By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does dry hire feel simpler but wet hire feel like where the real money is?
Dry hire feels simpler because there is no wage, no fuel bill, and no responsibility for what the machine does once it leaves the yard. Wet hire feels like the real money because the day rate is higher and the contractor's own operator is working every hour on site. Both are feelings, not numbers, and feelings are usually built from the last good week rather than this month's figures.
Most earthmoving contractors start out doing dry hire almost without deciding to: an excavator or bobcat goes out on site, the civil contractor or builder runs their own operator, and the invoice is machine hours times a rate. Wet hire grows from there, often because a customer asks for it, not because anyone worked out which one actually pays.
Neither feels wrong at the time. The problem is that feel is not the same as margin, and most owners are comparing the two from memory of a good week rather than from what each type of hire actually leaves after costs.
What does the gross profit margin on a dry hire job actually show against a wet hire job?
The number that settles the argument is the gross profit margin each job type leaves once fuel, the operator's time, servicing and the float are counted against what was charged, not the rate quoted on the day. A dry hire excavator earning a steady rate with no running costs can out earn a wet hire job that looked busy but ate its margin in diesel and breakdowns.
This is where the symptom and the cause usually come apart. An earthmoving contractor feeling like wet hire is where the real money is might be looking at turnover, not profit. A site cut that ran long because of a wet day, or a drainage job where an attachment had to be swapped twice, can turn a good day rate into a thin one by the time the machine is cleaned, fuelled and parked. The gross profit margin on that job, tracked separately for dry hire and wet hire, is what tells the truth that memory cannot.
How do you actually find out which one is making you money?
You find out by looking at gross profit margin job by job and hire type by hire type, not by comparing turnover at the end of the month. That means setting the real cost of every wet hire day, fuel, wages, servicing, breakdown time, against what was invoiced, and doing the same for every dry hire job against its machine hours.
Once you see it that way, the picture often moves. A tipper on dry hire might be quietly carrying the business while a wet hire excavator job, the one that feels like the flagship work, is the one dragging the average down. You cannot fix what you cannot see, and guessing from the last good week is not the same as checking this week's numbers.
This is what data first means for an earthmoving contractor: the decision about where to put the next excavator, the next operator, or the next tipping fee negotiation comes from what your own job data says this month, not from a feeling about which type of work felt busier.
What changes when AI agents take over tracking this for you?
An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would do it yourself, following your prices, your wording and your rules, except it does it every time without being asked. For an earthmoving contractor, that means an agent can sit across every dry hire and wet hire job as it closes out, matching fuel, servicing and operator time against the invoice, and flagging the jobs where the margin has slipped.
That work rarely gets done by hand because it is not billable and there is always a site cut, a trenching job or a rock breaking job pulling attention somewhere else. AI agents taking it on does not replace you making the call on whether to chase more wet hire work or grow the dry hire fleet. It means the call gets made from the actual numbers this month, not from the last job that went well or badly.
Should you be chasing more wet hire work or building up the dry hire fleet?
There is no single right answer for every earthmoving business, and the data usually shows a mix rather than a clean winner. Some civil and builder customers want wet hire because they do not want to manage an operator; some want dry hire because they already run their own crew and just need the plant.
The right mix for your business is the one your own gross profit margin points to, job type by job type, customer by customer. An earthmoving contractor with a reliable operator and a low breakdown history might find wet hire consistently pays better once fuel and wages are covered. Another, carrying older plant with heavier servicing costs, might find dry hire is where the real margin sits. Neither is wrong; the numbers for that business are what decide it.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts by looking at what your own dry hire and wet hire jobs have actually left behind in gross profit margin, not at which one feels busier or which one the owner prefers running. The Trade Business Intelligence reads that job and finance data alongside ten years of coaching earthmoving and other trade businesses to find where the margin is really being lost, whether that is in fuel, servicing, float time or pricing.
From there the how, which agents to build, which jobs to track differently, which hire type to grow, is worked through inside the Academy with members. The Academy is for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn, because the Trade Business Intelligence gets smarter for every member as every member feeds it.
