By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does a site cut look fine on the quote but thin on the bank statement?
Most earthmoving contractors can rattle off their dry hire rate, their wet hire rate and their tipping fee without blinking. What they usually can't say is how many of the machine hours on that job were actually billable once everything else is counted. A site cut or a trenching job can be quoted tight and still bleed margin on the ground, and the owner often doesn't find out until the job is closed and the numbers don't add up.
The gap sits in the hours nobody puts on the invoice. Floating the excavator between sites, waiting on a tip run, a rock breaking delay, the bobcat sitting idle while an attachment gets swapped, a breakdown that eats an afternoon, a wet day that stands the whole crew down. None of that time disappears. It still costs fuel, servicing, operator wages and plant finance. It just never gets billed, which means the gross profit margin that looked solid on the quote is already smaller before the invoice is even raised.
Why does this stay invisible to the owner running the business?
The reason this blind spot survives isn't a lack of intelligence, it's a lack of time. An earthmoving contractor is out quoting the next civil job, fielding calls from a builder about drainage work, sorting a breakdown on site and still trying to keep an operator rostered on bulk earthworks. Sitting down to work out what last week's wet hire actually returned once every cost is counted drops to the bottom of the list, every single week.
That avoidance is understandable, but it's exactly where the margin leaks. Revenue booked and hours worked both look healthy on paper while gross profit quietly shrinks underneath. Nobody inside the business is tracking it because nobody has the time, and a business that is too busy to check its own numbers is usually the business most at risk of finding out too late that the bank balance doesn't match how hard the crew has been working.
What should a good coach actually test before an earthmoving contractor pays for one?
A coach worth paying for doesn't start with a pep talk, they start with your own numbers. Before you sign up with anyone, ask what they will look at first. If the answer is your goals and your mindset, that's a warning sign. If the answer is your billable machine hours against your float time, your servicing and breakdown time, and your wet day losses, that's a coach testing the thing that actually moves profit.
Picture an earthmoving contractor running two excavators and a bobcat across a handful of civil jobs in a given week. On paper the week looks fully booked. Once float time between sites, a service on one machine and half a wet day are taken out, the billable hours left might be far lower than the hours the crew actually worked. That difference, multiplied across every machine and every week, is where profit is won or lost, not in small percentages but in whole chunks of margin that either exist or don't.
What changes when AI agents take on this tracking?
An AI agent is software that does a piece of office work the way you would do it yourself, using your own prices, your own wording and your own rules. For an earthmoving contractor, that means an agent can sit across the non-billable admin that normally eats into evenings: logging float time between sites, flagging when a machine is due for servicing, matching tip dockets to the right job, and keeping a running picture of billable hours against the hours the crew actually worked.
This is what a data first approach looks like in practice. Instead of guessing at margin from memory or from how busy the week felt, the business works from its own job and finance data, updated as the work happens. AI agents don't replace the operator on the machine or the conversation with the builder on site, they take the paperwork that was never billable anyway off your plate, so the time that's freed up goes back into quoting the next job properly and looking after the crew.
How do you tell a coach worth paying for from one who isn't?
A coach worth paying for has usually run a trade business themselves, starts every conversation from your own data rather than asking you to explain your business from scratch, and looks for where a problem actually starts rather than handing you a generic worksheet. Greg Allan built his own trade business before coaching others, which is part of why Data First Coaching starts with the owner's numbers rather than a conversation about goals.
Before signing up, ask what they will look at in the first session, whether every recommendation will be specific to your jobs or the same advice given to every trade, and whether their answer to a margin problem is always “hire someone” rather than fixing the system underneath it. If a coach is selling harder than they are asking questions about your dry hire, your wet hire and your tipping fees, that's worth noticing too.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the owner's own numbers through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a conversation about goals or motivation. For an earthmoving contractor that means looking first at billable machine hours against float time, servicing, breakdowns and wet days, because that gap is usually where the real problem starts, not where it shows up. Greg Allan has said, “that's why we need some form of a system to track not only job productivity,” and that tracking is where the work begins. The how of building that system is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
