Dan's Excavating, Inc.

Dan’s Excavating was founded in 1974 and works out of 12955 23 Mile Road in Shelby Township, Michigan, employing between 200 and 500 people. The firm has built its reputation on large-scale, high-profile underground work, site preparation, road construction and structural concrete, which is a combination that suits Michigan Department of Transportation freeway reconstruction where drainage, earthwork and bridge structures all sit in the same contract. It works predominantly on public infrastructure across the state. In August 2026 Dan’s Excavating won the openly bid $27.8 million package to relocate and reconstruct William P. Rosso Highway between I-94 and Jefferson Avenue near Selfridge Air National Guard Base, work that includes relocating the Irwin Drain, concrete box culverts and a new roundabout at Town Center Boulevard.

Six divisions rather than one: underground, airports, structural concrete, highways, electrical and ITS, and site development. That fifth one is what separates Dan’s Excavating from a straight earthwork contractor. The company self-performs traffic signals, fibre optic cable, dynamic message signs and cameras, so a highway package does not need a separate electrical prime.

Underground work runs from six-inch pipe to 144-inch, covering storm and sanitary sewer, watermain and box culverts. Equipment is owned rather than rented, a multi-million dollar fleet maintained in-house by the company’s own technicians.

The project record is public and priced. The largest listed is the Runway 3L/21R reconstruction and associated taxiways at Detroit Metro for the Wayne County Airport Authority, at $160.9 million. Behind it: I-75 from the Ohio state line to Erie Road for MDOT at $115.5 million, I-94 from M-60 to Sargent Road in Jackson County at $108.9 million, Baldwin Road phases one and two in Orion Township for the Road Commission for Oakland County at $31.3 million, the Central Deicing Facility and Runway 21R hold bay at Detroit Metro at $20.0 million, and the 25 Mile Road sanitary sewer for Shelby Township at $6.5 million. The company takes work from roughly $250,000 residential development up through nine-figure airport infrastructure.

The workforce is union, with operators, labourers, carpenters and electricians supported through local apprentice programmes. The retention figures are the ones the company leads with: turnover at about a quarter of the industry norm, and seventy percent of the workforce past fifteen years of service.

The tagline is short and, on the evidence of the project list, accurate: we dig Michigan.