Planning to move lots of dirt

[40Kchicks]

This summer I am starting a HUGE project. We are expanding our chicken farm by adding four 60X500. Each barn pad will have to be built up a couple of feet. A road will go between the first two barns and then loop back between the second two barns. The first two feet of earth is black soil with scattered field stones mixed in. The stones don’t get much bigger than 8” in diameter. After that layer, it is broken clay with no rocks.

The problem is that I talked to a local excavator that has recently done 11 of these 60X500 barn pads and including rock for the driveway he wants $140,000 to do it. I budgeted $160,000 for excavation but I just can’t get myself to pay that much to have it done.

This is what I’m thinking. I found a big 20yard paddle scraper that I may be able to rent for $12000 a month. It will take a month by my estimations to move about 13000 yards of dirt. Then I need a big sheeps foot roller which are easy to rent for about $5000 a month. I already own a 99’ JD450H dozer with a laser auto tracking blade so that will do the fine grading. We have shale on the property that if I bought an 30K lb excavator (50K) and dump truck (30K) I could use for my base material. A good quarry is about 3 miles away so for the top coat I could buy it from them. The excavator is also needed for trenching the new gas, water, and power lines.

Scraper rental 12000
Compactor rent 5000
Excavator 50000
Dump truck 30000
Fuel 3000
Extra help 5000
Top Rock 3000
Total 108000 and I get to keep or sell the excavator and dump truck. Plus the money I save can help with the house that we are going to build on the property.

Do any of have experience with moving this much material? Are these huge scrapers easy to use? Would the paddle scraper work with my field stones or do I need an open bowl scraper? Do you think I’m getting in over my head? I do have experience with the excavator and dozer.

Thanks Eric

 

[EddieWalker]

I've never ran a scraper, but been on jubs where they were being used. If the soil is hard, then you need a pretty big dozer to push them through the dirt for a full load.

When it was really tough, the dozers would run their rippers back, then push the scraper through.

There was also a motor grader constantly maintaining the roads, and even then, they would run off them and get stuck.

The biggest job I was on was in the tens of milllions of yards removed.

Wouldn't it be easier to just use the excavator to dig out the material, load it into the dump truck and haul it off. I'd think one excavator and two dump trucks would work really well for removal. The dozer with a sheeps foot behind it shoudl work for spreading and compacting, or the dozer and a vibratory roller running in conjuction.

I think $3,000 for fuel is on the low side. I do half that myself running just my dozer, and I don't run it every day.

Are you financing this? If so, does the bank know you plan on being the contractor? Allot of banks require a third party to be the GC and don't like the borrower to be that person. The reasoning, as it was told to me, is that everybody over estimates their ability, understimates what it will take to do the job and never get it done on time.

Good luck, it sounds like an ambitous project!!

Eddie

 

[JerryG]

Eric,
That price is totally crazy. I wouldn't have ever even thought about paying that much. I would even say they could keep the houses if the pads were going to cost that much. By the time, that you pay that much for pads on top of the price of the houses and equipment, I don't see how that you could ever make the payments. Surely they aren't that much different there than they are here. Have you checked with others and gotten bids from them?

 

[40Kchicks]

Eddie

Thanks for the feedback. I can bump up that fuel budget.

The reason I have been looking for a scraper is the amount of dirt that needs to be moved and the distance. It would take so many loads with the excavator and more people. I’m hoping that the scraper will let one person do the work of two with faster cycle times. We also consider renting a huge dozer for the project but thought that the distance we are moving the dirt would be too far. I would be able to get on the field earlier though and they are easier to find to rent. Right now the ground is very wet. I plan on moving dirt as soon as things dry up which is usually early June in Oregon. Hopefully I get to it when its dry but not set up like stone.

