About

If it's dirt or concrete, it's us.

Family-run excavation and concrete crew, working across the Greater Chattanooga area. We help homeowners and builders get sites ready — clear, safe, and on-grade — so the rest of the project goes smoothly.

The short version

If it's dirt or concrete, it's us. We clear lots, dig footings and basements, grade pads, lay driveways, run drainage, install septic, set retaining walls, and pour concrete from sidewalks to slabs. The crew shows up when we said we would, with the right machine for the access, and a foreman who walks the site with you before the first blade hits the ground.

How we ended up doing this

The Greater Chattanooga area has been our home for longer than the company has existed. The geography here — ridge lots, river valleys, red clay, weathered limestone close to the surface — punishes shortcuts. Footings poured too shallow heave by year three. Driveways laid on uncompacted clay rut by year two. Pads cut into a slope without a real drainage plan develop wet spots that won't go away. We've spent two decades watching what happens when site work gets done wrong and learning how to do it right the first time. That's most of what you're paying for: the time we've put in learning what doesn't work.

The crew

We're not a 50-truck outfit. We're a small, owner-operated crew that scales to the job. Andrew Hibbs runs the work — most days you'll find him on the excavator or the truck, not behind a desk. Scott walks the sites, talks to clients, and writes the estimates. The rest of the crew has been with us for years; everyone on site has been on the equipment long enough to know what the machine is telling them.

The advantage of a smaller crew is that the same people who quoted the job are the ones doing it. Nothing gets lost in translation between a salesman and a foreman. The trade-off is that we're not the right call for a 100-acre commercial development — we focus on residential and light commercial projects where a family-run team is a feature, not a limitation.

How we work

Walk before we bid. Every project starts with a free site walk in our service area. We look at access, slope, soil, drainage, neighbors, utilities, and what "finished" means to you. The conversation is more useful than any photo or set of plans. Most jobs we bid the same week.

Written estimate with line items. We don't quote lump-sum numbers you can't audit. Each line on the estimate is a measurable scope — yards of cut and fill, square footage of pad, linear feet of trench, cubic yards of stone, hours of haul-off. If anything changes during construction, the change order references the original line.

One crew, one site. We don't run six concurrent sites and rotate the equipment in for half-days. When we start your job, we're committed to it until the punch list is done. You see the same faces every morning.

Communicate early, often, and in plain language. We send a text the day before mobilization. We text again when the crew arrives, when major milestones hit, and when something needs your input. No project should be a surprise.

Set up the next trade. Most of our work feeds another trade — the foundation contractor, the framer, the landscape designer. We hand off a site that's pad-ready, trench-ready, or grade-ready, and we document the conditions so the next crew can build to spec.

What we do

We're a generalist excavation and concrete crew. The work breaks roughly into five areas:

  • Excavation & site prep — land clearing, building pads, footings, basements, driveways, trenching, hauling.
  • Concrete — sidewalks, patios, driveways, slabs, equipment pads, decorative work.
  • Drainage — French drains, yard regrading, surface drainage, foundation perimeter work.
  • Specialty digs — septic systems, storm shelters, ponds, retaining walls, pool excavations.
  • Land maintenance — forestry mulching, brush clearing, stump removal, lot reclamation.

The services index has the long list — 24 distinct pillar pages covering everything from utility trenching to erosion control.

Who we work with

Homeowners — most of our work. New builds, renovations, additions, drainage problems, post-construction restoration, driveway replacement, pool digs, basement work, septic, retaining walls.

Builders & GCs — site prep packages, footing digs, slab pours, utility trenching, dirt management across active jobs.

Architects, engineers, and landscape designers — coordinate on plans before the work starts. We're happy to walk the site with the design team and flag what the drawings don't show.

Real estate investors and flippers — quick site walks, fast estimates, scope-of-work for due diligence.

