Digger hire with operator
A digger and a driver who knows how to use it.
Hire a mini digger by the half-day, day or week anywhere in the Forest of Dean, and one of our operators comes with it. No licence, no plant insurance, no hoping you can work out the controls.
Send a photo of your access on WhatsApp and we’ll tell you if it fits.
Operated hire
The machine turns up with someone who can drive it
Dry hire, where a plant yard drops a machine on your drive and leaves, sounds cheaper until you add up the licence, the insurance, the deposit, and the day and a half it takes an inexperienced operator to do four hours of digging.
Operated hire is simpler. We bring the digger, we bring the driver, and the job gets done at the speed of somebody who does it for a living. You get a price for the work, not a machine and a problem.
It’s the same setup we used clearing ground for a barn conversion in Bream, just booked on its own instead of as part of a bigger job.
- No licence needed
- No plant insurance
- No deposit to find
- Transport included
- Fuel included
- Half day, day or week
What we take on
Jobs a mini digger makes easy
Anything from a morning’s digging to a week on site. Homeowners, landscapers, fencers and other trades all use us.
Footings & foundations
Trenches for extensions, garages, garden rooms and outbuildings, dug square and to depth.
Drainage & service trenches
Foul and surface water runs, soakaways, water mains, and ducting for power or broadband.
Garden levelling & clearance
Sloping gardens terraced, overgrown plots cleared, old bases and slabs broken out and shifted.
Driveway & patio dig-outs
Existing surfaces lifted and the ground reduced to the right level for a proper sub-base.
Muck shifting
Spoil, hardcore or topsoil moved around site with the dumper, or loaded out and carted away.
Help for other trades
Landscapers, fencers and builders who need a machine and an operator for a day, without buying one.
Access
Will it fit down the side of the house?
Nearly always the first question, and the easiest one to answer before anybody books a day off work.
Through a side gate
A mini digger will generally pass through a gap of around a metre, so most rear gardens are reachable without dropping a fence panel.
Steep or soft ground
Plenty of Forest plots are on a slope. We’ll look at the ground first and board out where it’s needed, rather than churning up your lawn.
Just send a photo
Message us a picture of the gate, the drive or the alleyway and we’ll tell you the same day whether a machine will get in.
How it works
Booked in four steps
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1
Tell us the job
Call, or WhatsApp a photo of the site and the access. Rough measurements help.
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2
Get a price
A straight figure including machine, driver, fuel and transport. Muck away quoted separately.
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3
Pick a date
Half day, full day or by the week. We’ll confirm the slot and turn up when we said.
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4
Job done
Dug, levelled, tidied up and the machine off your drive the same day where we can.
What’s in the price
One figure, quoted for your actual job. No hourly creep, no delivery charge bolted on afterwards.
Always included
- The machine
- An experienced operator
- Fuel
- Transport to site and back
- Our insurance, not yours
What moves the price
- How long you need us, half day, day or week
- Machine size the access will take
- How far we’re travelling
- Whether spoil needs carting away
Send us a photo of the job and the access and you’ll have a straight price back the same day.
Our plant on site
A closer look
★★★★★
“Professional and experienced in their craft.”
Common questions
Digger hire, answered
No. This is operated hire, so the machine always comes with one of our drivers. You’re not operating it, so you don’t need a ticket, a licence or your own plant insurance. That’s the main reason most homeowners choose operated hire over dry hire.
Usually. A mini digger will pass through a standard side gate of roughly a metre, which covers most rear gardens without taking a fence panel out. Send us a photo of the access on WhatsApp and we’ll tell you straight away whether it’ll fit.
It depends on the machine size, how long you need it and how far we’re travelling. Give us a ring or send a message describing the job and we’ll give you a straight price, with transport included, before we book anything in.
We can. Muck away is quoted separately because tipping charges depend on what comes out of the ground. If there’s space to level the spoil on site instead, that’s nearly always cheaper and we’ll say so.
Most digging carries on in the wet. If the ground’s so bad that working it would wreck your garden or make the job unsafe, we’ll tell you and move the date rather than churn the site up.
Cinderford, Coleford, Lydbrook, Bream, Mitcheldean, Newnham and the wider Forest of Dean and Gloucestershire. We’re based at Ruspidge in Cinderford, so most of the Forest is a short run.
Need the whole job doing, not just the dig?
We’re a building firm first. The plant is there because we use it ourselves every week.
Machine and driver, ready to go
Check a date for your dig
Tell us the job and the access and we’ll come back with a price and the next free slot.