Just about everything makes mostly a shallow pancake of roots just below the surface. Escallonia are brittle, you will probably find they can be jerked out/broken apart fairly readily. Try spades, mattocks, mauls, rock bars...if using a chain on a truck the main difficulty might be having everything you attach to snap off, without the rest of the shrub coming with it.

We recently transplanted a 4-foot escallonia and it wasn't difficult. The roots were not deep, "shallow pancake" is an excellent description of what we encountered.

thanks for the input. How about a 5 foot holly? Any one dig up one of these??

Now those definitely can be as though set in concrete. Put a chain around it and pull it out with a truck, if you can. If there might be utilities running through its roots this particular approach could backfire, of course.