How One Excavation Contractor Closed Over $140,000 in Deals on $35 a Day
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.
Author: Brady Carlson | Co-Founder of Dirt2Dollars
Published Date: 29 June, 2026
“We’ve been running at $35 in ad spend this whole time, which is crazy.”
That’s a direct quote from one of our excavation clients, and he’s right. It is crazy. On about a dollar an hour in ad spend, he’s closed over $140,000 in signed deals, and the biggest job on his list could still double or triple from here. Here’s exactly how it played out, in his own words.
Watch the full breakdown here:
We Told Him to Spend More. He Never Had To.
When we launch a campaign, we usually recommend a bigger daily budget to give it room to scale. He ran less than half of what we suggested and never bumped it up once. He didn’t need to.
In his words: “You recommended more and I was like, I don’t know. They just kept coming.” The appointments kept landing at a budget most people would call too small to bother with. That’s what a dialed-in campaign does. It isn’t about how much you throw at it. It’s about putting the right offer in front of the right property owners in your area.
The Jobs That Actually Closed
Let’s walk the board.
A $70,000 job wrapping up this week, straight off one of the campaigns. Done, closed, in the books.
A $20,000 job right next door to where he was working. A woman called him and said, “I saw your advertisement.” He drove out, sold it, and walked away with a deposit and a signed contract. That’s the part most people miss. The ads don’t only deliver the appointment you booked. They make you visible to everyone nearby who’s been sitting on a project, waiting for a reason to call someone.
And then there’s the big one.
One Appointment, a Snowball of Work
One booked appointment turned into an $80,000 job, sold and signed, a month of work on its own. But it is not staying $80,000.
It started as five acres of clearing. Then it grew. His engineer is now designing a new septic for the store on the property. The owner is putting up a barn, so that’s a second septic. He’s also building a house on the cleared land, which means the dirt work, the driveway, and a third septic on top of that.
Three septics, the clearing, the dirt work, and a driveway, all spinning out of a single appointment. His own estimate is that it could turn into a couple hundred thousand dollars over the next few months. Call it $200,000 to $300,000 in work from one opportunity.
That is the real value of a single qualified appointment. The booked job is just the front door. What’s behind it can be months of work and repeat business you never had to chase.
He Almost Didn’t Believe It Would Work
I asked him if he expected things to go like this when he started. Off pure gut? No. He wasn’t sure at all. So what tipped him into trying it?
The reviews. He told me he was less skeptical than his wife “because I was the one that saw all the reviews.”
Sit with that for a second if you’re on the fence right now. A skeptical excavation contractor, running a small budget, half-expecting it to flop, is now past six figures in closed deals and telling me, flat out, “I definitely want to keep it going.”
What This Actually Is
None of this is luck, and none of it is a fluke budget. It’s an exclusive, qualified appointment system pointed at real property owners in his market. No shared leads. No bidding wars. No tire kickers. Just confirmed on-site appointments with people who have real projects, booked onto his calendar, at an ad budget he barely felt.
We’ve generated over $42 million in estimates running exactly this for land clearing and excavation contractors across the country. This guy is one contractor, on one lean campaign, already over $140,000 closed with a job that could triple.
If you want to see what this could look like in your market, let’s talk.
👉 Book a Demo Call: https://link.toolboxx.co/widget/bookings/intro-blogs
