Buying Advice To TLB or not to TLB that is the question???? SCUT or CUT

[Fiziksgeek]

I had a Massey GC2400 and traded it in after 3 years for a GC1720 just so I could get the backhoe. Wish I had gotten it the first time! I have found it so useful for a number of tasks. It always hard for others to give opinion on weather is till do the jobs you want on your land...so many variables.

 

[chriswheeler]

Up until I got my older JD 970 TLB, I was doing quite a bit of the digging by hand on my little 5 acre place. Sold off the 2 other tractors I had, and got the TLB. Now the backhoe stays on most times. I ended up using the backhoe part of it much more than I thought I would. The size you are talking about would sure work for my application, but I found the smaller units much more expensive than ones that were just a size bigger used. The 33 hp. runs a larger brush hog and tiller with ease. Don't think you will regret buying a TLB with a frame mount backhoe to start with, but unless you are buying new, I'd open up what you are looking for to a slightly larger unit if you find a good deal.
Chris

 

[Snobdds]

Would never own a tractor without one. It's always being used for something.

 

[roadhunter]

Another similar machine to the little foreign TLB's are the little rental backhoes like Almand and Terramite. They generally are built more heavy duty with things like steel body panels instead of plastic and have increased lifting capacities. They also appear to be very simple to work on. Might be worth considering.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Hi all, a question for all that decided to get the TLB and the ones that didn't . Any regrets with either? I am having a hard time deciding what to get for a sub compact. I like the size of the 22-25hp sub compacts and I think any bigger is too big for my acreage. We have built a house on 8 acres in which front 2 acres are level ground and the back 6 acres are fully treed. I am going to be leveling the ground better to have a smooth grass surface for the yard and build trails and such in back acres. Where we are in Sundre Alberta, the ground is about 12 inches of topsoil/native grass then 95 ft of pitrun below lol so you can imagine what the yard is looking like after they dug the foundation and septic field. I was thinking I would use the BH on other jobs im thinking of doing but everyone I have talked to said "Why spend the money on BH when u can get this..." I dunno. I have been looking for about 6-10 months since we started building. We lived on an acreage before this and all I had was a quad with blade for snow removal but hired out a lot to get landscaping done and now this time I want to do it by myself. So I have looked at JD 1025r, BX25, MF GC1710/20, Kioti 2510 also just ran into a dealer with TYM. Maybe I should just look at FEL and get the snow blower/ tiller/ box blade/ back blade / forks etc?. Im going to go out again this week and come down closer to what Im going to get. Was leaning toward the MF 1710/20 for tlb but now maybe 1705/1715. What others would you recommend? Is there a big difference in resale of different brands?

Thanks,

In the USA, Kubota leads the pack in resale value maybe closely followed or maybe lead by John Deere. Since JD discontinued the 110 TLB they really don't have a compact or sub-compact dedicated TLB.
I have only one regret with buying my B26 and that is that I didn't buy one sooner.

If you get a TLB don't forget to get a thumb, hydraulic preferable but even a mechanically connected one substantially increases the usability of the hoe when it come to picking up rocks, trees and other objects.

 

[Poopdeck Pappy]

Would never own a tractor without one. It's always being used for something.

Same here. My little BX23 is a great tool that is useful for so many things. I don't ever want to be without a backhoe again.

Of course, if I had an unlimited budget, I'd get a mini-excavator because they are so much faster in digging a hole than a tractor-mounted backhoe. But, the mini-excavator is a one trick pony rather than a swiss army knife like the TLB.

 

[gladehound]

Hi all, a question for all that decided to get the TLB and the ones that didn't . Any regrets with either? I am having a hard time deciding what to get for a sub compact. I like the size of the 22-25hp sub compacts and I think any bigger is too big for my acreage. We have built a house on 8 acres in which front 2 acres are level ground and the back 6 acres are fully treed. I am going to be leveling the ground better to have a smooth grass surface for the yard and build trails and such in back acres. Where we are in Sundre Alberta, the ground is about 12 inches of topsoil/native grass then 95 ft of pitrun below lol so you can imagine what the yard is looking like after they dug the foundation and septic field. I was thinking I would use the BH on other jobs im thinking of doing but everyone I have talked to said "Why spend the money on BH when u can get this..." I dunno. I have been looking for about 6-10 months since we started building. We lived on an acreage before this and all I had was a quad with blade for snow removal but hired out a lot to get landscaping done and now this time I want to do it by myself. So I have looked at JD 1025r, BX25, MF GC1710/20, Kioti 2510 also just ran into a dealer with TYM. Maybe I should just look at FEL and get the snow blower/ tiller/ box blade/ back blade / forks etc?. Im going to go out again this week and come down closer to what Im going to get. Was leaning toward the MF 1710/20 for tlb but now maybe 1705/1715. What others would you recommend? Is there a big difference in resale of different brands?

