we look for places the soil can stay before we price an export. Landscape berms, fill areas elsewhere on the plan, and nearby projects that need fill all qualify. The site preparation and grading work that balances a site often saves more than any change in the hourly rate. Replacing the removed soil with crushed rock is a separate line, priced by the quarry and the haul.

How to Compare Excavation Bids

Excavation bids for the same scope often arrive far apart because each contractor assumes something different about the dirt. Check these items before comparing totals.

• Pricing unit. Confirm whether the price is per hour, per bank yard, per loose yard, or per foot, and convert every bid to the same unit.
• Haul and disposal. Ask where the spoil goes, who pays the dump fee, and whether the bid assumes clean soil.
• Import. Find out whether replacement rock or backfill is included, and to what compaction standard.
• Cave-in protection. Any trench 5 feet or deeper needs a box, shoring, or slopes. Ask which one the bid assumes.
• Water. Ask whether the price covers pumping groundwater or rain out of the excavation.
• Season. A bid written for August ground can change in January. Ask what the price does if the work slips into the wet season.
• Permits and erosion control. Confirm who pulls the site development permit and who installs and inspects erosion control.
• Restoration. Ask who puts back asphalt, concrete, and landscaping, and to what standard.
• Locates and potholing. Confirm who exposes marked utilities before the machine digs near them.

Get an Excavation Estimate in Portland

Angelo Underground handles construction excavation, utility trenching, mass excavation, and site preparation for commercial, municipal, and residential projects across the Portland metro area. We hold Oregon CCB license 243015, and we are a PGE Approved Contractor and an Avetta Consortium member. We are also Public Works and ODOT certified, which qualifies us for utility and agency packages.

Our construction excavation page covers equipment, scheduling, and service area. For jobs near live utilities, our hydrovac excavation and potholing crews expose crossings before the machines arrive. Request a proposal and we will price your scope by the hour, the yard, or the foot, whichever fits the job.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does excavation cost per hour in Portland, OR?

An excavator and operator cost $100 to $300 per hour in the Portland metro area, and an operator alone costs $50 to $150 per hour. Most contractors also charge a minimum of $500 to $800 or a full eight hour day. Trucking, dump fees, and moving larger machines to the site are usually billed on top of the hourly rate.

How much does excavation cost per cubic yard?

Digging ordinary soil costs $2.50 to $15.00 per cubic yard, and breaking rock costs $50 to $200 or more per cubic yard. Bulk cut and fill on a commercial site in the Portland market runs about $4 to $12 per cubic yard moved. Hauling the soil away adds $8 to $25 per cubic yard nationally, and Portland dump fees can add more, such as the $36 per cubic yard one Portland area yard charges for dirt.

How much does it cost to dig a 100 foot trench?

A 100 foot trench in open soil costs about $500 to $1,200, based on $5 to $12 per linear foot. Hard ground, roots, cobble, or tight access raise that to $1,300 to $4,000. A trench with pipe installed costs more, and a 100 foot open cut sewer lateral in Portland runs $5,000 to $20,000 at $50 to $200 per foot.

Why is excavation so expensive?

Moving and disposing of the soil usually costs more than digging it. Wet clay swells by about 25 percent when it comes out of the ground, and every truckload pays for trucking and often a dump fee. Trenches 5 feet and deeper also need a trench box, shoring, or sloped walls, and permits, erosion control, and restoration add to the total.

How do you calculate excavation cost?

Multiply the length, width, and depth in feet and divide by 27 to get bank cubic yards. Multiply that by the soil’s swell factor, about 1.25 for wet clay, to get the loose yards that have to be hauled. Price the digging per bank yard, price trucking and dump fees per loose yard, and add cave-in protection, permits, imported backfill, and restoration.

Do you need a permit to excavate in Portland?

Most excavation in Portland needs a permit. The City requires a site development permit for earthwork, excavation, or fill over 10 cubic yards, and work in the street needs a street opening permit. Projects that disturb an acre or more need Oregon DEQ 1200-C stormwater coverage, and every dig needs a locate request to the Oregon Utility Notification Center at least two full business days ahead.

When is the cheapest time of year to excavate in Portland?

Summer is usually the cheapest time to excavate in Portland. The City’s extra wet weather erosion rules run from October 1 through April 30, and Portland International Airport averages 30.21 of its 36.91 annual inches of precipitation in those months. Winter digging is possible, and it usually costs more for erosion control, pumping water, and replacing wet native soil with crushed rock.