Short answer: clean fill dirt in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro is $10 per cubic yard delivered, with structural fill for foundation pads at $20 per cubic yard — see our full DFW pricing guide for the complete tables. This guide is about something the pricing tables don't cover: how much fill a new-construction lot actually needs, why the clay in Frisco behaves differently than the clay in Fort Worth, and what changes when you're grading an open lot for a builder instead of fixing one homeowner's backyard.
Why New Construction Is a Different Job Than Backyard Fill
A homeowner backfilling a pool or leveling a low spot is solving a bounded, existing-yard problem. A new-construction lot in the DFW growth corridor — Frisco, Prosper, Celina, Melissa, Anna — starts as raw or partially graded ground and needs the entire building pad brought to engineered elevation before a foundation crew shows up. That means two distinct fill operations on the same lot: rough grade (clean fill, bulk elevation across the whole lot) and pad fill (structural fill, the compacted base directly under the foundation footprint). Using rough-grade clean fill under the pad is the single most common and most expensive mistake on a new build — it passes a visual inspection and fails a compaction test months later when the slab starts to crack.
Blackland Prairie Clay by DFW Submarket
DFW soil is not one thing. The region sits across the Blackland Prairie, Grand Prairie, and Cross Timbers formations, and which one your lot sits on changes what fill grade you actually need under load-bearing work.
| Submarket | Native Soil | Grading Implication |
|---|---|---|
| Dallas / South Dallas County | Houston Black series clay (Blackland Prairie) — highly expansive, shrinks and swells with moisture | Structural fill required under any slab; native clay is unsuitable as pad base |
| Fort Worth / Tarrant County | Grand Prairie and Cross Timbers blend — limestone clay east, sandier soil west | Fill grade varies by side of the metro; ask which formation your specific lot sits on |
| Plano | Austin Chalk and Taylor Marl clay — highly reactive to moisture changes | Structural fill with sand content resists the seasonal heave that pure clay causes |
| Frisco / Prosper / Celina corridor | Blackland Prairie clay with Austin Chalk formations; northern lots trend sandier | The fastest-growing part of the metro also has some of the most reactive clay — pad fill is not optional here |
The practical rule across all four: if the lot sits on Blackland Prairie clay (most of the metro core and the northern growth corridor), assume the pad needs engineered structural fill regardless of what the rough grade uses. Fort Worth's western lots on sandier Cross Timbers soil are the one submarket where a soil test might come back favorable enough to relax that assumption — and it's still worth confirming with your geotechnical engineer rather than assuming.
What Builders Actually Order
Production and custom builders don't order a single grade — they order two, in sequence, on the same lot.
| Fill Type | Where It Goes | Price | Typical Depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clean fill dirt | Whole-lot rough grade, non-structural areas | $10/yd | Varies by lot topography, often 6-18 inches |
| Structural / select fill | Foundation pad footprint, driveway subbase | $20/yd | 12-24 inches, engineer-specified |
Because active builds run on a schedule, not a single delivery date, most builder accounts move into our volume tiers (see the full DFW pricing guide for the tier breakdown) — 100+ yards gets a custom per-yard rate, and 500+ yards across multiple lots or phases moves to a contractor program with staged deliveries timed to the framing schedule rather than one bulk drop.
Site Access on an Active Job Site
An open construction lot and a fenced backyard are opposite problems. On a backyard job, the constraint is usually a narrow gate. On an open lot, the constraint is coordinating with everyone else who needs the site that week — excavation, utility trenching, foundation forms. Tandem trucks (10 yd) work fine for most residential lots; tri-axle (16 yd) and end dump (18 yd) trucks move faster on larger phases where the site can absorb bigger rigs without blocking other trades. We coordinate delivery windows directly with the GC or superintendent rather than a homeowner, and timing usually needs to land before form-setting, not after.
Worked Example: Rough Grade + Pad Fill on a New-Build Lot in Frisco
The project: a 60 ft x 120 ft lot in the Frisco/Prosper corridor, needing a 4-inch whole-lot rough grade raise plus an engineered pad fill under a 50 ft x 60 ft foundation footprint at 18 inches deep.
Step 1 — whole-lot rough grade. 60 x 120 x (4/12) ft = 2,400 cubic feet, divided by 27 = 88.9 cubic yards. Round to 90 yards of clean fill.
Step 2 — foundation pad fill. 50 x 60 x 1.5 ft = 4,500 cubic feet, divided by 27 = 166.7 cubic yards. Add a 12% compaction allowance for engineered lift placement: 166.7 x 1.12 = 186.7 yards. Round to 188 yards of structural fill — just under twelve 16-yard tri-axle loads.
Step 3 — the bill.
| Line Item | Quantity | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clean fill dirt (rough grade) | 90 cu yd | $10/yd | $900 |
| Structural fill (pad) | 188 cu yd | $20/yd | $3,760 |
| Delivery | — | Included | $0 |
| Total material delivered | 278 cu yd | — | $4,660 |
At this volume the lot qualifies for a custom volume rate rather than list price — the table above is the list-price baseline so you have a number to negotiate from. Compaction testing (a separate line item from a geotechnical firm, not something we provide) confirms the pad hit spec before the foundation crew pours.
Get a Site Quote
Text us at (469) 253-2403 with the lot address, the rough-grade and pad dimensions if you have them, and your target delivery window. For builder accounts running multiple lots, ask about the contractor program — we'll set up staged deliveries against your framing schedule instead of quoting lot by lot.