File every ticket
Correct the first time, on your dig schedule. Keyed in by me, not by your office manager between invoicing and answering phones.
811 locate desk · All 50 states
Your crews shouldn't be standing around waiting on marks.
I ran gas main crews. Water, gas, high pressure mains. I know what it costs when six guys and a machine sit at the curb because a ticket lapsed over the weekend or a utility never posted a response.
Now I run the locate desk so your office doesn't have to.
- Month to month · no contract
- 30-day pilot on one crew
- A ticket lapses on my watch, you don't pay
Today
Tue · 5:42 AM
1Lapsed
3≤2 days
6Held
14Clear
9days
Industrial Blvd Ph 2 2411-0884
1400 Industrial Blvd, Columbus OH
Clear to dig
4days
Ridgeview Dr bore 2411-0902
820 Ridgeview Dr, Aurora CO
2 owners not posted
0lapsed
Harbor St tie-in 2411-0771
3125 Harbor St, Tampa FL
Do not dig, renew
2days
Cedar Ave 8" water 2411-0913
6400 Cedar Ave, Raleigh NC
Dig date inside notice period
Two lists to every foreman before crews roll: clear to dig, do not dig.
Licensed & insured
Errors & omissions coverage in force
Works inside the software you already use
You remain the excavator of record
What it costs you not to
A ticket nobody watched is the most expensive line item on the job.
$2,500 to $4,000
One crew standing down for a day. Truck, machine, and the guys, all billing nothing.
1
Gas strike: repair, downtime, fines, a claim, and a phone call you don't want to make.
18 mo
How long after the dig a damage claim can land. What's in your file that day is what you have.
The service
Six things, every working day, before your foreman hooks up the trailer.
I'm not selling you software. Software doesn't call Frontier on day nine. What you're buying is a person who works the desk every morning, and the board is how it gets worked and how you see it.
Nothing lapses
Every expiration tracked to the day, renewed before the clock runs out. If one ever does lapse, you hear it from me before you find it.
Chase the non-responders
I call the facility owners who haven't posted and stay on them. Supervisor, reference number, and a logged call every time.
Morning status to your foremen
Two lists by text before crews roll: clear to dig, do not dig. Nobody's foreman is opening a website at 5:40 a.m. in a truck.
Build the file
Ticket history, marks, responses, timestamps, every chase call. The documentation you'll want the day somebody claims you hit an unmarked line.
One-page weekly report
Open, cleared, renewed, at risk. Plus which facility owners are holding your jobs up, by name. Friday, every week.
The board
Built on the paint that's already on the ground.
The interface uses the APWA uniform color code, so a foreman reads it without being taught. Every facility owner on a ticket is a bar in its marking color.
Solid
Responded, and it clears the dig.
Hatched
Responded, but it still holds the job.
Hollow
Nothing posted yet. That's the call list.
Hazard striping
The ticket has lapsed. Nobody needs a legend.
Electric
Gas / Oil
Comms / Fiber
Water
Sewer
Reclaimed
Survey
Beyond a spreadsheet
Four things a tracking sheet will never tell you.
01 Lawful start date, per state
Advance notice counted from the moment the ticket was first called in. Business days, calendar days, or clock hours, because states differ on all three. A planned dig date inside that window gets flagged in red on the board before anyone hooks up a trailer. Ask a competitor to show you that in a demo.
02 Clear to dig is a conclusion, not a checkbox
It isn't a field anybody can set. It's drawn from three independent gates: the ticket hasn't lapsed, the notice period has run out, and every notified facility owner has posted a response that clears. Nobody can accidentally mark a lapsed ticket clear.
03 Renewal arithmetic
Renewing restarts the expiration clock but not the notice period, and it resets every response to pending. Refreshed marks have to be re-confirmed rather than riding on a stale “marked” from three weeks ago.
04 Response aging
Who's been silent, for how long, worst first. That list is my morning, and it's the part that no software does for you. Somebody has to pick up the phone.
Fifty states, none of them guessed
The part nobody else will put in writing.
Every state sets its own notice period and ticket life. Some count business days, some count clock hours. Ticket life runs anywhere from under two weeks to a month.
The system ships the whole directory. All 50 states plus DC, their one-call centers, and links to each center's published rules. It ships the day counts empty.
A state stays unusable until an operator enters its two numbers and signs off, and that sign-off records who, when, and the URL they read. Until then the board returns rules not confirmed instead of a verdict, because a default notice period is a guess with a backhoe attached to it. Editing any number revokes the confirmation.
I'm not going to tell you software keeps you legal. I'm telling you this one refuses to guess, and it writes down who decided what.
STATE RULES
Ohio
2 business days · 21 day life
Confirmed
Colorado
not set · not set
Not confirmed
Florida
not set · not set
Not confirmed
Damage claims
The audit trail is the product.
Every action writes a timestamped entry to the ticket's log: created, renewed, response recorded, call placed, note added, closed. In hosted mode the log table has an insert policy and deliberately no update or delete policy, so a ticket's history cannot be rewritten after the fact. That's the entire point of having one.
When a claim lands eighteen months later, it prints as one file: everyone notified, every response with timestamps, every chase call with its reference number, and the full history. That's what an adjuster asks for on day one, and it's the difference between a defended claim and a paid one.
