How Levi Costa Built Landworx Montana One Job at a Time
Get to Know Levi Costa
Some guys talk about the American dream. Levi Costa is out there living it, one masticated cottonwood grove, one 4:30 a.m. alarm, one 16,000-lb equipment haul at a time.
Levi is the owner of Landworx Montana, a land-clearing and excavation outfit built out of a favor for a friend that turned into a full-blown business. In the third episode of Behind the Wheel, Doc's Diesel sat down with Levi, along with his partner and longtime crew member, to talk about what it really takes to run heavy equipment for a living.
From a Favor to a Full-Blown Business
Landworx didn't start with a business plan. It started with a call from a friend. "You got my best friend of mine growing up…why would you not want to see him succeed? So when he calls for help, yeah, I'll be there. Sounds great. What are we doing?" says one of Levi's team members.
Levi is the first to admit he didn't know how to run a company when he started. "Starting a company without really knowing how to run a company, you learn a lot. You have a lot of mess-ups, a lot of mistakes, but you just got to own all your mistakes and take them all as learning lessons."
Levi's partner, who handles the books, remembers the moment it became real: "I remember he was working for a company, traveling a bit, and he would come home every couple months and talk about how he wanted to start his own company. And finally he came home one day and said, 'I want to do it,' and I said, 'do it.' So he started it, and he hasn't looked back. I think that's pretty close to the American dream."
That's a mindset a lot of Doc's Diehards know well: you don't learn to run equipment, run a crew, or run a rig by reading about it. You learn by putting in the hours and fixing what breaks.
The Work: Clearing Land, Building Dreams
Landworx handles mastication and land clearing, general excavating, foundations, septic systems, and roads, but Levi's real passion is decking out properties in the mountains.
"Whether it's carving a place out for hunting, we've done some ski runs for clients, and then we do excavating as well, foundations, septic systems, roads. But we really love working in the mountains and decking people's properties out, whether they want to use it for dirt biking, decking out their fishing property, their hunting property, putting in a ski run, whatever they can imagine, we kind of make it come true."
On the day of filming, the crew had just cleared a dense grove of cottonwoods and brush into usable space: "You couldn't see through it at all. Now it's a bunch of usable space."
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The Equipment Levi Runs: Hauling Serious Weight
Running a land-clearing operation means hauling serious iron, day in and day out. Levi's clearing rig is a 333G excavator with a forestry package.
"That's a 333G. It's got a forestry package on it, added about 1,000 lbs to it, so it's about 13,000. The masticator that cleaned all this up, that's another 3,000 lbs. So that's 16,000 lbs alone. And then all the other implements and tools we got to throw on the trailer and truck, it adds up pretty quick."
That weight doesn't stay parked. It travels, often over an hour and a half each way, starting before sunrise.
"Leaving the house as early as 4:30 or 5 some mornings, or as late as 6:00, driving an hour and a half to the job. Get here at 7 and start work, work until there's a good stopping point — whether that's 8 hours or 14 hours. It just depends on the job and the day. And then drive the hour and a half, two hours home, eat some dinner, and do it all over again."
That's a lot of miles on the truck, a lot of weight behind it, and zero room for a breakdown mid-route. It's exactly the kind of duty cycle that separates guys who baby their trucks from guys who actually depend on them.
Maintenance First, Excuses Never
If there's one thing Levi is dead serious about, it's staying ahead of maintenance on the equipment and the trucks hauling it.
"I do all my own maintenance. I need to know how everything works. Anytime I have a breakdown, I have all the tools on my truck to fix it, and I need to know how to fix it. If I don't know how, you got to be smart enough to figure it out. Time is money, and when it's down, you just fix it, buy new parts and get her done. But staying up with maintenance is huge. As soon as you slack on maintenance, a lot more things break and it becomes a lot more expensive."
That's the exact philosophy behind every part Doc's Diesel sells: get ahead of failures before they cost you a job. For a rig logging an hour and a half each way before the workday even starts, fuel filtration isn't optional. Long highway miles and remote job sites mean more exposure to dirty fuel, and clean filtration protects injectors that are expensive to replace.
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Protect the Fuel System Doc's Ford 6.7L Powerstroke Fuel/Water Separator Filter 3-layer pleated media rated 3 micron @ 98.76% efficiency — built to keep water and debris out of a fuel system that's running hard, hours from the shop. Shop the Filter |
Sustained heavy towing also means crankcase pressure builds fast. Keeping that system clean protects the turbo, intercooler, and intake valves from carbon buildup over time.
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Don't Overlook This One Doc's Ford 6.7L Powerstroke CCV Filter Traps oil mist and blow-by gases before they recirculate into the intake — one of the most overlooked parts on a Powerstroke logging Levi's kind of hours. Shop the CCV Filter |
If your rig is logging the kind of hours Levi's does, staying current on filtration and fluid maintenance isn't optional. Check out our breakdown on why your CCV filter matters or compare fuel filter options in our DGF401 filter comparison before your next long haul.
The Crew Behind the Grind
Landworx isn't a one-man operation, even if it started that way. Levi's longtime friend now runs equipment for him: "We've been friends for a long time. Went to school together growing up. Super hard worker, grading any piece of equipment, I could throw him in there and a couple hours later he's running it like he's got 1,000 hours. I can walk away and trust that he'll handle anything. If he needs anything, he'll call me."
And at home, Levi's partner keeps the business side running. "She's the brains behind the whole thing. She hops on the computer, helps with all the office work. Every time I get frustrated on the computer, she comes and figures it out. She has a lot of support there, and then just at home too, just saying you got this, being there for me. Little things like that are huge."
His partner sees the growth firsthand from the books: "In the last two years especially, it's been cool to see the time and effort he puts into it, as well as being able to see where it started versus where it's at now. I always tell him, make sure you look at where you are versus where you were. I'm really proud of where he's at now."
What's Next: Taking Landworx to the Skies
Levi's next move isn't another piece of ground equipment; it's a pilot's license.
"I'm going to tie the flying into the business. I already had a job the other day that was 18 miles of trail through the mountains, and that's not something I could just hike and do a job walk. So flying over that would be perfect: go fly over the job site, fly over clients' ranches, especially elk hunting properties. It'd be really good to take a client up in the plane and take a look, and just scouting the property for myself."
It's the same problem-solving mentality that turned a favor for a friend into a full-blown business: find what's slowing you down, and build a way around it.
GEAR UP FOR THE LONG HAUL
Guys like Levi don't have time for equipment — or a truck — that lets them down. Whether you're hauling 16,000 lbs into the mountains or just putting in daily miles, Doc's Diesel has the filters, additives, and maintenance kits to keep your diesel running like it's got another 500,000 miles left in it. Browse our full parts catalog and join the Diesel Diehard rewards program to save on the parts that keep you moving.
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Every Tank, Every Time Doc's 24/7 Diesel Treatment + Cetane Boost Goes in every tank to support fuel lubricity, boost cetane, and keep injectors clean — daily-use protection for a truck that doesn't get a day off. Shop the Treatment |
Shop Doc's Diesel maintenance kits and join the Diesel Diehard loyalty program to earn rewards on the parts that keep you moving.
Watch Levi's Full Episode
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I did my oil change with y’all’s 10 W 30 full synthetic with the hot shot secret with fuel filters and immediately knew the difference and sounded better. Ran better. I was getting 20 miles to the gallon now I’m upwards of 24 absolutely getting this for the rest of its life and my next truck’s life.
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