Fill Dirt & Soil Delivery in Houston
Houston runs on volume. More commercial construction, more industrial acreage, more suburban expansion than any other Texas metro. Gulf Coast clay, high water tables, and strict PI requirements make sourcing the right material harder here. SWPPP compliance adds another layer. Gordon Deason’s team handles delivery and dirt export so your crew can focus on building.
The Houston Soil Landscape
Houston sits on Gulf Coast alluvial clay with some of the highest water tables in Texas. That combination means geotech requirements are stricter here than anywhere else in the state. Structural fill needs to meet tight PI specifications, and the material has to perform in conditions where drainage is a constant consideration. Not every supplier can deliver fill that passes testing. We source from yards and export sites that can.
The Houston market is a volume game. A single commercial project can move 50,000+ CY. Suburban expansion in Conroe, The Woodlands, Magnolia, Tomball, and Spring generates steady demand that doesn’t stop when one project closes out. Managing that volume means coordinating multiple suppliers, multiple haulers, and delivery schedules that match production pace across several active sites at once.
Gordon’s team runs the Houston operation with a focus on multi-supplier coordination. When one source runs dry or a haul route gets jammed, there’s a backup already in the pipeline. Your grading crew doesn’t stop because the dirt stopped showing up.
SWPPP and Drainage: Houston’s Extra Layer
Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans are a bigger factor in Houston than in other Texas metros. The flat terrain and high water table mean erosion control and drainage aren’t afterthoughts. The fill material you bring onto a site has to work within the SWPPP framework. We source material that meets drainage specifications and coordinate delivery timing to avoid staging soil during high-risk weather windows.
Materials We Deliver in Houston
Every load is sourced to spec and delivered in commercial volumes for contractors, civil crews, and developers across Greater Houston.
Select Fill
Clean, compactable structural fill sourced to the tight PI specs Gulf Coast geotech reports demand, with the documentation your testing lab needs.
Common Fill
General-purpose fill dirt for bulk volume, elevation changes, and rough grading across high-water-table sites.
Fill Dirt
Bulk fill dirt delivered across Greater Houston for land leveling, backfill, and raising low or flood-prone areas.
Topsoil
Screened topsoil delivery for finish grade, detention-pond slopes, and landscape and erosion-control areas.
Sand & Base
Cushion sand, concrete sand, and aggregate base for bedding, sub-base, and the heavy utility work Houston volume demands.
Road Base & Crushed Concrete
Flex base and recycled crushed concrete for drives, logistics-yard laydown, and stabilized access on soft ground.
Dirt Export & Haul-Off in Houston
Houston’s volume cuts both ways. Big sites generate big spoils, and finding a destination for surplus clay can be as hard as sourcing fill. We export dirt out of Greater Houston job sites and route it to active fill destinations, so you aren’t paying premium dump fees on material another developer needs.
For high-volume grading and excavation, we coordinate multiple haulers, track daily counts, and keep the export moving across Harris, Montgomery, and Fort Bend counties, timed around SWPPP and weather windows. One point of contact for both import and export keeps the whole operation in sync.
Export Dirt From Your SiteCommon Houston Applications
The projects we handle most across the Greater Houston area:
Areas We Serve Across Greater Houston
We deliver fill dirt and soil, and run haul-off, throughout the Greater Houston area, including:
- Houston
- Conroe
- The Woodlands
- Magnolia
- Tomball
- Spring
- Katy
- Cypress
- Sugar Land
- Richmond
- Rosenberg
- Pearland
- Humble
- Kingwood
- Montgomery
- New Caney
- Friendswood
- League City
The Science of Gulf Coast Soils
Greater Houston sits on Gulf Coast coastal-plain deposits dominated by the Late Pleistocene Beaumont Formation, which the USGS describes as plastic, compressible clay and mud of low permeability. The soils are smectitic Vertisols, high in plasticity, poorly drained, and underlain by a high water table, the combination that makes Houston geotech among the strictest in Texas and pushes nearly every commercial project toward imported, spec-compliant select fill.
| Soil series | USDA classification | Clay content | Engineering behavior |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lake Charles | Fine, smectitic, hyperthermic Typic Hapluderts (Vertisol) | 45-60% | Poorly drained, very slow permeability; high shrink-swell, gilgai |
| Beaumont | Fine, smectitic, hyperthermic Chromic Dystraquerts | 42-60% | Poorly drained; formed in Beaumont Formation fluviomarine clay |
| Bernard | Fine, smectitic, hyperthermic Oxyaquic Vertic Argiudolls | 34-49% | Vertic clay; significant shrink-swell |
Classifications per USDA-NRCS Official Soil Series Descriptions. Confirm parcel-specific properties with the USDA Web Soil Survey.
Why drainage and the water table drive fill practice
Poorly drained, very-slow-permeability clays under a high water table mean wet-of-optimum soil cannot reach target Proctor density, so moisture conditioning and controlled compaction are essential, and TxDOT Item 132 explicitly ties acceptable density to a moisture band. The 2021 International Building Code flags soil as expansive at a Plasticity Index of 15 or greater. Land subsidence adds a regional dimension: areas near Pasadena subsided more than 10 feet between 1906 and 1995 from groundwater withdrawal (USGS), which led to the creation of the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District in 1975. Houston remains among the largest-gaining U.S. metros (U.S. Census Bureau), with industrial, logistics, and suburban growth from Conroe to Sugar Land.
How We Spec & Source Material
Commercial fill is only useful if it meets the spec. We source select fill, flexible base, and structural material to the standards your engineer and the jobsite require, and deliver it with the documentation your testing lab needs.