Talk about your exposure
DOCUMENTATION PACKET
Ticket 2411-0771
- 10/02 08:14 Ticket created: Harbor St tie-in, Tampa FL
- 10/02 08:14 5 facility owners notified
- 10/04 11:47 Response: Electric, clear, marked
- 10/04 15:02 Response: Water, clear, marked
- 10/07 09:30 Call placed: Comms, no answer
- 10/08 10:12 Call placed: Comms, ref #48812, escalated
- 10/09 07:55 Response: Comms, marked, conflict noted
- 10/14 06:30 Renewed: responses reset to pending
Insert-only log · no update or delete policy
The comparison that matters
Compare me to your software plus the person who operates it.
There's good ticket software out there and some of it is free. Somebody still has to work it. Here's a five-crew contractor at roughly 80 tickets a month, using his own numbers.
| Doing it in-house | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Ticket software, advanced tier (flat + per-ticket) | $360 |
| Office admin running it, 10 hrs/wk @ $27/hr loaded | $1,169 |
| Real cost (conservative) | $1,529 |
| Same, at a realistic 15 hrs/wk | $1,753 |
| Real cost (realistic) | $2,113 |
| Full Desk, 4 to 8 crews, done for you | under both |
Loaded rate is $20 to $24/hr base × ~1.3 for payroll tax, comp, unemployment and PTO. Bring your own numbers to the call and we'll run it on yours.
My price doesn't go up when you get busy
Per-ticket pricing bills you most in the month your cash is tightest. Flat monthly, forecastable, month to month.
My desk doesn't take vacation
Your admin gets sick, quits, or gets pulled onto a bid. That's usually exactly where the lapse happens.
I work inside what you already have
I'm not replacing your system. I'm the person who works it. Additive, not a rip and replace.
Tiers
Three levels. Priced on your crew count, on a fifteen-minute call.
Month to month, invoiced on the 1st, 30-day out. No contracts. Fire me any month you want. It costs me nothing to say that, because nobody fires a locate desk that works.
Ticket Desk
1 to 3 crews
- Ticket submission on your schedule
- Renewal tracking, nothing lapses
- Expiration alerts
- Board access for the office
Full Desk
4 to 8 crews
- Everything in Ticket Desk
- Positive response chasing: I make the calls
- Daily morning clear / no-clear to each foreman
- Notice-window enforcement on every dig date
- One-page weekly report, every Friday
Desk + Defense
Claims exposure or high-consequence gas
- Everything in Full Desk
- Damage documentation packets on demand
- Monthly compliance file
- Full timestamped audit trail, insert-only
Start with one crew for thirty days. If a single ticket lapses on my watch, you don't pay.
Straight about it
What this is not.
Overselling this is how you lose a contractor in month two. So, plainly:
No live connection to any 811 center
Tickets are keyed in by hand, by me. Portal integration is the first thing built once there are paying clients, and they'll say what matters more than I can guess today.
Foremen get texts, not logins
The office gets a real working board. Morning status is text-first because that's the channel that actually gets read at 5:40 a.m.
No photo storage
The packet documents the ticket record and the call log, not field photos. Keep those with the job file.
The locate rules are confirmed, not warranted
Ticket life, notice period and the holiday calendar are set per state and confirmed against each one-call center. This is not legal advice, and you remain the excavator of record.
Questions I get
The ones worth answering in writing.
We already handle that in the office.
Most do. Who is it? And when she's out sick or on vacation, who picks it up? That's usually where the lapse happens.
We already use 811 ticket software.
Good software. Keep it. Somebody still has to work it, though. The software doesn't call the power company when they haven't posted a response on day three. That's the part I do, and I'll work inside whatever you've already got.
Can I just buy the app?
It's not for sale on its own. It's the tool I run your desk on. If you want software you operate yourself, honestly, go look at what's out there; the free tiers are decent. Call me when you'd rather not operate it.
Does this keep us legal? Does it cover every state?
It covers every state, and here's the part I'd want to hear if I were you: it won't give you a dig verdict for a state until somebody has sat down with that state's rulebook and confirmed the notice period and the ticket life. No defaults, no best guess. Until that's done it says rules not confirmed and stops. Once it is done, the file shows who confirmed it, what day, and what page they read. I'm not going to tell you software keeps you legal. You're the excavator of record and that doesn't move.
How do I know you won't drop the ball?
Start me on one crew for thirty days. If a single ticket lapses, don't pay me. And you can fire me any month with no notice. There's no contract.
That's too much money.
What's a crew day run you, all in? Truck, machine, guys. And how many times last year did a crew stand down on locates? Run that number and then let's talk.
Who are you, exactly?
Foreman on gas main crews. Water, gas, high pressure mains. Then IT, then a CS degree. Unusual resume. It means you're not getting a software rep reading a script; you're getting somebody who has stood in the hole waiting on marks.
Next step
Fifteen minutes, and three questions about your desk.
Who handles your tickets now and how many hours a week it eats. What a crew day costs you, all in. When a crew last stood down waiting on locates. That conversation prices the job, and you'll know inside of a call whether this is worth doing.
Locate Desk LLC · Underground contractors nationwide · Licensed & insured