About · Checkered Flag Excavation, Inc.
Jay Voisey has been putting numbers on Missouri dirt since 2000.
Everything on this page is either public record or his own words off a recording, and it says which. There is nothing here you cannot go and check yourself.
- Founded
- 2000Family owned. De Soto and Festus, Missouri.
- BuildZoom score
- 92Top third of 23,328 licensed Missouri contractors
- Certification
- WBEWoman Business Enterprise
- Office
- (636) 586‑1794checkeredflagexcavation.com
The company
An excavation company that is teaching, not a channel that digs.
Checkered Flag Excavation, Inc. was founded in 2000 and is family owned and operated. It works out of two Missouri addresses and the machines are still running this week.
Jay is not a full-time instructor with an excavation background. He is a contractor who is bidding work while this course is being built, which is why the numbers in it are current rather than remembered.
- De Soto
- 12548 Ware Rd, De Soto, MO 63020
- Festus
- 2786 Meyer Rd, Festus, MO 63028
- Phone
- (636) 586-1794
What the company does
- Culverts
- Demolition
- Grading
- Hauling
- Land clearing
- Ponds and lakes
- Retaining walls
- Roads
- Rock breaking
- Septic systems
- Trenching
Where it works
Jefferson County and the greater St. Louis metro.
- De Soto
- Festus
- Hillsboro
- Crystal City
- Herculaneum
- Pevely
- High Ridge
- House Springs
- Barnhart
The record
Licences most excavators never pull.
Two of these are separate licences for the same trade, he can install a septic system and he can inspect one. Both are held, and both are public.
- Certification
- WBE certifiedWoman Business Enterprise
- Licence
- Septic installerMissouri licensed
- Licence
- Septic inspectorA second, separate Missouri licence
- Licence
- Master DrainlayerSt. Louis County roster, 2022
- Approval
- Land Disturbance Special InspectorSt. Louis County approved list, 2025
- Bid lists
- Jefferson County, MONamed vendor on public bid sheets
He keeps the continuing education current for those licences, the CEUs and PEUs, and says plainly that sitting in those rooms is the only place he hears what is going on in the trade from anybody else.
There are no customer reviews on this page because there are none published anywhere. BuildZoom shows none. Manta shows none. Checkered Flag has never published a testimonial, and this site is not going to invent one. What it has instead is a licence stack and a score, both of which a stranger can verify without asking Jay for anything.
Sources: BuildZoom, BBB, TheBlueBook, Procore, St. Louis County licence rosters, Jefferson County MO vendor sheets
How it started
A skid steer, a partner, and no plan at all.
His own account, recorded 15 September 2026
He bought a Bobcat skid steer in partnership with a buddy while he was restoring cars on the side and building a new shop. He rented a high-lift for about three months. Then he bought his first machine, in December.
“People just started coming to me… i didn’t have to bid anything.”
Jay Voisey, recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [2:47]
Clearing, a road, a pond, a basement. The work arrived before the pricing did, which is the same order it arrives in for almost everybody who buys a machine, and it is exactly why the pricing is the part that gets learned late and expensively.
“I ended up buying a machine in December. I always made sure i bought all my machines in the winter. I always figured if i can afford a machine in the winter then i can afford it in the summer.”
Jay Voisey, recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [3:16]
Quotes on this page are transcript-verbatim, lower-case “i” and all. Cleaning a man’s speech up is the first step towards putting words in his mouth.
The turn
The day an accountant asked about his insurance.
“Whenever i started, i started off doing the same way everybody else, doing side jobs and and doing the job here, job there. And my cpa asked me about my insurance and i was like, what insurance? I said i i’m renting this, i’m renting equipment, why do i need insurance for?”
Jay Voisey, recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [20:40]
“At that pivotal moment is whenever i decided that there’s no more fly by night. I’ve got to either be real or be out.”
Jay Voisey, recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [21:25]
Twenty-five years later that is still the line the whole company runs on, and it is why the licence stack above exists at all. Nobody made him pull those licences. They are what “be real” turned into.
His lane
He is not the biggest contractor in Missouri, and he will tell you so first.
A man who teaches bidding has to be straight about which bids he actually writes. Here is the line, drawn in his own words.
The work he takes
- Residential subdivision grading
- Subdivision infrastructure
- Finish work in subdivisions, before the houses are done
- Land clearing
- Lakes and ponds
- Sub work for larger contractors
- Large homeowner and landowner jobs
The work he passes
- Big commercial projects, he has never gone deep into building a Walmart or grading a large-scale commercial site
- Anything that has to be bonded at size: he has bonded only a few jobs in his whole career, and all of them small
- Hard-bid large-scale commercial work, which he says he will pass up every time at this point in his life
- Work he would not want his name attached to afterwards
“At this point i’m going to continue picking the low-hanging fruit. I’m not going for the for the big monster job. If if you come to me wanting a large-scale commercial job, if i didn’t have to bond it, sure we’ll do it. But if i have to bond it, no. No, i’m not interested in that.”
Recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [46:13]
“Bonding is a a complicated deal, and to be perfectly honest with you i’ve only had to bond a few jobs in my career. I never jumped into the larger bigger commercial jobs that required um high bonding. We’ve bonded small jobs.”
Recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [37:02]
Where he is this year
Twenty-five years in, and this year is the hardest one.
Most people teaching a trade wait until the good year to talk. He is teaching in the bad one, and the arithmetic he is using to get through it is the course.
“Now prior to the past few months we would always have a year stockpile of work or more. Always sitting on a year plus of work. This is the first time in my career that i haven’t been sitting on a year plus of work.”
Recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [50:14]
He is bidding more and winning less of it, and he says so on the record rather than around it. What he has not done is drop his number to chase the cheap end of the market.
“Anyone that knows my company knows that i’m not cheap. Anyone local knows i’m not cheap. But they all know that we are the best at what we do, and that i’m going to notice everything that they’re not going to notice, and i’m going to plan ahead for everything that’s going to go wrong.”
Recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [60:59]
Why a course, and why now
In his own words, asked on camera.
“A lot of guys, like i’ve said, from not having proper insurance and being new to the game, don’t exactly know how to play the game yet, and and we’re — none of us are born with the knowledge, that’s for sure, everybody’s got to start somewhere. So i’m hoping to educate a lot of the people out there that are new to the game, so that, so that they can be fair with everybody else, um, and bring the prices up overall.”
Jay Voisey, recorded interview, 15 September 2026 [49:31]
That is the whole reason, and it is the only one on the record. He is not claiming a teaching history, a roster of people he has brought up, or a second career as an instructor. He has a company, a licence stack, and twenty-five years of bids he is willing to open up.
Now go and look at what he actually teaches.
Eight modules, built from real Checkered Flag jobs. The founding cohort is $397, and reserving a spot takes no card.