Buying Advice Advice on First Utility Tractor Purchase

[roadhunter]

Interesting. the BX is a toy and not going to be useful for what you are wanting to do IMO. Looking at the pics it appears you are missing a lot of topsoil. I noticed the roots seem to be exposed and it appears you are missing about a foot of soil from that area. Is that a shoreline by chance? IF so you will want to leave the rocks there to prevent erosion, basically natural rip rap.

I'd try renting a couple of different pieces of equipment to see what works best for you but I dont' think you are going to find a small inexpensive machine to move large rocks like that. To me an excavator with a thumb would be best for that application. Rent a dump trailer as well and you could move a lot of rock.

 

[dave1949]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm probably not going to be able to swing buying a full size TLB...will take some convincing of the wife on my part plus I will still need something to do the smaller jobs I referred to as well.

Here is picture of the worst part which is reflective of most of the property. From what I am hearing it sounds like I should rent (or hire a guy) a good sized machine to move the bigger rocks. When I say "big" I'm referring to rocks the size of the one in the left of the picture. I probably need to move about ten of those total no more than fifty feet. It's the medium and small size ones that I am going to try and do myself. View attachment 391493

Do you think I could move those with a B-series? I'm not really in a rush.

Are you saying that most of the non-lawn one acre is like that?

Sometimes you can usefully read some land history. For example, on the other side of the rock wall through the trees in your pic looks like cleared ground with grass growing. If there is a rock wall it means someone in the past picked and cleared rocks to make a small field/pasture. If the part in your pic was left undone, it's probably because it was too rocky to pay doing the work. That may still be the case.

The trees don't look to be thriving all that well. If there are no old stumps from larger trees, I'll bet the rock runs thick and deep and/or the ledge is not far down.

With my 40 hp NH & backhoe attachment I could handle most of those rocks, all of them if there isn't more rock buried than sticking up. A tractor can push a much larger rock, once you get it up on the surface, than a typical tractor backhoe attachment can lift. But if you take off the top layer and it's just more of the same below that, you haven't accomplished much. Maybe you could get some re-bar or other steel rod, sharpen a point on one end with a grinder and try driving it between rocks here and there. See what you hit.

HDX Fence Post Driver-901147HD at The Home Depot

What are you trying to accomplish, what is the goal for this land?

 

[newbury]

If you REALLY want to "do it yourself" with a "TLB" and have the tractor for other normal tractor things (snow moving, plowing, discing, running a chipper, box blade work, etc. etc.) you need a tractor with a backhoe WITH A HYDRAULIC THUMB.

You haven't mentioned $$ but the thread title was close to the tractor size. You need a utility tractor and that's normally classed around 50HP, like my M4700. If your going to move one stone 3' x 3' x 3' your looking at almost 2 tons. A 1 cubic foot stone is about 150 to 200 lbs.

You might squeak by with a B26TLB but a L39 would be better. I believe the "designed as TLB" tractor are heavier built than adding on a backhoe to a lighter built tractor.

 

[Poopdeck Pappy]

Contrary to what a prior poster said, a BX is NOT a toy. And there are plenty of people on TBN using them to handle a lot of project that their size would make you think they couldn't do. The BX is NOT toy. That's not opinion; it's fact.

Having said that, I don't think a BX is the right tool for that job. I don't have any rocks on my place, but the portion of the rock you can see may be just the tip of the iceberg. For getting out the rest of the iceberg, you'll need a much larger machine.

But if you want to hire a machine to work on the big ones and use a BX or, even better, a B series machine to work on the smaller ones, I think you'd have plenty to do on weekends for a long time and could eventually make some headway.

 

[Gary Fowler]

The problem with rocks is that you cant tell how big they are from how much is sticking out of the ground, at least where I am that is the case.
I had a pine tree that was setting on top of a rock which I tapped gently with my Utility 70 HP tractor and knocked it down. The exposed rock looked to be about a foot in length. I thought I would dig out that rock with my B26 TLB but after digging for an hour or so and uncovering about 7-8 foot of solid rock with hundreds of babies nestled all around it, I gathered up the babies which I used for a creek crossing bridge and backfilled the hole. I never found the ends or bottom of that huge boulder. Even a 40 ton excavator wouldn't have picked that one up but it sure would have dug out all the babies a lot easier.
Your rocks may just be sitting on top of the ground, but as mentioned by others, what is underneath may also need to be addressed. You cant grow grass on solid rock, so if you have bedrock under all those small to large sized rocks, removing the top growth wont help a lot other than you will have a lot of rocks to do something with.

 

[mikema0477]

Wow this is great info everybody. Thanks!

You all are pretty perceptive. Dave you are correct in that on the other side of that is my neighbors yard.

I will do my best to describe what is in the picture. It is almost like a swale in that it takes runoff from the yard and holds it in that little depression. I need to go out and measure the slope, but it is pretty noticeable. On the other side of that depression is a little mound and then on the other side is another swale-like depression. So there has been indde


1. Cut down most of the trees that you see in the picture. There are a couple of maples outside of the picture that I want to keep but for the most part they all need to go.
2. Start forming a retaining wall that begins from the "mound" I mentioned above and runs as a semi-circle up to the lawn area. This would be done by first moving those gigantic rocks that are not buried into the right place, and then digging some of the rocks that are smaller (not necessarily "small") from the area and using those to form the retaining wall. Moving those big rocks was something I was going to leave to somebody else with the larger machines.
3. Once wall is formed, fill in that depression with dirt...it's going to be a lot of dirt. Again probably worth somebody else coming a doing it, but it will cover up about 95% of the other rocks.
4. That will become lawn with a couple of trees planted.

The other areas are not really as bad. There are a lot of surface rocks, but they are smaller. There are several downed trees that are pretty large. But to Dave's point I have some extremely tall elm and sycamore trees there that are really healthy. That area will pretty much be left natural after I get rid of all the vines and invasive plants.


John, I never really thought about a skid steer. Would ground clearance be an issue with that? I wouldn't want to high center it going over some of those rocks.

Maybe the best thing to do is rent a couple of pieces of equipment over the course of a few weekends and see what works and what doesn't.

 

[TomSeller]

One of my favorite ways to get rid of rocks is to dig a hole near them and push them into the hole. Of course if all the soil is rocky, that might be harder to do than say.

 

[dave1949]

I think that's a great plan, rent a few different machines and see what's what.

 

[Roadbuilder6]

I agree with your plan to rent and see what works for you. A If you buy a tracked skid steer, you will not have a problem getting hung up. With a wheeled one you might. I think a CTL or a MTL are the perfect machine for your jobs. And when you are done, either sell it or keep it to plow...

 

[drivadesl]

I am working on a similar project and am considering getting a rock bucket to help separate the rock from dirt. These can be outfitted with a grapple as well.

Construction Attachments Skeleton Rock Bucket