dieselfuelonly
Gold Member
Hi everyone, looking for some opinions here.
We have a small 6 acre horse farm, and with the sale of our old house (FINALLY!) we would like to do some improvements around here.
Some of these include redoing the riding area, getting some new gravel and spreading it on our driveway, and numerous other little projects around the house.
I am looking to spend under $7500 on a piece of equipment (Skidsteer or Mini Ex.) to help us accomplish these tasks. I know my budget is very limited, but I have found several skidsteers and a Takeuchi mini excavator that are within my price range. Anyway, thats beside the point - I need help deciding on which piece of equipment would be better for our property. I won't buy a piece of equipment thats in poor condition.
As I see it:
A mini excavator would be great for:
Loadind and unloading materails from my truck, or anything else
Spreading materials precisely over a small to medium sized area
Mild grading/leveling with the dozer blade
Using alongside my Yanmar (and if I ever finish that small trailer...) to transport materials around the yard
Digging holes/trenches
Fun to operate
And not so great for:
Moving large amounts of materials
Heavier grading/leveling
Bigger jobs
Limited attachment options
Moving around to work on larger areas (slow)
A skidsteer would be great for:
Moving piles of mulch, gravel, dirt, etc. that we get delivered
Grading/Leveling areas like the riding ring
Spreading materails out over larger areas
All sorts of other tasks with the seemingly endless attachments that are available for rent
And not so great for:
Working in smaller areas
Digging holes/trenches
Unloading materails from my truck
Working alongside my Yanmar (pretty big... I like to make use of everything I have, a skidsteer turns my Yanmar into a big lawnmower basically).
Not as fun as a mini excavator, but still pretty fun
Anyway, only other things I can think about are... I live in NC, have lots of clay and the stuff can get pretty darn hard if its dry out. I would be interested in using either piece of equipment to make money, I can see either one being useful there, though my neighbor already has a skidsteer and gets a LOT of work around here, he doesn't have a mini excavator though.
Thanks for you're thoughts and opinions.
Dennis
We have a small 6 acre horse farm, and with the sale of our old house (FINALLY!) we would like to do some improvements around here.
Some of these include redoing the riding area, getting some new gravel and spreading it on our driveway, and numerous other little projects around the house.
I am looking to spend under $7500 on a piece of equipment (Skidsteer or Mini Ex.) to help us accomplish these tasks. I know my budget is very limited, but I have found several skidsteers and a Takeuchi mini excavator that are within my price range. Anyway, thats beside the point - I need help deciding on which piece of equipment would be better for our property. I won't buy a piece of equipment thats in poor condition.
As I see it:
A mini excavator would be great for:
Loadind and unloading materails from my truck, or anything else
Spreading materials precisely over a small to medium sized area
Mild grading/leveling with the dozer blade
Using alongside my Yanmar (and if I ever finish that small trailer...) to transport materials around the yard
Digging holes/trenches
Fun to operate
And not so great for:
Moving large amounts of materials
Heavier grading/leveling
Bigger jobs
Limited attachment options
Moving around to work on larger areas (slow)
A skidsteer would be great for:
Moving piles of mulch, gravel, dirt, etc. that we get delivered
Grading/Leveling areas like the riding ring
Spreading materails out over larger areas
All sorts of other tasks with the seemingly endless attachments that are available for rent
And not so great for:
Working in smaller areas
Digging holes/trenches
Unloading materails from my truck
Working alongside my Yanmar (pretty big... I like to make use of everything I have, a skidsteer turns my Yanmar into a big lawnmower basically).
Not as fun as a mini excavator, but still pretty fun
Anyway, only other things I can think about are... I live in NC, have lots of clay and the stuff can get pretty darn hard if its dry out. I would be interested in using either piece of equipment to make money, I can see either one being useful there, though my neighbor already has a skidsteer and gets a LOT of work around here, he doesn't have a mini excavator though.
Thanks for you're thoughts and opinions.
Dennis