Why You Should Start a Hydro Vac Business in 2026

First, what does this thing actually do? Well, hydro excavation uses high pressure water to break the soil apart and then uses a massive vacuum to suck up the water, debris, the dirt and puts it into the tank on the truck.

The result is that you can expose underground pipes, electrical lines, fiber, gas lines, mostly minimized risk of smashing through them with a bucket or excavator or some kind of heavy machinery.

that matters and it matters because contractors constantly need to know exactly where all underground utilities are before they start digging and osha actually requires contractors to determine the location of the underground utilities before excavation and when they get close they determine the exact location by safe and acceptable means that creates a super simple business model you own the truck contractors call you you send out a truck and operator to the job site and you bill by the hour currently the industry pricing puts standard hydrovacs somewhere around $300 to $400 an hour with larger specialized trucks going obviously considerably higher.

A lot of times there's minimums, like four hour minimums are pretty common.

So let's use $350 per hour, for example, at six billable hours a day.

It takes you an hour to drive there, an hour to drive home.

The guy's working six hours and 250 work days per year.

That truck can generate about $600,000 a year.

And that's with, like I said, taking all every weekend, every holiday off, and only working six billable hours a day.

Get that truck to like eight billable hours a day, and now you're around 700, $750,000 top line.

But now you add mobilization, disposal, emergency work, overtime, and I think that heavily utilized truck can actually push towards a million or even more.

First, what does this thing actually do? Well, hydro excavation uses high pressure water to break the soil apart and then uses a massive vacuum to suck up the water, debris, the dirt and puts it into the tank on the truck.

The result is that you can expose underground pipes, electrical lines, fiber, gas lines, mostly minimized risk of smashing through them with a bucket or excavator or some kind of heavy machinery.

that matters and it matters because contractors constantly need to know exactly where all underground utilities are before they start digging and osha actually requires contractors to determine the location of the underground utilities before excavation and when they get close they determine the exact location by safe and acceptable means that creates a super simple business model you own the truck contractors call you you send out a truck and operator to the job site and you bill by the hour currently the industry pricing puts standard hydrovacs somewhere around $300 to $400 an hour with larger specialized trucks going obviously considerably higher.

A lot of times there's minimums, like four hour minimums are pretty common.

So let's use $350 per hour, for example, at six billable hours a day.

It takes you an hour to drive there, an hour to drive home.

The guy's working six hours and 250 work days per year.

That truck can generate about $600,000 a year.

And that's with, like I said, taking all every weekend, every holiday off, and only working six billable hours a day.

Get that truck to like eight billable hours a day, and now you're around 700, $750,000 top line.

But now you add mobilization, disposal, emergency work, overtime, and I think that heavily utilized truck can actually push towards a million or even more.