lwm
Bronze Member
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2009
- Messages
- 73
- Location
- Los Gatos, CA
- Tractor
- Kubota B21 TLB, 3 spool T&T, 6 foot blade, box scraper, post hole digger. Kubota M59 TLB, EA 8 foot scraper, 8 foot Gannon box scraper, WR Long OBG 1. Kubota KX161-3S Excavator, 12, 16, 24" buckets, 30" flail, hydraulic thumb. Very tole
Hi all,
Haven't posted in a while but wanted to tell you all about my recent seat time.
Someone texted me out of the blue and said "I hear you do tractor work, want some?" I was a little taken aback because the only work I've done is for myself and my neighbors. The non-personal stuff has all been clearing a downed tree, pulling cars out of the ditch, stuff like that. But whatever, I said sure, I'll come over and look.
I had to figure out how to price it and I started with calling a rental yard and asking how much for something like my B21 and a box scraper. $110 delivery charge on each end plus $250. And no top and tilt (WTF? How do you grade without a T&T?). Then I asked about an excavator, they wanted the $110 on each end plus $300/day. That's for an excavator half the size of mine (12K pound KX-161-3) and it had a manual thumb.
So I started pricing and was pricing hourly cheapest on my B21, higher on my M59 construction tractor and highest on the excavator. It all got way too complicated so I asked them "How about $1000/day and you get me and any of my equipment you want me to run?" They said fine and I ended up with 4 chainsaws, a brush bandit chipper, the construction tractor with bucket, grapple, pallet forks for my redneck bucket (see below), gannon scraper, and a scraper, and the excavator over there.
I must say that the excavator works with the tractor like a hand in a glove. I was skeptical of that big 7 foot wide bucket on the M59 but now I love it. Moves a solid yard mounded (or more if you are good) and the excavator dozer blade neatly fits inside that bucket, makes it easy to push the last part of whatever into the bucket. I dunno if Kubota planned it or I just got lucky, but those two love working together.
So what I was doing was taking a narrow "road" that was all overgrown, on a maybe 20 degree natural grade slope, and restoring the road that went along the front of the houses, around to the back, which opened up into a hillside with chestnut trees. Along the way I cut into the slope to create a new place for the road part and then graded on the other side of the road to create a bunch of parking spaces. That front part took a transfer load (maybe 22 yards or so) of base rock about 3 inches thick, gives you some idea of the size.
On the back side there was years and years of duff and powdery soil under the chestnut trees. I moved ~40 yards of that down the hill to a pile (that we later had to spread out so it didn't create erosion problems). Once that was cleared I cut a road into the hillside so they could get to the back of their garden and another turnaround road.
I have to say that putting your butt into the tractor for 8 hours a day for a a few weeks is very different than that I normally. I grew into the equipment quite a bit (I'm a homeowner with all this stuff, I have 15 acres and my neighbor has 320, it's normally just used on those two properties). I have a pretty good idea where the M59 will tip over, I got it down in a ditch I was creating tipped over enough that the upper front/rear wheels had no traction and the lower ones were just digging holes (I put a chain on it and hauled it out with the excavator. No big deal. Did I mention how well they work together?) I've gotten much more comfortable with the M59 sideways on a hill (I still respect the **** out of gravity, it's always on), I'm much faster when it is safe to be but still slow where it is sketchy. I don't know how to describe it, I just have much better feel than I did before this job. It's very neat to realize that the machines are much more capable than I am, that there is still more room for me to learn more (I'm an engineer in my real life, I love learning).
Got better at the excavator as well. For me, the hardest thing on that is to drag the bucket such that it is on a flat horizontal line, if you just do the front stick you will get an arc so you have to pull back on the back stick until the front stick is vertical and then start pushing forward on the back stick. If you can do it, or have tried, you'll know exactly what I mean, and the fact that I find that difficult will kind of peg how much of a n00b I am. Anyway, I got pretty good at it because we brought in loads of material on my flatbed (which unfortunately is not a dump. On the plus side I put 10,000 pounds of base rock on a chevy 3500HD dually and it worked!). Getting the material out is a pain so I grabbed some plywood with the excavator bucket and thumb and used that as a big scoop to pull material out. As I got down to the bed I had to drag it perfectly straight or I was either losing material or pushing the bed down. So I can do a straight line along a flat surface now, I don't think I could do that in the air, I think I need the visual queue. But progress, right?
Anyway, had a blast. Learned a bunch, made a pile (not as big as you might guess, when they got to $5K I said that's enough, I'll do the rest on me because I'm a n00b and I think a real $1000/day person would be faster. They were super stoked). And I've got another job I'm going to look at that the customer said they are good for $1500-2000 for a days worth of work with my B21. W00t!!
I love my tractors!
