How much does excavation cost in Middle Tennessee?

Residential excavation around Franklin runs about $100 to $250 an hour for a machine with an operator in 2026 national guides, and the average project lands near $4,000, with most between $1,700 and $6,700. Local published rates for Franklin run higher, $230 to $400 an hour. The dirt, the rock and the haul-off decide where your job lands in that range.

Those are market ranges from published guides, not our prices. Middle Tennessee adds two things every quote has to account for: clay that turns to soup when it is wet, and limestone that can sit two feet under the grass. Our excavation crew digs footers, basements, trenches, ponds and tear-outs across Williamson County with our own trucks hauling the spoil, and the numbers below are the ones that matter when you read a quote.

What does excavation cost per hour, per yard and per job?

An operated excavator runs $100 to $250 an hour nationally in 2026, and local pages for Nashville and Franklin list $180 to $400. Per cubic yard, simple cut and fill on site is $1 to $12, while full residential digging with the spoil hauled away is $50 to $200. Whole projects average about $4,000.

The local column comes from contractor feedback pages dated 2022, so it is a floor, not a current quote. The gap between the two per yard rows is the whole story of excavation pricing: pushing dirt around on site is cheap, and digging it out and trucking it away is not.

What do common excavation jobs cost?

In 2026 guides a new construction foundation dig runs $1,500 to $10,000 and a basement $5,000 to $15,000. Trenching is $5 to $12 per foot for standard utility runs, so 100 feet is $1,300 to $4,000. Pool digs average about $2,500. Driveway and patio tear-outs run $1,000 to $2,500.

A pool example shows how the per yard math works. A 16 by 32 foot pool at 6 feet average depth is about 114 cubic yards, which HomeAdvisor prices around $1,930 to dig in plain dirt. The same hole in rocky ground, at $40 to $100 per yard, is a different number entirely. Pads for houses, barns and shops follow the dig with compaction and grade, which is the site preparation side of the work.

What makes a Middle Tennessee dig cost more?

Rock, wet clay and haul distance. Rock adds $40 to $100 per cubic yard in 2026 guides, a rocky site adds 10 to 30 percent and clay soil 25 to 50 percent in two recent guides, and every yard of spoil that leaves costs $8 to $25 plus the truck time. In this county all three can show up on the same job.

The rock is not a rumor. USGS work near Brentwood found four limestone formations stacked under the surface, and the agency says soluble carbonate rock underlies most of Middle Tennessee. How deep it sits depends on which soil you stand on. NRCS describes Talbott soil, common across the Nashville Basin, as clay over limestone at 20 to 40 inches. Mimosa and Hampshire soils reach rock at 40 to 60 inches, and Hampshire runs 35 to 55 percent clay. Maury and Armour soils, the deep terraces around Franklin (Armour’s reference site is one mile north of town on US-31), run more than five feet to rock. A footing or basement dig on Talbott ground can hit limestone. On an Armour terrace it usually will not.

The water is the other cost. Nashville averages 50.51 inches of rain a year, and May is the wettest month at just over 5 inches, with March and April close behind. Wet clay pumps under a machine, sticks in the bucket and weighs more in the truck, so spring digs go slower than the same dig in October. Where the dirt goes matters too. Spoil swells when it comes out of the ground, and a Franklin page lists haul-off at $400 to $600 or more per truckload. Spoil leaves on our own dump trucks as the machine loads it, and where the plan has a place for it, a pad or a low spot or a berm, we put it to work on site instead of hauling it, which saves money on both ends. Steep slopes and tight access push the number up too; one guide adds 75 to 200 percent for steep ground, and a tight backyard means a compact machine and more hours.

Do you need a permit to dig in Williamson County?

Everyone needs an 811 locate, at least three working days before digging, and it is free. Beyond that, unincorporated Williamson County requires a Land Disturbance Permit above one acre of disturbance, with a $150 per lot fee, and the state’s construction stormwater permit starts at one acre too. Inside Franklin the grading permit trigger is 10,000 square feet.

The 811 rule is state law. Tennessee’s Underground Utility Damage Prevention Act requires notice at least three working days and no more than ten before any excavation, the ticket is good for 15 calendar days, and the penalty for skipping it can reach $10,000 per incident. The hand tool exception for owners on their own property does not cover a rented trencher or a mini excavator.

Above one acre, or for any lot inside a larger development plan, the state’s Construction General Permit applies, and its paperwork goes in about 30 days ahead with no digging until the notice of coverage comes back. Williamson County’s stormwater regulations require a Land Disturbance Permit at the same one acre line, good for two years, at $150 per residential lot, and the county’s own policy says an individual lot under one acre with under 10,000 square feet of new hard surface only needs a stormwater guidelines form and a site plan. Skipping the permit on a single lot is a $1,000 fine per occurrence. Rutherford County runs its own permit above one acre, valid 18 months, with farm use exempt. Franklin and Brentwood have their own city thresholds, and our Williamson County permits guide walks through them.

How do you read an excavation quote?

A good quote names the volume or the hours, the haul-off, the rock allowance, and what happens if the ground is not what the estimate assumed. The cheap number is the machine. The expensive surprises are rock, water and where the dirt goes, so ask about all three before anything mobilizes.

Our version starts with a free site visit. We look at the ground, say what is likely under it based on the soil and what nearby digs have hit, and quote the dig and the haul-off in writing with the rock risk in the open. If rock shows up mid-dig, you hear about it that day with options and numbers. And because the same company does the grade work that follows the dig, the sequence runs on one schedule: clear, dig, grade, haul. Two guides worth reading before you call are what yard grading and drainage cost and fill dirt vs topsoil, since the spoil from a dig is often the fill for the next job.

If you want a number for a footer, a basement, a trench or a pond in Williamson or Rutherford County, the site visit is free. Call (615) 599-7550 or use the contact page.