Justice Trucking And Backhoe Service

Justice was a subcontractor to my logging contractor with the job of building a road on our property. It was over budget and the quality of work was extremely, extremely poor. They did a terrible job of grading, no ditching whatsoever, they didn’t use geotextile fabric as instructed/spec’d, left huge messes of overburden and debris, they lazily buried brush under the new road, and they destroyed my existing driveway by diverting ground water onto the road and then not correcting the issue before continuing hauling over it. And finally, they shoveled their tracks onto my driveway. Avoid this outfit at all costs.

Al Justice has run this business, started by his father in the '60s, since 1999. There is an associated quarry, and a trucking operation. While the price for the work was significantly more than we'd anticipated would be necessary, we were new to private road repair and maintenance and had to hope that the recommended work and charges were reasonable and advisable. With heavy trucks coming soon and the winter weather not yet over, we had to rely on the contractor's integrity and reputation in the community in hiring a contractor. Al seemed sincere and forthright in discussing progress and points at which it appeared to him that additional work might be worthwhile to us in the long run, and he was careful to check with us to get work okayed before proceeding. His crew was easy to work with, and we liked Al and the others. Al explained his professional suggestions but did not pressure us, and we approved work incrementally to the point that we paid four times what we had originally planned, repairing some deep holes, areas of poor drainage, and years of rough usage and neglect. It would have been better to reach a clearer understanding about our preference for a basic repair of the whole stretch of road rather than an excellent repair of first one section and then another. We thought we had managed this but in fact were in the position, like people buying house siding in the old days, of finding two sides completely finished and two only just started. Given our lack of expertise with roadwork, this was unfortunate but perhaps not surprising. We do not feel that the company was at fault in this. In the end, we do have a good solid repair of everything but the parking area in front of our house, are happy with the quality of the work, and feel confident that it will be long-lasting. We will also feel free to call Al for future work, and will be in a better position as consumers to negotiate what we truly need. At the time of this writing, Justice is charging $235 per 15-16-ton truckload (at least for a job like ours), compared with $840 for a single truckload of the same size charged by his nearest competitor, Ashe Construction, in Randle, WA.