Excavation and sitework live on a time gap. A contractor prices a job in the spring, wins it in early summer, and burns the diesel through the fall. An excavator, a dozer, a skid steer, and the dump trucks that feed them consume fuel at a pace that puts a small outfit anywhere from several hundred gallons a month between jobs to a few thousand when a big site is moving dirt every day. All of it was priced months earlier, at a fuel cost somebody had to assume when the bid went out the door.
That assumption is the quiet risk in every hard bid. Materials get quoted by suppliers. Labor rates are known. Fuel is the input the estimator has to guess forward, and there is no comfortable way to guess it: pad the number and you lose the bid to someone braver, shave it and a fuel spike eats the margin you thought you won. Concrete work carries the same exposure with a twist, since missed pours and schedule slips stretch the window between pricing and fueling even further.
Bidding against a known ceiling
FuelAnchor is a fuel supply company, and what it sells is the missing piece of that estimate. You request a quote for the gallons you expect to use, and it returns a locked maximum price per gallon for your term. You prepay the gallons, then fill with a FuelAnchor card at the stations you choose. Below the locked maximum you pay the day's pump price. Above it, you pay your capped rate for as long as the term runs.
For an estimator, that converts the fuel line from a forecast into an input. The takeoff already produces machine hours and truck miles; those produce gallons; and gallons times a per gallon cost with a written worst case is a number you can defend in a bid review. Whatever margin the bid carries is margin the fuel market can no longer claw back mid-job.
The buying pattern fits too. Dirt outfits already fuel through retail, whether that is the service truck filling transfer tanks near the yard or dump trucks and pickups fueling along their routes. Diesel for the iron and gasoline for the pickups are quoted independently in the same request, and the form lists off-road diesel among its fuel types.
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One job or a whole season
Terms run 1, 3, 6, or 12 months, which maps cleanly onto how dirt work arrives.
A single large job can carry its own short agreement. When a two month site package or a summer utility contract is signed, a 1 or 3 month agreement quoted at signing puts a ceiling under exactly the gallons that job will burn. The volume estimate is already sitting in the bid file. If the job was priced tight, capping the fuel under it is the simplest protection available, and the only thing you buy is fuel.
The construction season fits the longer end. In most markets, dirt work runs hard from thaw to freeze, and a 6 month agreement quoted in early spring covers the whole productive stretch. Year-round operations, and contractors in mild climates who pour and dig through the winter, can put a 12 month agreement under the entire book of work, so every bid that goes out during the term is priced against the same known ceiling.
Your number, not a rate card
There is no published price list. Every quote is computed at the moment you request it, from current fuel prices in your coverage area, your fuel types, your monthly volume, and your term. Ask in a quiet market and you will see one number; ask mid-spike and you will see another. That is how honest fuel pricing works, and it is an argument for quoting early in the season rather than after the first ugly fuel invoice.
Pull the gallons from last season's fuel receipts or your equipment tracking, pick the term that matches the work in front of you, and request a quote. About a minute to ask, the number arrives by email, and the next bid can go out with the fuel line nailed down instead of guessed.
🔒 Your information is never shared.
This form saves your progress automatically as you go.