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Trade Playbook
Heavy civil — roads, bridges, sewers, site servicing — is a different universe from building construction: public tenders, bonding, union operators, and margins measured in pennies on enormous volumes. The questions: how you actually break in (you don't just start a roadbuilding company), operator vs owner, the bonding and MTO-prequalification wall, and whether the thin-margin/high-volume game is worth it.
Where it starts
Union rates + OT
Heavy-civil operator / tradesperson
Where it tops out
Business income
Heavy-civil contractor owner
Union route
Largely unionized (IUOE, LIUNA)
Ontario figures for road & infrastructure, from the first day on site to the top of the trade. Approximate, and worth checking against current collective agreement rates and job postings in your region.
| Stage | Pay | What is going on at this stage |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy-civil operator / tradesperson | Union rates + OT | IUOE/LIUNA wages plus the overtime that heavy civil runs on (see Heavy Equipment Operator). |
| Estimator / project manager | $90k–140k | |
| Superintendent | $110k–150k | |
| Heavy-civil contractor owner | Business income | Large revenue, thin margins, heavy equipment — bonding capacity caps your volume. |
Every figure above is what civil contractors get paid. It is not what you charge once you run a road and infrastructure business. Your rate has to carry the hours you are not on the tools, the truck, the tools themselves, WSIB, insurance, the quote you wrote and lost, and the holdback sitting in someone else's account for 60 days. Contractors who set their rate off their old hourly wage are the ones who work every weekend and still cannot say whether the year was profitable.
The step from paid by the hour to paid by the jobScale, specialize into a niche (bridges, directional drilling, line painting), or sell. Heavy-civil contractors with an equipment fleet, bonding capacity, and a public-tender track record are valuable — the equipment alone is a balance sheet, and the prequalification status is hard-won. Estimators and supers also move into owner/agency project-management roles.
Wage data, union rate sheets, and the places civil contractors talk about money openly.
The rates above are the market. The live feed is the market this week: which builders and contractors just pulled a permit or won a contract in Ontario, what they are about to need, and who to call.
Heavy Equipment and Crane Operator Jobs in Ontario: Who Is HiringAEC Stack handles incorporation, WSIB, insurance certificates, quoting, invoicing, and chasing the money, so a road and infrastructure business runs like one with an office behind it.
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