We dig, you install
Plenty of good tradesmen do not own an excavator and have no interest in owning one. If that is you, this page is the part that usually takes three phone calls to establish: what we actually do, who decides what, and how the job gets billed.
JWSR works as the excavation crew for other trades across northern New Jersey. The installing trade sets the trench depth and width, JWSR files the 811 notice, which New Jersey requires not less than three business days and not more than 10 before digging, and JWSR backfills in lifts and restores the surface afterwards. Certificates of insurance are provided on request, and billing can run either direct to the customer or through the trade, agreed before the job starts.
The six questions worth settling first
Do you dig and leave, or do you finish?
We finish. Open the trench, hold it while you install, then backfill in lifts and put the surface back. On a driveway that means compacting every three inches of elevation before repaving, because a trench backfilled in one go settles and leaves a shallow trough along the line a year later. If you only want the hole and your own crew is handling the rest, that is fine too, but say so up front so it is priced that way.
Who decides the trench depth?
You do, with the inspector. It is your installation and your code, and we are not going to tell an electrician how deep their conduit belongs. Tell us the depth and the width you need and we will give you that, including where it has to change along the run. If your spec and what we find in the ground disagree, we stop and call you rather than guessing.
Who calls 811?
Whoever is running the machine, which is us. New Jersey requires notice not less than three business days and not more than 10 before excavation, and business days exclude weekends and holidays, so a Monday call is not clear until Friday. That timing is the single most common reason a trade partner's schedule slips, so tell us as early as you can, even if the date is soft. The ticket costs nothing and it can be filed well ahead of the work.
Can I get a certificate of insurance?
Yes, and you should not have to ask twice. General liability, commercial auto and workers compensation, with certificates sent for your project file on request.
Who invoices the customer?
Either way works, and it is worth settling before the job. On water service work we usually invoice the homeowner and pay the licensed plumber directly, because the excavation is the larger cost and one bill is simpler for the customer than two. If you would rather carry the whole job and sub the digging to us, we will bill you instead. What we will not do is get between you and your customer.
What if it will not trench?
Then we bore, and we tell you before we start what happens if the bore does not go. Rock is the usual reason it does not: a boring head that meets a shale ledge rides up rather than cutting through. When that is a real possibility we price the open cut as a separate what-if line so nobody is renegotiating in front of your customer with the ground already open.
Who we do this for
Electricians
Service upgrades, generator feeds, detached garages, barns, pool equipment and site lighting. We open the trench to your depth, you lay the conduit, we backfill and restore. One thing worth knowing before you plan a shared trench: New Jersey specifies separation between sanitary sewers and water mains at 10 feet horizontally, or separate trenches with the sewer at least 18 inches below the water main, so a single trench for everything is often not on the table.
Plumbers
You make the connection, we do the dig. This is the arrangement the code actually contemplates: plumbing work may not be undertaken except by someone licensed to perform it, and your seal goes on the subcode application. We are there in support, with the machine, the trench and the restoration, and on the emergency ones we wait on site while you work so the hole is closed the same day. More below, because plumbers are most of this page's phone calls.
Generator installers
Pad excavation and the trench runs that come with it, gas and electric, on a schedule that lines up with your install date rather than fighting it.
Pool builders
Excavation, spoil handling and access. Spoil is usually the thing that decides the price, because a site a truck can back up to and a site with a single gate on a slope are not the same job.
General contractors
Site prep, dig-outs, trenching, backfill and grading on your schedule. More on that on our contractor page.
Fiber and telecom builders
Conduit, boring, plowing, drops and restoration. We have placed more than 470,000 feet of conduit, and that has its own page.
To the plumbers specifically: the customer stays yours
We know why some of you hesitate to bring in a dig crew that also runs its own sewer and water jobs. So here it is in writing. A customer who comes to us through you is your customer. We do not quote them work behind you, we do not market to them afterwards, and when they call us directly the next time their plumbing acts up, we tell them to call you. We want your next fifty digs, not one stolen customer, and everyone in this county talks.
The usual shape: your camera found the break, the homeowner is standing next to you, and the question is how fast the ground can be open. Call from the driveway. We have opened trenches the same day on emergencies. New Jersey’s One Call rules carry an emergency provision (N.J.A.C. 14:2-3.6) for conditions endangering life, health or property, so a genuine emergency does not always sit through the three day markout wait, and we handle that call and its paperwork rather than leaving it with you. Then we stay on site while you make the repair, so it is one visit for the customer instead of two mobilizations. A root intrusion job in Bernardsville is what that looks like when it goes right: the plumber called it in, we dug it, waited, backfilled, compacted, seeded and hayed it.
Two more things plumbers use us for. When a buyer’s sewer scope comes back bad and your customer needs a digging price to negotiate with, we read the footage and put a real number on it fast, under your name or ours, whichever serves you. And where the line runs under something nobody wants opened, we own the boring equipment too, so the answer does not have to change because a driveway is in the way.
Longer-term and larger-scale work sits on our contractor and utility page, fiber has its own on fiber construction, and if you are buying on behalf of a municipality the rules are different again: how a NJ town hires a contractor.
What the digging costs is on what this work costs, including trenching by the foot and boring by the foot, and the boring detail is on directional boring. Two worked examples: a routine job run exactly this way in an HOA sewer repair in Bernardsville, and a bore that did not go in why we could not bore this driveway.
Need a dig crew for your install?
Call 862-268-2510. Tell us the depth, the run and the date, and we will tell you straight whether we can hit it.
Call 862-268-2510