The Short Answer
- Brown Bros. does not take on individual homeowner projects like driveway grading, backyard drainage, or single-lot excavation.
- Brown Bros. does handle residential site work — but only at neighborhood scale, clearing and preparing entire subdivisions for developers and builders.
- The core of the business is commercial, industrial, and roadwork site development across Chattanooga and the Southeast.
The question we hear every week
“Do you do residential?” is one of the most common calls Brown Bros. gets — from homeowners wanting a driveway graded, a wet backyard fixed, or a pond dug, and from developers asking whether Brown Bros. can prepare raw land for a new subdivision. Those are two very different jobs, and the honest answer depends on which one you mean.
Here is where Brown Bros. actually fits, and where it does not, so the right calls get through and the wrong ones do not eat up a Monday morning.
What Brown Bros. doesn't do: individual homeowner projects
Brown Bros. is not set up for single-lot residential work — grading a backyard, cutting in a driveway, digging a pond, or clearing one homeowner's lot. That kind of job needs a small local outfit that can show up with a single machine and finish in a day or two.
Brown Bros. runs a fleet of more than 100 machines and crews built to mobilize on projects measured in acres, not square feet. Sending that kind of operation to grade one yard would be like hiring a moving company to carry a single box — the fit just is not there, and homeowners are better served by a contractor sized to the job.
What Brown Bros. does: commercial, industrial, and roadwork
This is the core of the business. Brown Bros. self-performs excavation, grading, land clearing, utilities, erosion control, paving, and site development for commercial buildings, industrial and manufacturing facilities, and roadway and infrastructure projects across Chattanooga, North Georgia, and the Southeast.
Recent work includes site preparation for manufacturers like Volkswagen, Gestamp, and Plastic Omnium, the Cambridge Square commercial development, and a growing list of data center and mission-critical projects across the region. These are the projects Brown Bros. is built for — complex, schedule-driven, and demanding enough that having one accountable contractor handle the full scope actually matters.
What Brown Bros. also does: residential site work, at neighborhood scale
Here is the nuance most people miss: Brown Bros. does do residential site work — just not for individual homeowners. When a developer or builder is turning raw land into an entire subdivision or master-planned community, that is squarely Brown Bros. territory.
At Integra Vista, Brown Bros. cleared and prepared a large raw tract into a development-ready residential community, cutting buildable lots with the grading and drainage a neighborhood depends on. At Hillock Farms, an active project, crews have already moved 1.2 million cubic yards of dirt turning raw ground into buildable lots. At Chestnut Heights, the same work is underway right now, shaping a wooded tract into a new residential community lot by lot.
- Land clearing across the full tract
- Mass excavation and grading to create buildable lots
- Drainage, erosion control, and utility rough-in for the whole community
How to tell which one you need
If you own a single lot and need it graded, cleared, or dug, look for a local residential landscaping or excavation contractor sized for that scope.
If you are a developer, homebuilder, general contractor, or municipality bringing a subdivision, commercial site, industrial facility, or road project to life, Brown Bros. is exactly who you want on it. Call (423) 893-9595 or request an estimate, and the team will tell you straight whether it is a fit.