Land Grubbing: What is it exactly?

[DrRick]

I have a dozer , loader (tracked),and an 80K lb excavator. I have a contract from nrcs to remove juniper and I have to say that the excavator is efficient at removing the heavy cover of cedar on my ranch. Reason one- I can track along and cover a 60 foot swath of ground as I go. The dozer has to cover this ground 7 times to accomplish the same thing. reason two- the 40 ton excavator can remove the tree or the tree with roots, with ease, then place it where I want it. reason three - I can see and choose which trees I want to remove , which allows me to sculpt the acreage as I want. I stiil use the other machine to pile and clean, but the excavator is more cost efficient at clearing the vert heavy canopy I have here
rick

 

[JoeinTX]

San Angelo, that's the country

But, Rick, if you had to have one machine to clear/rake/level/plow and seed a pature..........would the excavator do it? No. It can rumble along and pick-and-choose and make small piles. But, it can't do the equally necessary other jobs.


An excavator is WORTHLESS for total land clearing. It will still need another machine to come along and clean-up after it. In other words, it literally blows................

Thus, the fascination with it I read here on this board is ignorant and odd.

 

[DrRick]

what you say is true- however the NRCS contracts stipulate that we only have to kill, ie. nock over the cedar and they prefer that we leave it where it lays for erosion control, and wildlife habitat. In these cases the excavator is king if only due to the fuel costs. I agree that in normal circumstances the big dozer or track loader is far more efficient overall. I will be using just this method to stack and burn some of the areas that I clear. All of the land clearing companies out here are now using excavators to grub, followed up with a track loader or big skid steer with rakes to stack. They tell me it is because of the cost savings over a large dozer, which was what they moved from. A lot of the jobs here are in crp fields that have regrowth mesquite. This has to be grubbed at the root ball and the fields can't be disturbed too much. Cat tracks do make a mess.
rick