A real job, Briarcreek Road area: a driveway sinkhole that turned into a fill-and-pad job — a 20ft × 15ft sunken area in the rear yard, 12–18 inches deep, plus a pad for a 12ft × 20ft shed. Fill required: about 16 cubic yards — one large dump-truck load. Fill work invoiced at $1,500; the gravel pad at $3,500.
The useful number: 16 yards fills a 20×15 area about a foot deep. People under-estimate this by half, consistently. A “small dip” in the yard is routinely a full truck of dirt, and the truck is most of the cost — placing it is an hour or two of machine time. That's why fill jobs are priced on material and hauling, not hours, and why small fills don't get cheaper by being small.
Check the parcel line and the water first. Plenty of Gastonia lots back onto creeks and county-owned strips, and the property line is often not where the mowed edge is. Anything near a waterway needs the ownership question answered before the machine arrives, not after. A contractor willing to clear an unverified parcel edge for you is not doing you a favor — if the land turns out to be county property, report the overgrowth to the county instead; they'll often clear it at no cost to you.
Permits: Gaston County runs its own delegated erosion-control program — an erosion control permit is required at one acre of disturbance, and the county fee schedule also lists a single-lot tier for lots under an acre, so small grading jobs can still need paperwork. We confirm before quoting.