Service area

The Greater Chattanooga area, with a 30-mile working radius from downtown. Tennessee cities: Chattanooga, Hixson, Ooltewah, Red Bank, East Ridge, Signal Mountain, Soddy-Daisy, Lookout Mountain, Cleveland, Dayton, Harrison, Apison, Sale Creek, Collegedale, Walden, Jasper, Whitwell, South Pittsburg. North Georgia cities: Ringgold, Fort Oglethorpe, Dalton, Chickamauga, Rossville, Tunnel Hill, LaFayette, Trenton, Rising Fawn.

If you're close to the line, ask — we usually say yes. The service areas map shows every city we work in.

What we don't do

We're a generalist excavation crew, not a do-everything contractor. We don't pave asphalt, install roofs, pour pools (we dig the hole), build buildings, do interior finish work, fell large trees near structures, do septic pump-outs, or run electrical inside structures. When a project needs those trades, we coordinate with specialists who do them well.

Equipment

What we run, sized to the access and the job:

  • Mid-size tracked excavator (~25,000 lb class) — most pads, basements, ponds, footings, larger trenches.
  • Mini-excavator — tight back yards, fence-line work, small trenches, careful work near existing structures.
  • Skid steer — backfill, light grading, material moving in tight spots.
  • Tandem and single-axle dump trucks — hauling spoil, delivering stone and topsoil.
  • Laser grading kit — precision finish on pads and slabs.
  • Compaction equipment — vibratory rollers and plate compactors sized to the fill lift.
  • Forestry mulcher — underbrush clearing and right-of-way maintenance.

Everything is maintained on-shop, not subbed out. Equipment failures on site are rare; when they happen, we have a backup machine available.

Licensing, insurance, and bonding

We carry general liability and workers' compensation insurance. Certificates are available on request — typically the GC or property owner asks for the certificate before mobilization. For projects requiring bonding, we can coordinate. License details are kept current with the relevant authority for the state and jurisdiction of each project.

Pricing philosophy

We don't bid jobs to "win" with a low number and recoup it on change orders. The first estimate is meant to be the final number, assuming the conditions we found on the walk match the conditions during the work. When a project genuinely changes — rock we didn't see, soil that's wetter than expected, a scope addition the client wants — we write a change order before doing the extra work, not after.

We're not the cheapest excavator in town and don't claim to be. We're priced for the time, the equipment, and the experience that go into doing the work right the first time.

Sustainability and the site

A few things we do on every job, partly because they're better for the planet and mostly because they're better for the client:

  • Topsoil gets stockpiled and respread, not hauled off and replaced with bought topsoil at the end.
  • Spoil that can stay on-site stays on-site — we work it into the grade plan instead of trucking it to a landfill.
  • Trees worth saving get protection zones, with the tracks of the equipment kept off the root flares.
  • Recycled concrete aggregate gets used as base where the project allows it, instead of virgin quarry stone.

Communication

We're text-friendly. (228) 355-1539 rings during business hours and goes to text outside of them. Email andrewhibbs28@gmail.com for anything that needs an attachment. The intake assistant on the contact page is the fastest way to package a new project — it asks the right questions and emails the details over so we can review and respond.

FAQs

About L & S — common questions.

Are you licensed and insured?

Yes — general liability and workers' comp. Certificates are available on request before any project mobilizes.

Do you do residential and commercial?

Both. The bulk of our work is residential and light commercial. For very large commercial projects we'll coordinate with specialty subs but we don't take on jobs that exceed our crew size.

Can you work from plans?

Yes. Send us the architect's site plan, the engineer's grading plan, or the builder's footprint and we'll bid to it. If something on the plan doesn't match the site, we flag it before the work starts.

What if my project is outside your typical service area?

Ask. We'll travel beyond the 30-mile radius for the right project, but mobilization charges scale with distance. The conversation is free.

Can I see examples of past work?

The photos page has a rotating selection of jobs across the service area, and the videos page has equipment clips from active sites. For specific reference projects in your area, ask during the site walk and we'll point you to recent work nearby.

Why "L & S"?

Family initials. Two generations on the equipment.

Ready to break ground?

Let's talk about your site.

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