I do not understand why it would cost more to make it narrower. My electric, water and phone service lines all lay directly underneath my gravel driveway.

Is it already flat in this area? Presuming you aren't pilling any trees, you should be able to just roll over the top with a roller or drive over it a bunch of times with vehicles, such as your construction vehicles :). Then you just have the gravel truck come out and it dumps the gravel behind it as it drives.
You don't really even need 12.5 feet, but I would suggest to make it as wide as you can. There should be minimal cost, with the majority being rock. I don't really understand why you would be disturbing ground on either side of the drive unless they mean that there may be some shiftening/hardening up to 3 feet on either side? That still doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to put your driveway there kinda like people plant trees along the edge of their property and those roots "disturb" the neighboring properties? Do you have any pictures of the driveway area?

If there is any elevation at all to the property, water management has to be considered. That means ditches or swales to either side of the drive, which extends out the needed width to the 3' additional to either side. You need to talk to the adjacent property owners about the disturbance that will need to happen on their property to be able to get in your driveway!

And NO, you don't just compact the existing soil! That's one sure way to have a 5 minute driveway! The existing topsoil with all of it's organic matter has to be removed, then a layer of interlocking crushed rock laid down and compacted as a base, and then the larger gravel goes on top of that. If the topsoil is allowed to remain, and you just dump gravel on top of that, you'll have the gravel sink down into the top soil and keep on needing loads and loads of gravel down the road. Without a proper base, the road will also develop what my grandmother called "hog wallows" in the road.

Yes, I did leave out the step of removing sod. Given that OP has proper equipment to deal with snow, removing sod and creating a level surface should not be a huge issue. I was assuming too much that he didn't really have sod as he stated this was a heavily wooded area. My woods mostly just have thorny gooseberry plants :). If this driveway area is already cleared or somewhat cleared, and we had pictures, better advise to the difficulty level could be made.

It's useful to know that the electric, etc. can go directly
beneath the driveway. I forgot to mention that the terrain
is flat. There is a stretch -- not in the narrow portion of
the property, whew! -- where the clayish soil makes the ground
mushy after heavy rain. It might be desirable to have the
driveway bed slighty elevated there. I'll take pictures --
the trees in the path have been felled and removed -- the next
time I'm on the property and post them and look forward to
continuing this thread.

i also am in the same process of having consumers energy run electric and gas 900 feet through woods. my easement is 33x 660. my drive is only cut out about 12 feet wide and curvy. they 1st told me they wanted a 12 foot path of there own to run ele,gas! So basically they wanted me to clear around 25 feet wide! there reason was,is that if theres probs they would have to tear up driveway. Now i have talked them into running under driveway. but at a cost of 12k plus 3k for winter rates. good luck. I already have 5k into having trees and stumps removed. I may have to remove more? My 1st quate for gravel drive was 7k. (way high? i think. For now I am leaving natural. Sandy soil
my 1st post cheers

This post was edited by jasburrito on Wed, Nov 6, 13 at 10:38

I had to run electric and phone about 3000', a good 500' was wooded. I cleared it myself, so it only cost me $18k to get service, including the wire.

I would not advise removing any soil, I'd just bulldoze at least a good foot of sandy non-expansive soil over the driveway. It may be flat now, but after you compact the driveway with traffic it will become the low spot where the water collects.

After you lay down your base soil, put washed road stone on top and drive over it repeatedly in some slight rain until all the road stone disappears into the base. Then you should have a solid base for the regular road stone to form the driveway surface without constantly rutting out.

Our driveway is .7 miles. .5 was an old railroad bed, so we didn't need to worry about base, but the rest we made using the above technique and it doesn't rut or wash out at all. We've had heavy equipment on it in the rain, cement trucks with 9 yards of cement (not in the rain); it didn't rut or wash out.

I had a friend that raised his drive and in the process he changed the course of drainage and had a lot of problems and spent a whole lot of money.

I hand cleared my 700ft drive and spent about 1000 on rock and grading. (sandy soil through woods)

But I need to add another load here pretty soon because it is washing out a bit where we turn out of the carport.

Some of my added cost was excavator to remove stumps and truck to haul away. There were some huge trees. I sold the wood for 700. Prob worth 2k plus,should have let it rot. but whatever. i am waiting on bank ro get an appaisal of print. Takes 4 to 5 weeks. So i wiil be starting in the winter. cheers

Organic matter in topsoil will degrade and the soil level will fall. Any type of construction, whether a home or a drive, needs to go down the subsoil and be built on a proper foundation.

