Underground Utility Contractor in Oklahoma City

Trinity Boring Solutions installs underground utilities across the Oklahoma City metro without tearing up the surface above them. We run 10 drill rigs, all owned outright, and we have completed more than 10,000 bores since the family started this business in 1965. If you are pricing out a utility installation in Oklahoma County or Canadian County and you need a contractor who can pull permits, coordinate locates, and put pipe in the ground on schedule, this page covers what we do and how we do it.

We are based at 9102 Northwest Expy in Yukon, about 15 minutes from downtown Oklahoma City, which puts our crews and equipment inside the metro rather than driving in from out of state. Call (405) 409-7423 to talk through a job.

What We Install Underground

Underground utility work covers a lot of ground, so here is the specific scope we handle.

Water and Sewer

Water mains, service lines, gravity sewer, and force main. We install by bore or by open trench depending on depth, grade tolerance, and what sits above the alignment. Gravity sewer needs tighter grade control than a pressure line, so we plan those differently from the start.

Electrical and Telecom Conduit

Primary and secondary electrical conduit, duct bank, and communication conduit for carriers and contractors. This includes fiber optic conduit installation for backbone and last mile builds, plus innerduct and multi cell configurations where a carrier needs future capacity in the same trench or bore path.

Storm Drain and Drainage

Storm lines, culvert crossings, and drainage structures. Storm work often means larger diameters, which is where our casing and jack and bore capability matters more than a small directional rig.

Fire Line Installation

Fire service lines into buildings, including work coordinated around existing site utilities on occupied commercial property.

Steel Casing and Road Crossings

Steel casing installation under roadways, rail, and highway. We do jack and bore where the crossing calls for a rigid, straight line installation with a casing pipe, and directional drilling where the alignment has curves or obstacles to steer around. See our road and highway utility crossing work.

Hydrovac Daylighting and Potholing

Hydrovac daylighting and potholing exposes existing utilities before we drill. On a congested Oklahoma City street with gas, water, electric, and multiple telecom owners in the same corridor, potholing the crossings is the difference between a clean bore and a utility strike.

Emergency Utility Repair

Emergency utility contractor service, 24/7 for breaks, strikes, and outages. If a line is down and your project or your customers are waiting, call and we will get a crew moving.

Equipment and Bore Capability

The specifics buyers ask about most:

• 10 active drill rigs, owned outright, not rented. That means we are not waiting on a rental yard to release a machine when your schedule moves up.
• Vermeer and Ditch Witch directional drills, owned outright, sized from compact service line units up to large production rigs.
• Bore lengths from 10 feet to 5,000 feet. A short driveway crossing and a 5,000 foot highway or river run are different jobs, and we are set up for both.
• Diameters from 3/4 inch service line through 48 inch casing. Small fiber conduit and residential water service through large diameter steel casing, sewer, and water main.
• Hydrovac trucks and trailers, also owned outright, so we are not subbing out the potholing and waiting on someone else’s calendar.

Owning the iron matters on price too. Rented equipment shows up in a bid as a line item that has to be marked up. Ours does not. You can see the full fleet on our drill rig fleet page.

Central Oklahoma Soils and What They Do to a Bore

Central Oklahoma is mostly red clay over shale, with sand and gravel where you are near the North Canadian River or Deep Fork. Each behaves differently on a drill.

• Red clay holds an open hole well, which is good, but it packs on the reamer and can slow a pullback if the mud program is wrong. It also swells, so annular pressure has to be managed to avoid frac out at shallow depth.
• Shale is where bit selection and rig torque earn their keep. Thin shale layers are drillable with standard tooling. Harder, thicker shale can require different tooling and a slower advance rate, and it is worth knowing that before you sign a bid that assumed easy ground.
• Sand and gravel lenses near the river bottoms lose returns and can collapse. Those need a heavier mud program and sometimes a casing solution instead of a straight directional bore.

A contractor who has drilled here for decades prices this in. A contractor who has not will price it low and then submit a change order when the shale shows up.

Permitting, Locates, and Right of Way

Most delays on underground utility jobs are paperwork, not drilling. We handle the paperwork.

OKIE811 locate requests. Every bore starts with a locate ticket. We submit, we wait out the required notice period, and we verify the marks in the field before the drill turns. Where the marks are vague or the corridor is crowded, we pothole to confirm rather than assuming a paint line is accurate to the inch. Our page on OKIE811 locates before boring walks through the process.

City of Oklahoma City right of way permitting. Work in the City of Oklahoma City right of way requires a permit and, for boring work, a contractor who has been through the City’s prequalification process. We deal with that side of it so your project is not stalled at the counter.

ODOT permits. State highway crossings go through the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, which has its own submittal requirements, casing standards, and depth of cover expectations. We prepare those submittals and build the crossing to what the permit requires.

Suburban jurisdictions. Edmond, Norman, Moore, Yukon, Mustang, Del City, Midwest City, Bethany, Warr Acres, Nichols Hills, The Village, Piedmont, Newcastle, Choctaw, and Harrah each run their own permitting and inspection. We work in all of them and we know which cities want what.

How a Bore Job Runs

For anyone who has not subcontracted this work before, the sequence is predictable. We walk the alignment and confirm entry and exit points, staging room, and spoil handling. We submit the OKIE811 ticket and pull the applicable city, county, or ODOT permit. We pothole the crossings with hydrovac to physically expose conflicts. We set the rig, drill the pilot bore on the designed profile, ream to the diameter the pipe requires, and pull the product pipe or casing. Then we restore the entry and exit pits, clean up the site, and hand you what the inspector needs. On a straightforward street crossing that is often a single day. On a long run with heavy traffic control or multiple crossings, we will give you a realistic day count up front rather than an optimistic one.