Thanks,

Hi Skawtty! Welcome to TBN. I think it might be helpful for you to list out the tasks that you want to do with a tractor as completely as possible including size of the tasks. For example, if you want to dig stumps, how big and how many? If you want to dig a hole, how big and how often? If you are using forks, what are you using them for an how much do you need to be able to lift with them?

You seem locked into a SCUT. Please make sure that a SCUT is compatible with your expectations before jumping in. For example, you mention you want forks. Please keep in mind that a pallet load of most things that come on pallets weighs more (typically much more) than a SCUT can lift with forks.

I didn't get a back hoe because my cousin has a 7-ton excavator. However, for the little digging jobs that aren't worth bringing the excavator over for, I got a stump bucket for $500. Great for footers, digging stumps etc. Not something you can run on a SCUT, they just aren't heavy enough and don't have strong enough loaders. It's not a replacement for a back hoe but like I said, I have access to an excavator. So if you really don't have big backhoe jobs to do, it might be a reasonable alternative. If you decide to get a tractor big enough to handle fairly heavy pallets of material or big logs, rocks, it will also be big enough to run a stump bucket. If you do have big backhoe jobs to do, a SCUT backhoe is not what I would recommend.

The Korean manufacturers (LS and Kioti) are quite good. Definitely worth a look. I bought my first kioti used in 2006 and it is still in the family. No issues on that one. I bought my second Kioti in 2014, no issues with that one either.

Let us know what you want to be able to do with your new tractor and I'm sure you'll get lots of viable approaches from the folks here at TBN. :thumbsup:

 

[RNeumann]

For me personally, I couldn't justify a backhoe. The cost to rent as needed vs the upfront cost of the tool took way to long to amortize. However I have a shop full of other tools that I could never justify from a cost standpoint but didn't hesitate to buy!

As for brand- Most of the time folks purchase based on dealer. The brands you are talking about are all good. Folks have already discussed the fact that Kubota has the top spot from a sales and dealer network but many of the new to N America brands are catching up fast. I'm sure you have found some good and not so good dealers in your search. Did you look at Mahindra....shameless plug!?!

Size comment- From what you describe the tractor seems small. Yes it can be done with this size but as mentioned above it has caused a few to question that aspect. I have a buddy with a near new Kubota BX TLB. He took one look at my 5 acres (sounds very similar to yours-I'm in N Idaho) and said don't do it- go bigger.

Good luck and enjoy the hunt- then enjoy the tractor!

 

[MossRoad]

When we bought our 20 acres, we also bought a very used, large industrial tractor loader (no backhoe) to accomplish the large tasks we needed to do. IH2500b. 8000 pounds, 50 horsepower PTO, cab and 3/4 yard bucket with 10' lift height and over-sized cylinders on the FEL. We used it to cut in a road, remove a few large trees and brush hog between rows on a tree plantation. For the few times that I actually needed a backhoe, I just saved up the jobs and rented a small tracked excavator for the weekend and knocked them all out in one day. Dug a 24' x 32' garage foundation and removed a bunch of tree stumps. So for one $265.00 weekend rental and only about 4-5 hours of actual work (I got 1/2 of my rental fee back for turning it in early) for that excavator VS the cost of owning a backhoe permanently, well, I made out OK at the time. :thumbsup:

We eventually sold the tractor loader and bought a much smaller, yet more capable (for our tasks) machine.

Think long and hard about coughing up thousands of dollars for a backhoe VS some good planning and renting a tracked excavator a couple weekends a year.

On that note, I have been putting together a towable backhoe out of cheap/used parts for several years. Some day it will be finished (about the time I plan to retire) and I'll have several hundred tree stumps to remove. I'm only doing it because I want it, not because I need it or can justify the cost of a new one.

 

[check]

So far, there has been no serious idscussion of budget. So, how mich are you willing to spend?

With Kubotas, for example, the BX25 TLB lists out st $23k Canadian, and the bigger B2650 will cost you $9k or $10k more with the QA FEL and backhoe with the necessary associated frame strengthener. So, put the specs for these 2 tractors side by side and see if the extra money for the B2650 is worth it. Also, drive both of them and see how they feel for example on uneven terrain. I tried the B2650 and personally found it a bit too big for me, but that may not be the case for you. As well, I currently have the BX25 with a bunch of attachments that I've collected over the years, and so upgrading to the B2650 is not worth the extra money to me. BUT if I were starting over... I might go for the B2650. (BTW, I would never buy a tractor without a backhoe on it.)

The biggest issue you will find is with respect to the lifting capacity of the FEL, simply because that is what you will use the most. So, my recommendation would be that you pay close attention to the FEL lifting capacities of any tractors that you look at it. Regarding the volume of the FEL for moving light stuff like snow, you can get a bucket expander from expanded.com for the BX25 that doubles the heaped capacity, and I use it every winter.

Good luck to you, and do keep us posted. We TBNers get huge vicarious satisfaction out of spending your money!