1800 Mr Excavate — Moving Earth Your Way

About

Diesel in the blood

1800 Mr Excavate Pty Ltd is an operator-only service provider to the civil and construction industry. We supply quality, experienced machine operators — fully ticketed and fully insured — to the contractors and builders who need the job done right. We supply the operator; you supply the plant.

The business was founded in 2017 by Craig Champion, who has spent more than 30 years in the seat across farm earthworks, Queensland coal mines, Hunter Valley mines and civil projects. That experience is the standard every operator we put on your site is held to.

Craig's path

  1. Growing upRaised around his father's and uncles' earthmoving businesses — Craig drove his first bulldozer at 11.
  2. 1994 – 1995 · TasmaniaFamily contracting business: excavator, dozer and dump truck on farm earthworks — land clearing, roads, cattle yards and dams — plus tip trucks carting soil and gravel.
  3. 1997 – 2005 · QueenslandHeavy equipment operator at Jellinbah mine, Blackwater — Komatsu 785 and Cat 777 to 793 haul trucks on overburden and coal. Certificate IV in Engineering (post-trade) in 1999.
  4. 2006 – 2018 · Hunter Valley minesBengalla, Mt Owen, Bulga, Mangoola and Mt Arthur, including six years with BHP at Mt Arthur — haul trucks to Cat 793 and Liebherr T282, Cat 992 loader, 16H and 16M graders, D10 and D11 dozers. With Robson Civil: Cat 336D excavator, D8R dozer, Cat 740 articulated trucks and water carts.
  5. 2017 – today · DenmanFounded 1800 Mr Excavate Pty Ltd. Today we supply experienced operators across the Upper Hunter, the Hunter Valley and north to Tamworth.

The business

  • 1800 Mr Excavate Pty Ltd · ABN 56 621 554 327
  • Based at 299 Merriwa Rd, Denman NSW 2328
  • Operators across the Upper Hunter, Hunter Valley and Tamworth — towns we cover
  • Clients book online through the 1ME client portal — available operators, agreed terms and a purchase order up front
  • Read our Google reviews

How every shift is run

  • Tickets verified by the office. Operators' tickets and licences are sighted and scanned; clients only ever see tickets we have verified, and renewals are tracked before they lapse.
  • Machine prestart on the plant they operate, recorded with any defects before work starts.
  • Take 5 — the operator's own pre-task check of hazards and controls, repeated when conditions change.
  • Your SWMS, signed onto. For high-risk construction work the operator reads and signs onto your SWMS and records it with a photo — or records that none was provided so we can follow it up.
  • Before You Dig Australia. We expect a BYDA enquiry before ground is broken, and our operators work to what the plans don't show as much as what they do. Our BYDA guide
  • Hours logged on the day against your job, and one tax invoice that matches — with the prestart, Take 5 and SWMS sign-on records attached.

Knowledge is what we share

We are building a wide range of abilities across our crew — more machines, more methods, more of the work done right first time. GPS machine control and 3D design models are next on our training path. This site is where we share that knowledge: how the work is done, what the industry is asking for and the technology that is changing it.