Heavy Equipment & Site Work Recruiting
Equipment operators, crane and pile driver operators, pipelayers, grade foremen, site superintendents, and the mechanics who keep the fleet running. We recruit for the contractors who clear, grade and prepare the site before anything goes vertical.
How do you hire heavy equipment operators and site-work crews in 2026?
Start from what the market pays.
In May 2025 BLS put the national median at $59,850 a year for construction equipment operators, $68,080 for crane and tower operators and $73,300 for pile driver operators. The specialties are small: there are only about 2,300 pile driver operators in the whole country, so the right candidate is often in another metro. My Trade Talent recruits equipment operators, crane and pile driver operators, pipelayers, grade foremen, site superintendents, earthwork estimators and heavy equipment mechanics for site-work contractors, for a fixed monthly fee instead of a percentage of salary.
Site work runs on a small group of skilled operators.
Every commercial project starts with excavation, grading, utilities and foundations. The people who run that equipment, and the foremen who run those crews, are a narrow and specialized part of the construction workforce.
What the national data says.
BLS counts about 478,000 construction equipment operators in the US, and far fewer in the specialties: about 43,000 crane and tower operators, 33,000 pipelayers and only 2,300 pile driver operators. For the smaller specialties, the right hire is often outside your own metro.
Operators are only half of it. A site-work contractor also needs the foremen who read grade and run the crew, the estimators who price earthwork, and the heavy equipment mechanics who keep machines running. We recruit for all of those seats.
The 10 site-work roles we recruit.
From the operator in the seat to the superintendent running the site. National pay for each role is from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Hiring for paving crews or for vertical construction instead? See Paving & Asphalt and Commercial Construction.
What Heavy Equipment & Site Work roles pay nationally.
BLS puts the national median for operating engineers and other construction equipment operators at $59,850 a year, $42,190 at the tenth percentile and $101,090 at the ninetieth, across 478,090 people employed. Equipment / Grade Foreman and Site Superintendent sit inside one BLS occupation, so one figure covers all of them - the gap between the tenth and the ninetieth percentile is where that difference shows up. Three roles above - Crane Operator, Pile Driver Operator and Heavy Equipment Mechanic - fall outside the occupations in this extract and are not listed.
| Roles | National median | 10th-90th percentile | Employed nationally |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy Equipment Operator (excavator, dozer, loader, grader)Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators (47-2073) | $59,850 | $42,190 - $101,090 | 478,090 |
| PipelayerPipelayers (47-2151) | $49,000 | $37,730 - $80,170 | 33,050 |
| Equipment / Grade Foreman · Site SuperintendentFirst-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers (47-1011) | $79,920 | $53,280 - $128,260 | 812,210 |
| Site-Work Project ManagerConstruction Managers (11-9021) | $114,990 | $69,690 - $189,440 | 380,360 |
| Earthwork EstimatorCost Estimators (13-1051) | $78,740 | $48,530 - $130,820 | 224,220 |
| CDL Dump & Lowboy DriverHeavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers (53-3032) | $58,640 | $40,140 - $79,380 | 2,062,040 |
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national, cross-industry, all ownerships. Where several of the roles above share one BLS occupation the row names them together, because BLS publishes one figure for the occupation rather than one per job title.
Hiring questions for Heavy Equipment & Site Work
What does a heavy equipment operator earn?
The national median for construction equipment operators (BLS occupation 47-2073, which covers excavator, dozer, loader and grader operators) was $59,850 a year, or $28.78 an hour, in May 2025. Crane and tower operators were $68,080 and pile driver operators $73,300. Local pay varies by metro, so check the market you are hiring in before setting an offer.
Do crane operators need to be certified?
On construction sites, yes. OSHA's crane standard (29 CFR 1926.1427) requires operators to be certified for the type and capacity of crane they run, by an accredited testing organization such as NCCCO, or qualified through an audited employer program. Confirm which one a candidate holds, and for which crane types, before an offer.
What license does a dump truck or lowboy driver need?
A lowboy rig is a tractor-trailer, so its driver needs a Class A commercial driver's license. Most single-unit dump trucks above 26,000 pounds need at least a Class B. Oversize lowboy loads also need state permits, so drivers who have moved permitted loads before are the ones to look for.
However you want to pay for Heavy Equipment & Site Work hiring.
Which one wins depends almost entirely on how often you hire. Here is the honest version of all three, and the full breakdown is on the pricing page.
Pay a placement fee
20–30%of first-year salary, per hire
Nothing while the search runs, then one large invoice the month your heavy equipment & site work hire starts. No commitment, the least predictable spend, and it repeats in full on the next hire.
Fits if you hire once every year or two.
See how we compare →Budget it monthly
$1,500per month, credited in full
You pay monthly while we run the search, and every month you have paid comes off the placement commission dollar for dollar. Same total as a percentage fee, spread across the search. No minimum commitment.
Fits if you have one or two seats to fill.
How pay as you go works →Stop paying per head
From $4,000per month, no placement fees
One monthly rate, hire as many heavy equipment & site work people as you want from your submittals, no per-placement fee at any volume. $4,000 is the 12-month rate; on the six-month minimum it is $4,250, because a pipeline takes time to be worth anything.
Fits if you are hiring continuously.
Why we charge flat →The 20–30% figure is the range contingency recruiters commonly charge, not a quote from a competitor. Compare all three side by side →
We publish how long our own searches actually take. Across every trade the median is 21 days over 88 timed searches in 2026 year to date. We have not closed enough Heavy Equipment & Site Work searches yet to break that out - the Hiring Index shows which trades we have. Figures are calendar days from our first contact with the candidate to the hire.
Every week a seat sits open, your crew covers it.
An empty operator seat or foreman role means the rest of your people carry the load, or the work waits. Let's talk about the roles you need filled.
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