Let's Talk Heavy Equipment Again.

[Action Fab]

Originally Posted by nate379

20k to clear the land, why even screw with buying 100k of iron?
Around here ive seen an acre cost that much to get build ready.

Because I'd more likely spend $30-$50k in equipment. Equipment is an asset, and allows me to do work at an exponential pace. I learn new skills, accumulate knowledge and have some sweat-equity in the process. Then sell said equipment at a break even or slightly profitable price or better yet put that equipment to work making a profit in the future. It's called investing in myself instead of burning capital.

[Action Fab]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

Don't question horse people logic.

14 acre "farm" in the OP should have been your first clue.

This is our third farm in the area. This will be the training facility for horses in work and under a program. We'll have a turn out and quarantine at the current farm and then our breeding at my homestead.

[Grumpy356]

Originally Posted by nate379

20k to clear the land, why even screw with buying 100k of iron?
Around here ive seen an acre cost that much to get build ready.

I think the track hoe is waste for 14 acres, BUT equipment the era he is looking for is going to sell for what he buys it for, so. You buy the equipment, use the equipment and sell it off and come in at a Zero sum gain / loss.


The only thing that I learned is an operator with a lifetime of experience has some value not encapsulated in the figures.

I can knock stuff down and pile stuff up, and burn, and re-stack, but I can never get the land as FLAT and SMOOTH as a guy who does it all day, every day. At least in the soil where I live.

[dethmachinefab]

Originally Posted by Grumpy356

I think the track hoe is waste for 14 acres, BUT equipment the era he is looking for is going to sell for what he buys it for, so. You buy the equipment, use the equipment and sell it off and come in at a Zero sum gain / loss.


The only thing that I learned is an operator with a lifetime of experience has some value not encapsulated in the figures.

I can knock stuff down and pile stuff up, and burn, and re-stack, but I can never get the land as FLAT and SMOOTH as a guy who does it all day, every day. At least in the soil where I live.

A real operator is key. Anyone can make a mess, but grading, swale, and cutting a road into a hillside it will pay to have a good operator. Still buy the equipment but put a good operator in the seat. If I was op a mid size excavator with a blade would be a do all machine.

[Action Fab]

I certainly don't want to present myself as a great operator. However I have had my fair share of time in the seat of a variety of equipment over the years. Mostly loaders, bobcats, and backhoes. Which is funny because I usually end up using the wrong equipment for the jobs but get it done nicely despite that. I have not operated a dozer or an excavator. I do have an inclination to understanding how to move earth and how water flows. I've build parking lots and driveways, leveled pad sites. Dug footer, knocked out berms, filled in swells, fixed ponds and cut ditches. I don't think this is above my ability. I certainly expect some level of learning curve to come into play. But I have confidence in my abilities to work through those short comings and get a good result. I'm usually pretty good at things I put my mind to.

[ARB-XJ]

Nothing seems like hard or large work. Personally i would buy a nicer track skid steer, cat 299D or JD 333G. They have so many attachments you can do 90% of the work with them. Rent a forestry head for taking down the trees or a brush hog for other clearing. Post hole auger isnt an issue, grapple bucket for moving trees, can even get a dozer blade for grading. Also super useful around the farm for moving large hay bales etc. Then rent a excavator for a weekend to do your culverts or other deep digging needed. Can even get GPS setup in the newer skid steers to help with grading if your looking to get something really flat.

[nate379]

Originally Posted by Grumpy356

I think the track hoe is waste for 14 acres, BUT equipment the era he is looking for is going to sell for what he buys it for, so. You buy the equipment, use the equipment and sell it off and come in at a Zero sum gain / loss.


The only thing that I learned is an operator with a lifetime of experience has some value not encapsulated in the figures.

I can knock stuff down and pile stuff up, and burn, and re-stack, but I can never get the land as FLAT and SMOOTH as a guy who does it all day, every day. At least in the soil where I live.

I'm not arguing that iron is handy, we have a small fleet of logging and dirt moving equipment, but if it's not earning money, it can get expensive to keep. Pumps, engine, undercarriage, etc on an excavator can easily cost $20k

[nate379]

Originally Posted by dethmachinefab

A real operator is key. Anyone can make a mess, but grading, swale, and cutting a road into a hillside it will pay to have a good operator. Still buy the equipment but put a good operator in the seat. If I was op a mid size excavator with a blade would be a do all machine.

That's for sure.