Where I live, top soil is especially sandy (and the climate is very dry.) There is no or little organic matter in the soil. Thus, I agree with ChrisStewart that all those extra steps to building a gravel drive aren't necessary everywhere. Our driveway was just gravel on top soil for years... it didn't budge, rut, etc. By contrast, I have family members a few hours away with a very different climate/soil who need to take all those steps, or risk the soil eating their gravel every year. The OP needs to research locally as it pertains to this tangent...

Yes, top soil will degrade, meaning it will break down into smaller particles allowing greater compaction taking up less space. The slight drop in soil level won't matter if you have built up the driveway at all.

You need to account for the course of drainage. That means putting in a culvert at each low section where the water will collect.

If you were building a paved road where a very consistent surface is critical, digging down to the subsoil would be important; but, for a gravel road the road won't be damaged by the slight changes caused by settling.

Washed road stone (3/4" to 1-1/2") will lock in your soil forming a rock lock sublayer even where the soil underneath it degrades and settles.

As promised, here is a photo of part of the path
of the private portion of my planned gravel driveway.
I want it to be no more 10 feet wide with the utilities --
electric and TV cable -- buried underneath. My
original query was to determine, basically, if I
could expect any pushback if I imposed these constraints
on my builder.

Here is my drive (and my dog also) ;^)

Here is a portion of my driveway with our car for reference:

http://distilleryimage3.ak.instagram.com/e618f0e001e411e3af6f22000a1f9a09_7.jpg

We got a lot of pushback from some contractors, but I had done a good deal of work making sure that it fits the legal limits for traffic without oversized permits.

Our first concrete company refused to drive down our driveway, but the guy we were working with was completely unreasonable. I showed him the measurements at the narrowest parts so he would know the truck would fit, but he just shrugged and said trucks would never fit and we would never get concrete trucks out here.

We hired their competitor, the competitor had no trouble and that guy was fired shortly after that (for unrelated unreasonableness).

Our driveway is 12' wide at the narrowest spot between rather steep dropoffs (vehicles would roll), 12' high to at least 11' wide for tree overhang.

It's a little nerve wracking driving on it in the ice and snow, but I like it.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Good point. Concrete truck access is probably the largest limiting factor.

A basic concrete truck is 9.5 feet at its widest (mirrors) and 12' at its highest. I specifically trimmed the driveway to 12 feet at the widest and 12' at the highest.

We had a few deliveries from van trailers (semi with standard box trailers). They tend to have the same dimensions, but are 12' high to a wider point and are longer. They had a much more difficult time getting through the driveway.

If your driveway has curves, you need to consider the turn radius of long vehicles, like truss delivery trucks and concrete pump trucks.

We also had trouble with the slope of our approach and the fact that the hill our house sits on is pure sand (despite being in a very fertile part of Iowa). Our concrete trucks only brought 6 to 9 yards of concrete at a time because they would otherwise be too heavy to get up steep sandy hills.

Also, if it is wooded, I suggest having a chainsaw in the back of your vehicle at all times. At first the clearing of the driveway will add more pressure to the remaining limbs in wind and snow (if applicable) so you will probably have a few large limbs block your driveway for the first year or so.

Have you checked to see if there are any minimum requirements in your area due to the fire department?

For fire equipment requirements, I found some online
and marked out my width and curve radii accordingly.
I kept in mind also the possible requirements of things
like truss delivery.

I like your driveway, ChrisStewart; that's what I want
mine to look like after it's been in place a few seasons.

LawPaw, are the trees at the edges of yours surviving okay
in spite of the possible soil compression? How many years
has it been there? I might show your pic to my builder
as an example of what I expect.

I also had to widen and keep 12ft. of clearance for construction but since then it has over grown and I have to go down it once a year in the winter and trim it back.

I suppose a wider area may prevent a lot of that work and you could simply run a mower down each side but I like mine the way it is and do not mind the extra work.

cpacker, my driveway is unusual in that about .5 miles of it was an old railroad line that was abandoned about 30 years ago. The railroad bed has seen consistent, but infrequent, travel by pickup trucks since that time.

Nothing grows on the bed itself. After about 100 years of having trains run on it, it is about as compacted as you can imagine. The rock was removed from the bed 20+ years ago, so it is primarily soil with a little railroad rock I pushed back onto it. I've had cement trucks drive on it the day after heavy rain and it doesn't rut. I can drive on it with my pickup truck loaded with stuff in heavy rain without leaving tire tracks. Surprisingly grass will grow on it, but not much else does.

The trees have grown up from the incline of the bed, and they do not seem effected by the increase in traffic over the last year.

The portion of my driveway that we created new has seen some tree damage from compaction. I've noticed that the areas where we built the road up more than 1 foot the trees seem uneffected so far, but the areas where the driveway was not built up the trees have suffered noticeably.

Type of tree matters too. The white oaks appear uneffected regardless of where they are, the black cherry trees have seen heavy damage from compaction.