I do hope this might be helpful. I too had this same conundrum as far as renting or buying. I chose to purchase a micro excavator. I came to this decision because of the following. First, I needed to dig about a dozen ditches to make some French drains (we have very clay rich soil) to drain the winter springs & runoff on our property. I also need to run about 200' of direct burial electrical wire for service to my shop. Finally, my wife wanted a storm cellar. All total I figured about 2 weeks renting a mini or a "real" backhoe. Our local rental place (a "united" nationwide company) quoted me 3K - 4K for the 2 weeks plus transportation for the equipment (~$250 each way). I started looking around for a backhoe for my tractor (Mahindra 2555 - 55hp). Mahindra will gladly sell me an attachment backhoe for around $8K (ouch). Other 3 point backhoes ranged from $4-7K. I looked around for used backhoes but for something that still runs expect $15K++. Mini-x used from 16K+ New from your first born to OMG really!
After looking around I did purchase a 1 ton Micro-X from (sorry) China - a Hightop. All total with a rock breaker, two different sized buckets and quick connect shipping, duty, customs broker, etc. the final cost was right around $6K. I'm still finding projects to use it for so I haven't sold it, yet. I initially thought I'd need something larger or at least something that had a digging depth of over 7 foot but I was mistaken. One of the first projects I did was dig out for the storm cellar. What I found was that by sloping one edge I could easily dig to over 12 1/2 feet without having to continually moving the excavator, in other words, I could park the excavator on the ramp, dig down and still reach the top to dump the bucket. After I dropped in the concrete and blocked up the walls it was easier to backfill with the tractor than with the really slow excavator. Please don't get me wrong, I really like the unit, it's just really slow moving on it's tracks (about 3-5 mph I think). The excavator worked very well back filling in the French drains but the volume of back fill required on the storm cellar, not so great.
Will I sell it, probably. I've already been offered more than I paid for it. I know some will be upset about buying from China, but the differences in price was just way to much to ignore. All said & done, if I needed to do it again, would I. Yes, I probably would; however, I would probably do things a bit different. First, my biggest expense was after it reached the US (over 1/2 of the total cost). Customs charges, brokerage charges, port charges and duty. If there ever is a "next time" I would probably get a Chinese company broker. Demand only door to door service or incoterm DDP (delivered duty paid). The seller will moan, groan and tell you how much you could save if you just ship CIF (delivered to port of your choice, insurance paid) which is what I did on the excavator. Do your research and then speak to someone who's done this before - seriously, I did volumes of research and from what I could tell it was going to cost me about a grand once at port. Unfortunately, this grew to over $3K. When I checked on another item of simular weight/size I was again told it was way too expensive to ship DDP, BUT WHEN PRESSED, I was told it would cost ~$1,400. It is a known fact (to all but those of us that don't do this for a living), that it is much less to have China do all the paperwork and initiate from China than to have an American company do it. Sorry big customs brokers.
Hope this helps!