I have just a few hrs of seat time on the 550 and 750 dozers we have. I can move stuff and make a "road" but it's nothing to be proud of. My friend's Dad is really good on dozer, been running them 60+ years, so he handled putting in roads.

Now some of the other equipment I have hundreds to thousands of hours on and I'm pretty good with.

[Rubirunner85]

Fuck you cant even buy a small house in the shit parts of town here for that

Nice property, I’ll keep watching...very interesting

[arse_sidewards]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

Trackhoe/excavators do everything well except hauling material long distances.

And cutting your grass, and moving shit around and everything else that isn't just parking somewhere and using the bucket.

I'm firmly of the belief that you need at least one rubber tired 4wd machine that can accept any attachment known to man and use it poorly. Whether that's a skit steer or a 4wd tractor with a bucket doesn't matter but you need at least one "can do everything but nothing well" machine.

[rockota]

Large frame high-flow skid steer and mid-Frame mini-ex is what I’d do...

[Muckin_Slusher]

Originally Posted by Grumpy356

My home is on 10 acres, and from my experience you can do MOST of what you want with a D-5 and a tractor. ( I did mine all with a D-4 and and a 45HP tractor and front end loader)

Here were my hurdles.

Weather. You will be burning a lot. Ands a burn ban can set you back. And when we came out of a burn ban, rain set in which was as bad.

You get a normal weather pattern, and you're golden.

The two pieces of equipment I wish I had was a skid steer, and a tractor powered blower that you could put a hose in the bottom of a brush pile and it feeds it air. Those things are awesome and make burning so much nicer.

Why can't you be normal and use a generator to run the salvaged furnace fan blowing through a couple lengths of duct like everyone else?

I wouldn't want my tractor tied up just to blow on a fire.

Anyway, now I'm googling "tractor powered blower"
Never knew there was such a thing.

[rockyota83]

biggest excavator with a blade you can get

[Action Fab]

All the excavators with blades I'm finding are too small. They also dont have all the differing articulations that the dozers have. Most are only two way.

[arse_sidewards]

Originally Posted by Muckin_Slusher

Why can't you be normal and use a generator to run the salvaged furnace fan blowing through a couple lengths of duct like everyone else?

You misspelled leaf blower and old culvert.

[Action Fab]

When I look into high flow track loaders I get a lot of these ASV machines that pop up. Why are they so much cheaper than the more common brands? Are they garbage or just hard to get parts for? This one has a brand new undercarriage and tracks from what the ad says. The hours are unknown and said to probably be high. But seems like a lot of machine for the price.

[rockyota83]

Originally Posted by Action Fab

All the excavators with blades I'm finding are too small. They also dont have all the differing articulations that the dozers have. Most are only two way.

you dont need a 6way when you have a hoe to do it for you

i have experience on just about every machine listed in this thread, i also have experience clearing land and cutting new roads, if i could only have one machine thats what it would be. ideally id have a excavator, dozer, tracked skidsteer, and a small dump truck(which is what we have at work)

[Action Fab]

I'm reading that these ASV machines are pretty kick ass, but due to size kill undercarriages quicker than other smaller machines. Which seems to make sense since most of the ones for sale say they have new undercarriages.

I found another md70 that's more local for $10k. I'm wondering if something like this and a good sized excavator wouldn't be a good route to go.

[Thepanzerfuhrer]

Fuck mini excavators. That is Unless you don’t value your time. The smallest excavator I would ever own is a 160 (9020) size. I was using my 9030b today to muck out my wash ponds and it was painfully slow.

[Action Fab]

Originally Posted by Thepanzerfuhrer

Fuck mini excavators. That is Unless you don’t value your time. The smallest excavator I would ever own is a 160 (9020) size. I was using my 9030b today to muck out my wash ponds and it was painfully slow.

Yeah, I'm not interested in a mini-ex. I'm taking about a 20 ton machine.

[Thepanzerfuhrer]

We own a Asv PT30. Awesome little machine expensive undercarriage. The drive sprocket needs rebuilding every year. The plastic rollers die pretty often. We have been upgrading to greasable aluminum aftermarket rollers as they fail. I love this little skid steer for plowing my sidewalks and sweeping the garage out. I have no experience with the large ones.

[Action Fab]

I found this and it has me rethinking a MTL.