Who We Work For

Our customer list is mostly other professionals who need a boring subcontractor they do not have to babysit.

• Municipalities and public works departments on water, sewer, and storm projects. See our municipal utility contractor work.
• General contractors who need utilities in before the slab goes down
• Electrical contractors running primary conduit and duct bank
• Plumbers who need a service line under a driveway, parking lot, or street
• Telecom carriers and their construction partners on fiber and conduit builds
• Fence companies who need a bore under a hard surface instead of a saw cut
• Data center and airport projects, where the schedule, security, and coordination requirements are stricter than a typical site

If you are a contractor bidding work and you need bore footage priced for your proposal, send us the alignment and we will give you a number you can put in your bid.

Service Area Across the OKC Metro

We cover the entire Oklahoma City metro, and beyond that all of Oklahoma and north Texas. Metro coverage includes Oklahoma City, Edmond, Norman, Moore, Yukon, Mustang, Del City, Midwest City, Bethany, Warr Acres, Nichols Hills, The Village, Piedmont, Newcastle, Choctaw, and Harrah, plus the unincorporated parts of Oklahoma County and Canadian County.

Being headquartered in Yukon means Canadian County jobs are essentially local for us, and anywhere on the Oklahoma City side of the metro is a short haul for a rig and support truck.

Why Contractors Pick Us

60 plus years, three generations. The owner’s grandfather started this business in 1965. That is a long record of doing one thing.

10,000 plus bores completed. Volume across every soil condition and utility type in this part of the state.

5.0 stars from 49 Google reviews. No filler in that number.

BBB rated A plus. Not accredited, but rated A plus.

Owned fleet, 10 rigs. Availability and pricing both benefit.

Permitting handled. OKIE811, City of Oklahoma City right of way, ODOT, and suburban jurisdictions.

Get a Number on Your Job

Send us the location, the utility type and diameter, the length of the crossing, and any known conflicts. We will tell you whether it is a directional bore, a jack and bore, or an open cut, and what it costs. If you want to see how pricing works before you call, read our directional boring cost in Oklahoma guide and the detailed HDD cost breakdown.

Call (405) 409-7423 or use the contact page to get a bore quote.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does an underground utility contractor actually do?

An underground utility contractor installs, replaces, and repairs the pipe, conduit, and cable that runs below grade: water, sewer, storm drain, gas, electrical, and communications. On our side of it, that means directional boring and jack and bore to get lines under roads, driveways, creeks, and existing utilities, plus trenching where open cut is the better answer, hydrovac excavation to expose what is already down there, and the permitting and locate coordination that has to happen before any of it starts.

How much does it cost to bore a utility line in Oklahoma City?

Price depends on length, pipe diameter, depth, soil, and how congested the corridor is. A short bore under a residential driveway for a small conduit is a very different number from 800 feet of 24 inch casing under an arterial street with four existing utility owners in the way. The honest answer is that we need the alignment and the pipe spec to quote it. What we can tell you is that we do not pad the bid with rental equipment markup, because we own all 10 rigs. Our boring cost guide covers the variables in detail.

Is boring cheaper than trenching?

Often, once you count everything. Trenching looks cheaper per foot in isolation, but a trench across a street or parking lot adds sawcutting, spoil hauling, backfill, compaction testing, pavement replacement, traffic control, and sometimes business disruption claims. A bore leaves the surface intact. On soft, open ground with no surface to restore, trenching can win. We will tell you which one is cheaper for your specific crossing instead of pushing you toward the method we happen to prefer. Our trenching versus boring comparison lays out both sides.

How long can you bore in one shot?

From 10 feet up to 5,000 feet. Longer runs need staging room on both ends, a mud program sized for the hole volume, and enough rig thrust and pullback capacity for the pipe. Our larger Vermeer and Ditch Witch production rigs are configured for the long pulls.

What pipe sizes can you install?

From 3/4 inch service line up through 48 inch casing. The small end covers fiber and telecom conduit and residential water service. The large end covers water main, sewer, storm, and steel casing under highways and rail.

When do you use jack and bore instead of directional drilling?

Jack and bore is the choice when the crossing must be dead straight and on grade with a rigid casing, which is typical for railroad crossings, many ODOT highway crossings, and gravity sewer where grade tolerance is tight. Directional drilling is the choice when you need to steer, when the alignment curves, when you have to dive under obstacles, or when you want to avoid the pits that jack and bore requires. Depth, soil, and the permit language usually decide it. We compare the two methods on our jack and bore versus directional drilling page.

Do I need an OKIE811 locate before you drill?

Yes, and it is not optional. Oklahoma law requires a locate request before excavation, and we submit the ticket, observe the notice period, and verify the marks in the field. On congested corridors we go further and pothole with hydrovac to physically expose crossing utilities, because paint on the ground tells you approximately where a line is, not exactly.

Do you handle city and ODOT permits, or is that on me?

We handle them. That includes City of Oklahoma City right of way permits, including the boring contractor prequalification the City requires, ODOT permits for state highway crossings, and permits in the suburban jurisdictions across Oklahoma County and Canadian County. If your project needs a submittal package for a crossing, we prepare it.

What are the soils like around Oklahoma City, and does it change the price?

Mostly red clay over shale, with sand and gravel near the river bottoms. Clay drills well but loads the reamer. Shale can require different tooling and a slower advance. Sand and gravel can lose returns and collapse. It does affect price, which is why an alignment through the river bottom near the North Canadian is not priced the same as a run through stable clay on the north side of the metro.

Do you do emergency work, and how fast can you respond?

Yes, we run 24/7 dispatch for emergency utility repair: line strikes, breaks, and outages. Because our yard is in Yukon and our rigs are ours rather than rented, we can put equipment on the road without waiting on a rental release. Call (405) 409-7423 and tell dispatch what is down.