Free, required, and misunderstood in one specific way that gets lines hit every year.
A JULIE 811 locate is free, it is Illinois law, and on our jobs it is step one — not paperwork we hand back to you. Brohez Trucking LLC files the ticket and waits out the clock before a machine touches ground on house and barn demolition, excavation, drainage and field tile, and pond work across a 60-mile radius from Mattoon, Illinois. If you are reading this because you are about to dig, call or text a photo to (217) 809-0779 and we will tell you what your job actually needs.
JULIE is the Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators — Illinois’ free one-call utility notification service. You file a ticket, or dial 811, and JULIE notifies every member utility with buried facilities near your dig site. Each of them sends somebody to mark their own lines. It is free to the person digging.
In Illinois, anyone who digs. Homeowner or contractor, fence post or foundation. There is no square-footage exemption that lets a small job skip it. On our jobs we file the ticket ourselves, because it is our machine and our responsibility, but the requirement is on whoever is doing the digging.
You file, and the utilities have a defined window to respond before the dig can start. Practically, that means a JULIE ticket is a scheduling item measured in business days — not something you file the morning you want to dig. A ticket also has an expiry, so a job that slips can need it refreshed.
A positive response is not an all-clear. A positive response means each utility has answered the ticket — and one of the legitimate answers is that a utility has facilities in the area and has marked them. Reading “all responses in” as “nothing buried here” is the misread, and it is how somebody hits a line on a site that was properly located. Marks on the ground are what you dig around, not the status on a screen.
Private lines. The gas line from the meter to the shop, the electric to the barn, the water line to the hydrant out in the lot, and old field tile — those belong to the property owner and no utility is coming out to mark them. On a farmstead that is often most of what is actually buried. Tell us what you know is out there; you know your place better than a locate ticket does.
Yes. In Illinois the requirement is on anyone who digs, with no small-job exemption, and it is free. On our work we file the ticket ourselves because it is our machine in the ground.
No, and this is the misread that gets lines hit. A positive response means the utilities have answered the ticket. One legitimate answer is that facilities are present and have been marked. What you dig around is the marks on the ground, not the status of the ticket.
No. The gas line from the meter to the shop, the electric run to the barn, the water line to a hydrant, and old field tile are the property owner's and no utility marks them. On a farmstead those are often the majority of what is buried, so tell us what you know is out there.
Yes, and it is the step people skip because the building is coming down rather than the ground being dug. But a teardown is a dig: the foundation comes out, the footings come out, and on a lot of properties the old service laterals are still live in the ground beside them. Gas, electric, water, telecom and sewer laterals do not always run where the drawings say, and an unmarked line under a foundation is exactly where a machine finds it. We file the ticket, wait the required notice period, and work to the marks — on every demolition, every time. It costs nothing and it is the difference between a clean job and a very bad afternoon.
We do, on work we are doing. You are welcome to file one yourself — anyone can, it is free, and if you are doing your own digging you should. But on a Brohez job it is ours to handle and we do not hand it back to you. Where it gets less obvious is the disconnects: the locate marks where a live line runs, it does not turn anything off. Getting gas, electric and water actually cut and capped at the main is the property owner's call to make with the utility, because they will only take that instruction from the account holder. We will tell you exactly who to ring and in what order.
Free, itemized, on-site estimates across central Illinois. Here is what to photograph, or see the rest of the plain-English glossary.