TxDOT Item 132 - Embankment
The benchmark for select/structural fill: Type A material caps Liquid Limit at 45 and Plasticity Index at 15, with density and moisture controlled by PI. TxDOT 2024
TxDOT Item 247 - Flexible Base
Road base and stabilized access: Grade 1-2 caps Plasticity Index at 10 and Liquid Limit at 40, compacted to 100% of max dry density. TxDOT 2024
Compaction & Atterberg testing
Material is verified by Proctor (ASTM D698 / D1557), Atterberg limits / PI (D4318), and USCS classification (D2487).
Stormwater (SWP3) & drainage compliance
Sites disturbing 1+ acre need a stormwater plan (SWP3) under the TCEQ CGP (TXR150000). On poorly drained Gulf Coast clay we time staging and placement around drainage and weather windows; pads follow the IBC expansive-soil threshold (PI ≥ 15, 2021 IBC).
Houston Soil Delivery FAQ
References & Authorities
The technical claims on this page are grounded in primary sources:
- USDA-NRCS - Lake Charles series
- USDA-NRCS - Beaumont series
- USDA Web Soil Survey
- USGS - Land Subsidence in the Houston Area (FS 110-02)
- Harris-Galveston Subsidence District
- TxDOT - Item 132 Embankment (2024)
- TxDOT - Item 247 Flexible Base (2024)
- ICC - 2021 IBC, expansive soils (§1803.5.3)
- TCEQ - Construction General Permit (TXR150000)
- U.S. Census Bureau - Metro Area Population Trends
Need dirt in Houston?
Tell us the material type, volume, and site location. Gordon will have a quote back to you the same day.
Serving Houston, Katy, Conroe, The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Pasadena and Greater Houston.
Houston Soil Conditions and What They Mean for Fill
Greater Houston is built on young deltaic and coastal plain deposits, and the dominant soils are the Beaumont and Lake Charles clay series: heavy, poorly drained, high plasticity clays laid down almost flat. There is very little natural relief anywhere in the metro, so on most commercial sites the grade you need is the grade you import, not the grade you cut to.
Two Gulf Coast conditions drive material volume here more than anything else. The first is water: a high water table plus flat ground means pad elevation, detention and drainage design decide the fill quantity, and getting a finished floor safely above the surrounding grade and the floodplain is often the single largest line in the earthwork budget. The second is subsidence. Groundwater withdrawal has caused measurable land surface subsidence across the Houston region, tracked by the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District, which is part of why elevation and fill volume get scrutinized closely on Gulf Coast projects.
In practice that makes Houston a strong import market: pads, building sites and detention work pull in select fill, common fill and sand steadily, while excavation spoil from detention ponds and utility work needs a destination. We move material in both directions across Katy, Conroe, The Woodlands, Sugar Land and Pasadena.
Fill Dirt & Select Fill for Sale in Houston
Houston earthwork is import earthwork. With almost no natural relief, the grade a Gulf Coast pad needs is the grade you truck in, and finished-floor elevation above the floodplain decides the volume. We sell and deliver select fill, bulk fill dirt and common fill by the truckload for pads, grade raises and detention work across Greater Houston, from Katy to Pasadena, quoted same-day against your spec and site.
Fill dirt in Houston, select fill, and common fill, all delivered by the truckload.
Fill Dirt Delivery Near Me in Houston
Searching for fill dirt near you in Houston? We do not sell from a yard you have to drive to. We deliver to the job site, so the material comes to your address anywhere across Houston, Katy, Conroe, The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Pasadena and Greater Houston, and the load is routed from whichever source sits nearest your site that week.
That also means the closest supplier on a map is not automatically the cheapest delivered price, because haul distance is only one input and material grade is the other. Send the address with the type and yards and we quote the real delivered number for your location the same day.
Dirt Hauling & Haul-Off in Houston
What Houston digs mostly comes from below the water line: detention ponds, utility trenches and channel work turn up wet Beaumont and Lake Charles clay that has to leave the site. We dispatch dump trucks to haul that spoil off Greater Houston jobs, and on a pad-plus-detention project we deliver the fill in and haul the pond spoil out in the same dispatch.
Need dirt removal? Start a same-day haul-off quote for Houston. Not sure which truck fits your load? See our dump truck sizes and load capacities.
Dirt Export in Houston
Exporting from a Houston site, we manage the trucks, the schedule and the destination for the spoil. Detention and utility spoil needs somewhere legal and close to go, and we match it to grade-raise and berm sites across the Gulf Coast region that want material rather than routing it to a landfill. Yards, material and site address gets you a same-day export quote.
Moving dirt out is half of what we do. See dirt export and haul-off for how the match works.
Dirt Dumpsite in Houston: Where to Dump Dirt & Clean Fill Wanted
Because nearly every Gulf Coast pad is raising grade, clean fill finds a home in Houston fast. If your site is exporting clean material, we place it with an active import job nearby and coordinate the dump trucks, which regularly turns disposal cost into a low-cost or no-cost haul-off.
Bulk Topsoil, Sand & Flex Base Delivery in Houston
Sand does more work on the Gulf Coast than anywhere else we deliver: cushion sand and bank sand under slabs, concrete sand for flatwork, plus stabilized base and flex base where pavement calls for it, and screened topsoil to finish over the clay. See sand and aggregate base, flex base and road base, and bulk topsoil.
What Fill Dirt & Dirt Hauling Cost in Houston
We price material by the cubic yard and by the truckload, and haul-off per load. Houston totals swing on two things: haul distance across a metro this wide, and how much elevation your drainage design demands, since the fill volume is the budget. The honest answer to "how much" is a fast, specific quote, so send the type, yards and address and we turn it around the same day.
Minimum order: 4,000 cubic yards.