Oh the redneck bucket is worth a peek: http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/redneck-bucket.jpg
It's not exactly OSHA approved, hence the name, but it's fairly safe, it's tied to the pallets with several tie down straps and I don't move around with him up there, I drop the bucket, move, lift. Used it a bunch of times and so far it's been great. It is *much* nicer and safer than just standing on a board on the pallet. I tried that and nope nope noped away from it as fast as I could. Way too sketchy.
Haven't posted in a while but wanted to tell you all about my recent seat time.
Someone texted me out of the blue and said "I hear you do tractor work, want some?" I was a little taken aback because the only work I've done is for myself and my neighbors. The non-personal stuff has all been clearing a downed tree, pulling cars out of the ditch, stuff like that. But whatever, I said sure, I'll come over and look.
I had to figure out how to price it and I started with calling a rental yard and asking how much for something like my B21 and a box scraper. $110 delivery charge on each end plus $250. And no top and tilt (WTF? How do you grade without a T&T?). Then I asked about an excavator, they wanted the $110 on each end plus $300/day. That's for an excavator half the size of mine (12K pound KX-161-3) and it had a manual thumb.
So I started pricing and was pricing hourly cheapest on my B21, higher on my M59 construction tractor and highest on the excavator. It all got way too complicated so I asked them "How about $1000/day and you get me and any of my equipment you want me to run?" They said fine and I ended up with 4 chainsaws, a brush bandit chipper, the construction tractor with bucket, grapple, pallet forks for my redneck bucket (see below), gannon scraper, and a scraper, and the excavator over there.
I must say that the excavator works with the tractor like a hand in a glove. I was skeptical of that big 7 foot wide bucket on the M59 but now I love it. Moves a solid yard mounded (or more if you are good) and the excavator dozer blade neatly fits inside that bucket, makes it easy to push the last part of whatever into the bucket. I dunno if Kubota planned it or I just got lucky, but those two love working together.
So what I was doing was taking a narrow "road" that was all overgrown, on a maybe 20 degree natural grade slope, and restoring the road that went along the front of the houses, around to the back, which opened up into a hillside with chestnut trees. Along the way I cut into the slope to create a new place for the road part and then graded on the other side of the road to create a bunch of parking spaces. That front part took a transfer load (maybe 22 yards or so) of base rock about 3 inches thick, gives you some idea of the size.
On the back side there was years and years of duff and powdery soil under the chestnut trees. I moved ~40 yards of that down the hill to a pile (that we later had to spread out so it didn't create erosion problems). Once that was cleared I cut a road into the hillside so they could get to the back of their garden and another turnaround road.
I have to say that putting your butt into the tractor for 8 hours a day for a a few weeks is very different than that I normally. I grew into the equipment quite a bit (I'm a homeowner with all this stuff, I have 15 acres and my neighbor has 320, it's normally just used on those two properties). I have a pretty good idea where the M59 will tip over, I got it down in a ditch I was creating tipped over enough that the upper front/rear wheels had no traction and the lower ones were just digging holes (I put a chain on it and hauled it out with the excavator. No big deal. Did I mention how well they work together?) I've gotten much more comfortable with the M59 sideways on a hill (I still respect the **** out of gravity, it's always on), I'm much faster when it is safe to be but still slow where it is sketchy. I don't know how to describe it, I just have much better feel than I did before this job. It's very neat to realize that the machines are much more capable than I am, that there is still more room for me to learn more (I'm an engineer in my real life, I love learning).
Got better at the excavator as well. For me, the hardest thing on that is to drag the bucket such that it is on a flat horizontal line, if you just do the front stick you will get an arc so you have to pull back on the back stick until the front stick is vertical and then start pushing forward on the back stick. If you can do it, or have tried, you'll know exactly what I mean, and the fact that I find that difficult will kind of peg how much of a n00b I am. Anyway, I got pretty good at it because we brought in loads of material on my flatbed (which unfortunately is not a dump. On the plus side I put 10,000 pounds of base rock on a chevy 3500HD dually and it worked!). Getting the material out is a pain so I grabbed some plywood with the excavator bucket and thumb and used that as a big scoop to pull material out. As I got down to the bed I had to drag it perfectly straight or I was either losing material or pushing the bed down. So I can do a straight line along a flat surface now, I don't think I could do that in the air, I think I need the visual queue. But progress, right?
Anyway, had a blast. Learned a bunch, made a pile (not as big as you might guess, when they got to $5K I said that's enough, I'll do the rest on me because I'm a n00b and I think a real $1000/day person would be faster. They were super stoked). And I've got another job I'm going to look at that the customer said they are good for $1500-2000 for a days worth of work with my B21. W00t!!
I love my tractors!
Oh the redneck bucket is worth a peek: http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/redneck-bucket.jpg
It's not exactly OSHA approved, hence the name, but it's fairly safe, it's tied to the pallets with several tie down straps and I don't move around with him up there, I drop the bucket, move, lift. Used it a bunch of times and so far it's been great. It is *much* nicer and safer than just standing on a board on the pallet. I tried that and nope nope noped away from it as fast as I could. Way too sketchy.
