Cutline Earthmoving · Drayton Flats & Mowe Prairie · mass-haul arithmetic since 1988
Dirt is a math problem. We grade to the answer.
Cutline Earthmoving prices earthwork by the yard that has to move, not the yard that is convenient to move — a cut-and-fill balance on every quote, haul counted before it is driven, and compaction tested on every lift. The figures lead the page because they lead ours.
What we move
Three trades, counted first
Basements & footings
Benched to the tables, cut to stake line within half an inch, backfill placed in eight-inch lifts at 95 percent standard Proctor. Cubic yards are counted from the model, not from truck tickets — and the difference is on the quote.
Road beds & parking grades
Two-lift aggregate base, crowns and falls cut to drain, structural sections compacted and proof-rolled before the paving crew is allowed on. Balancing a road cut is where the haul math pays for itself twice.
Ponds, berms & stormwater basins
Cores keyed and packed in six-inch lifts, spillways to the hundred-year line, risers and racks set to the permit drawing. A pond is earthwork with a grading inspector — we build for both audiences.
Mass haul
The balance is the product
Any excavator can move dirt; the money is in not moving it twice. A cut-and-fill balance sequences your site so fill comes from your own cut, and the quote shows the diagram — where every yard starts, where it ends, and the forty loads that never left. If the balance misses and trucks run anyway, the overage is ours. That is what arithmetic confidence means.
Trench country
Rock, located before it is hit
Every trench line is swept and the 811 ticket filed 72 hours ahead; private lines get walked with you and flagged by hand. Where the Prairie shelf starts, the hammer quote goes on before the chipping does — a stated hourly rate, vased walls, bedding stone, and a rock log per metre that closes with the density record. The trench you can see into is the trench that lands on budget.
How the math goes
From soils report to balanced site
Pull the model
Drone survey, plan quantities, soils pulled where the story is unclear. The ground gets read before it gets priced.
Balance the mass
Cut matched to fill yard for yard; the haul diagram decides sequence, machine and price — in that order.
Locate & stake
Tickets filed, private lines walked, hubs set to the model. Nothing underground is discovered by a bucket.
Move once
Cuts feed fills across the site in sequence; every structural lift placed at eight inches, tested, then the next.
Close the count
As-built quantities against the model, density log bound, and the yards we quoted are the yards on the invoice.
2025 — 2026
Counted, cut, closed
The only earthwork bid I have ever seen with a mass-haul diagram printed on it. Their number was not the lowest — it was the only one that survived the job. Final invoice landed within one percent of quote, on sixty-one thousand yards.
We had two acres of slope and three bids separated by forty thousand dollars with no explanation. Cutline showed us where every yard would move and why two of the bids were fantasies. Ours came in on the number, and the berm they built from our own cut deleted the landscaping line item outright.
In writing
The arithmetic guarantee
If the balance misses, the haul is ours
If a site we balanced produces spoils that must leave, or fill that must arrive, past the diagram on the quote — those truck hours belong to Cutline, not to you. Six seasons, one invocation, on a job where the soils report lied. We paid the trucks and told the geotech.
Asked across the desk
Why does a balanced site matter to me?
Because trucks are the most expensive wheel on any job. Balancing typically deletes a third of the haul on a normal site, keeps your lanes and your neighbours out of the mud calendar, and turns somebody else’s fill cost into your backfill. The diagram on the quote is the whole argument.
What if my site cannot balance?
Some cannot — a swamp fill wants import, a hilltop cut wants export. Then the quote says so plainly: yards in, yards out, haul rate, disposal receipts. What never happens is the hole getting deeper while the number quietly follows it.
How do you count the yards?
The drone flies before and after; the model integrates the difference. Truck tickets still exist, but they check the model — not the other way around — and the as-built quantities go to your engineer with the density log.
Do you handle the utility locates?
We file the 811 ticket and walk your private lines with you before any trench opens — well, septic, invisible fence, the gas line somebody remembers in June. The locate numbers ride on the job sheet and in the closure report both.
Earthwork for the coming season prices all winter · (555) 035-9127 · balance@cutlineearth.example
Bring the parcel, get the diagram
A parcel number and a rough scope is enough to start. We fly it, model it, and come back with a cut-and-fill balance your other bids can be checked against. balance@cutlineearth.example
Office seven to five · walks inside a week · balance@cutlineearth.example