Grading subcontractors operate equipment-heavy businesses with overhead profiles similar to civil and excavation — driven by fleet cost, fuel, and the field supervision required to maintain grade tolerances across multiple simultaneous projects.
These benchmarks are drawn from SPM's work with commercial grading contractors and industry data. Calculate your actual overhead rate — total G&A expenses divided by total revenue for the trailing 12 months — and compare to your revenue band below.
How to use this data: If you're above the top of the range, specific categories need review. If you're below the bottom, you may be underinvesting in systems and staff. Use the benchmark as a target range, not a single number.
Trade note for Grading Contractors: GPS grade control technology has added overhead for grading contractors that didn't exist 15 years ago — base stations, rover units, software subscriptions, and survey coordination. This technology overhead is real and worth tracking separately to understand its contribution to your overhead rate.
GPS grade control systems, base station maintenance, software subscriptions, and survey coordination costs often get lumped into general overhead without being tracked as a distinct category. Understanding this cost helps with bid pricing and technology investment decisions.
Grading work is heavily weather-dependent. During wet periods, overhead stays constant while revenue drops — spiking the overhead rate temporarily. This seasonal pattern needs to be planned for in the annual overhead rate calculation.
Moving equipment between grading projects — mobilization and demobilization costs — often goes to overhead rather than to the specific jobs incurring the cost. High-mob projects look more profitable than they are.
SPM tracks GPS grade control and survey technology costs as a dedicated overhead category in ControlQore — separate from general equipment overhead. This visibility supports GPS technology investment decisions and accurate bid pricing for GPS-assisted work.
Equipment mobilization and demobilization costs are coded to the specific jobs in ControlQore rather than to general overhead. Jobs that require frequent moves reflect their true cost. Jobs with minimal equipment movement show their actual margin advantage.
SPM builds weather-adjusted overhead rate benchmarking for grading clients — calculating overhead rate on a trailing 12-month basis rather than monthly to smooth out weather downtime spikes that create misleading month-to-month comparisons.
Find out in a free 30-minute call. Josh will tell you straight where your overhead rate stands and what to do about it.
Schedule a Free Call →