ASV's were popular here in my neighborhood when they first came out, a lot of farmers bought them, some contractors as well, I've run all the rubber tracked skid steers, when you compare them to rubber tired skid steers, the dollars per hour climb considerably. I'd call them a fad for this area, as one told me, everyone needed one until they got it, then they couldn't get rid of them fast enough. I know quite a few mechanics that work on them, none of them have much good to say about them. There must have been somewhere between 30-50 of them in my neighborhood when they came out, there are none left, most all were traded on rubber tired skid steers after only a short time. A lot of the owners told me that unless you absolutely need one don't buy one.

I hear all the complaints and the list is pretty long, if your in an area where it freezes during the winter, good luck running one, depending on what you plan to do with it and who runs it will determine just how high priced the upkeep is on one, I've heard most all the horror stories of the repair costs there has been associated with them, maintenance is also an intense ordeal, especially when its frozen out or in severe mud, the cat versions seem to cause even more problems than the asv's, not sure if its the power put to the tracks or not, but those tear the drive lugs off the tracks more than the asv's, idlers cause considerable grief, as does the terrain that you use them on. I've run them all, to use them they are not bad, but I'm glad I don't have to pay to repair them and keep them going, all my customers that had one, provided us with one to use when we needed a skid steer on site to use instead of bringing in our own skid steer, several owners told me that it costs about 100 bucks ever time you turn the key on, I don't know of any that claimed to get over 1000 hours on a set of tracks, most are under 500 hours, usually due to some failure or drive lugs torn off or tracks stretched to render them useless. I've seen them with the undercarriage snapped clean off and laying on their sides, with locked up idler wheels, worn idlers with tracks spit off, tracks torn up, stretched tracks, drive lugs missing on belts, frozen solid track components, blown drive motor hoses which I've helped to fix, a job you only volunteer to do once. A new machine would be nice to own, a used one, depending on who had it and how it was operated, I'll pass, someone else can have the fun.

I've also noticed over the years, that with tracks you can get a lot further into the mud than with a rubber tired machine, I've seen them so far in and then sank that only to top of the rops stuck out, whereas the rubber tired machines would have never got far enough into the mud to worry about, not sure if its a bragging point or not. We've run them side by side with a rubber tired machine and for some reason they won't climb a hill as steep as a rubber tired machine will loaded, they stall out or spin the drive lugs in the tracks, I'm told thats how you stretch the tracks out, not sure if its true or not. I've been called in to retrieve so many of them that I've lost count, they are heavy and will float over soft terrain up to a point, then they sink like a rock and by then most can't be pulled out, they are like most tracked machines and when the tracks sink, your done moving anywhere and since the front of the tracks are not too high and when loaded the weight is on the front idlers more and causes them to sink pretty fast, this is an observation and also what owners told me over the years. I've also been told that when they bog down in the mud, they don't have the ability to pull themselves out and will stall the tracks or rip the drive lugs off the belts, I've run one that did just that, I can't say I was impressed with the performance of them, on dry ground or just soft ground they work fine, in mud I'd opt for something else.

With the hours on the used ones you mentioned I'd never buy one with a run out undercarriage, the repairs might exceed the value of the machine. I'd also talk to the local repair people that actually work on them, and also price the undercarriage components and figure about half the life of what anyone tells you to expect to get, especially if you've never been around the rubber tracked machines before. There are a lot of variables to determine track life, most are where you plan to use them the rest is who is running the machine, nobody will ever tell you there is such a thing as how to extend the life of the tracks, only what shortens the life of them, a big point to keep in mind.

I have no idea what your planning on using one for, but I'd talk to plenty of people that have owned one and also still have one before ever buying one, if a rubber tired machine will do the jobs your wanting to do, buy one of those instead and hire someone will a rubber tracked machine for the jobs that a tired machine won't do, otherwise best of luck.

I'm not trying to put down any machine and I hope the asv lovers here don't take my post as an attack in any way, its just observations and also what owners have told me over the years from my area and how they were used, I'm sure there is plenty of people who think the world of the machines and in their applications they might be just that.

[Thepanzerfuhrer]

The under carriage on a ctl that looks like a dozer seem to last longer and isn’t so expensive as the asv style. Cat sells both styles so just take a look before you buy.

[Roc Doc]

I think your timeline is way off, unless you're going to be hiring a crew to assist.

That's a shit-ton of work for one guy, especially one guy with limited heavy equipment experience.

[YotaAtieToo]

20t is way overkill for what you're doing. A 7-8 ton machine can do a lot. Of course a 14-16 ton would be better and still able to be hauled behind a 10 wheeler.