I watched this excavator company build up my friend’s barn pads. The excavator guy bought three of these pull behind scrapers. Two were hooked behind a 400HP plow tractor and he had the other one behind a 200HP tractor. He rented the tractors locally. Each scraper would hold 20yards per trip. These tractors didn’t have any problem pulling these scrapers. He got 5 barns done in 10 days including fine grading. This cost him $200,000. My friend is really happy with the job that was done but thinks this was one part of the project that was overpriced.

This is of course going to be financed by a local bank. One bank that I was dealing with actually liked the idea of me buying the equipment because then there are more assets at the end of the project. I have just now started talking about excavation to the bank that is going to finance it. I don’t know if they will let me do it or not. I do have a contractor that I hope will build the barns and we have worked together before and he is confident in my abilities. I’m pretty sure that he would back me up. We go before a bank advisory board next week. One last hurdle before they say we have the loan.

Eric

 

[40Kchicks]

Jerry

I think that is a crazy price also. I am going to check around just as soon as our financing goes through. This contractor made a lot of money off my friend. I heard that he bought the scrapers for 30K each. That’s only 90K total, and for those 11 barns so far my friend has paid him 390K. This of course includes rock roads and drains ect but that seems like a lot of profit to me considering he had all eleven barns done in less than a month.

You probably see more barns being built in your area. We have very few poultry farms in our area and nobody has really expanded in years. Now Foster farms needs more sq footage and has finally come to realize that they are going to have to up the pay and give longer contracts to get it. We are going to take this rare opportunity to expand our farm so that we will be able to hire some help and build a new house.

Can I ask what you would expect to pay for a 60X500 barn pad and how you think they would do it? I included a photo of the field that will become barns.

Eric

 

[EddieWalker]

I've never seen or been around the new pull behind paddle excavators, but hear they are a huge improvement over the other type. I don't even know enough about them to know what they are called. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

They seem to be used allot in lakes where allot of dirt is removed and dumped on a dam. Is it practical to haul the dirt long range with them? There is a distance that it become unpractical.

How far are you moving the dirt?

I still like the idea of digging with the trackhoe and loading the dirt into a pair of dumptrucks. The distance you move the material will decide which aproach costs less.

There is also a reason that mines and quaries use dump trucks to move material. I guess it's because it's cheaper to move material over a certain distance this way. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Your reasoning sounds solid and makes allot of sense. But with the contractors charging so much, I wonder what we're missing here. Sometimes the expense of doing it yourself sounds like a good idea until you actually do it. A job that large is gonna have some unforseen expenses that us little guys won't have any knowledge about, or can forsee.

Eddie

 

[JerryG]

Eric,
In 2000 I had pads built for 2 new 54’ x 500’ houses, they were on about a 10% side grade. They were just less that $7000 each. They used a D6 and a Cat scraper and had them both done in 9 days. That included removing the topsoil, building the pad up and then putting the topsoil back on the slops around the pads. If they had needed to redo the pad some due to settling, he would bring in a grader for free. Around here they are doing pads like mine for about 10K-12K each now.

 

[40Kchicks]

This is another picture looking down our road in front of the existing barns. The front of the new barns will face the camera in this photo. I did the excavation, gravel placement, and concrete for this road. Actually I had a crew help with the flatwork. My wife and I built the forms and poured the retaining wall ourselves. She was unusually nervous when we poured that wall. It was the first of four walls so she got more comfortable later.

Eric

 

[40Kchicks]

Eddie

It seems like I read somewhere that a dozer works best for project less than 300 ft. From there the scraper does best up to 1500 feet and then from there its loaders and trucks. This would seem to make sense from were I have seen these tools used. We are going to be working in about a 500ft radius.

These pull behind scrapers usually are an open bowl type without the paddle. I found a picture of what they used.

Eric

 

[40Kchicks]

Jerry

10-12K sounds right to me. You were lucky to get such a good price. With a 10% slope I imagine they had to move a lot of dirt. So did the scraper work pretty fast and seem like the right tool for the job? Do you have any pictures of the new barns?

Eric