Dirt Work Bid School · Founding cohort open
Twenty‑five years of bids. Including the ones that lost money. Especially those.
You are not bad at digging. You are bad at bidding. That is a fixable problem.
$597 after the founding cohort closes. No card required to reserve.
- Founding price
- $397
- Years bidding
- 25
- BuildZoom score
- 92Top third of 23,328 licensed Missouri contractors
- Modules
- 8
The problem
You are busy and broke at the same time.
Every contractor who has ever run a machine knows the feeling: the calendar is full, the crew is working, the iron is moving, and the account still will not fill up.
That is almost never a digging problem. It is a number you wrote on a piece of paper weeks before the first bucket came out of the ground.
“We’re probably losing, gosh, seven out of ten. Um, every week. Yeah, every week here lately we were bidding every week.”
Jay Voisey, recorded 15 September 2026
That is a man with twenty-five years and a full licence stack describing this year. He is not selling you a secret. He is showing you the arithmetic he uses to decide which of those ten to chase and which to hand to somebody else.
What you get
Eight modules, built from real jobs. Including the losers.
From the site walk to the signed contract to what it actually cost when the dust settled. Each module is the thinking behind a number, not a definition off a slide.
Read the Site Before You Price It
What a walk actually tells you: access, water, spoil, and the things that turn a two-day job into a two-week one.
Swell, Shrink and the Real Yardage
Why the dirt you dig is not the dirt you haul, and where guys quietly eat the difference between the two.
What Your Machine Actually Costs You
Payment, fuel, wear, insurance and the hours it sits. The number most owner-operators have never worked out.
Haul, Downtime and the Hours Nobody Bills
Mobilisation, breakdowns, weather and the drive. The hours that happen whether or not anyone pays for them.
Hourly, By the Foot, or Lump Sum
Which structure to use and when. Jay runs lump sum on ten to twenty percent of his year and time-and-material on the rest, and he explains exactly why.
Overhead Recovery and Where the Money Goes
The office, the truck, the insurance, the unbillable people. What has to ride on every single bid before you have made a dollar.
The Contract Clauses That Eat the Profit
Retainage, change orders, rock clauses and the language that decides who pays when the ground is not what the plan said.
Getting on the List, and Walking Away From the Rest
How to get on a bid list worth being on, and the rules for putting a job down before it costs you money.
Who you are actually dealing with
A licence stack, not a YouTube channel.
Everything below is public record. None of it is a testimonial, because Checkered Flag has never published one.
- Certification
- WBE certifiedWoman Business Enterprise
- Licence
- Septic installer & inspectorTwo separate Missouri licences
- Licence
- Master DrainlayerSt. Louis County roster, 2022
- Approval
- Land Disturbance InspectorSt. Louis County list, 2025
- Bid lists
- Jefferson County, MONamed vendor on public bid sheets
- Founded
- 2000De Soto and Festus, Missouri. Family owned.
Case studies
The expensive lessons, with the numbers attached.
Not success stories. The jobs and decisions that cost real money, written up so you can see the arithmetic rather than the moral.
Insurance
The $40,000 claim that cost $80,000
One pulled bicep. One claim in a twenty-five year career, and three years at 130% of premium afterwards.
Overhead
Two percent of gross, before you dig
General liability priced off your sales, billed over ten months, and what that does to a thin bid.
Materials
Why he will not run corrugated pipe
Schedule 35 minimum, slick pipe only, and a slope you can mow sideways. What specifying above code costs and returns.
Reserve your spot before the price goes up.
The founding cohort is $397. After it closes the price is $597. Reserving takes no card.