Raytree drum mulcher

Lineman North Florida · Wednesday at 8:17 PM

Anybody have any first hand experience with one of these? I realize they are Chinese made but from all appearances they appear to be much better made than the Topcat and AGT Chinese mulchers and their current pricing is hard to beat.

mikester · Thursday at 5:27 AM

Sounds like tariffs aren't high enough to make you want to buy and support local

2manyrocks · Thursday at 9:25 AM

$9000 is a lot to risk if it breaks, IMPO.

Lineman North Florida · Thursday at 3:06 PM

mikester said:
Sounds like tariffs aren't high enough to make you want to buy and support local

I"m not interested in spending $ 25k for a name brand mulcher while these can be had for about $6500 and seem to have pretty good reviews with a 1 year warranty. My question was does anyone have any first hand knowledge about one, do you?

oldnslo · Thursday at 4:25 PM

No experience with that brand of mulcher but curious on what make or brand of hydraulic motor they use since they take a beating in that environment.

Rustyiron · Thursday at 4:42 PM

Lineman North Florida said:
I"m not interested in spending $ 25k for a name brand mulcher while these can be had for about $6500 and seem to have pretty good reviews with a 1 year warranty. My question was does anyone have any first hand knowledge about one, do you?

That's a pretty inexpensive way to "dip your toe" into the mulching business and to guage your customers interest in this service. Even if you only got a couple of hundred hours out of it. (if parts or repairs are not available)
That's $32.50/hr in mulcher costs leaving plenty of room for fuel and machine costs and profits.

I'd research the particular "tooth" and holder it takes first and make sure that you have a resource for them here in this country. They are a wear item that you will need.

mikester · Friday at 6:48 AM

Lineman North Florida said:
I"m not interested in spending $ 25k for a name brand mulcher while these can be had for about $6500 and seem to have pretty good reviews with a 1 year warranty. My question was does anyone have any first hand knowledge about one, do you?

I rent these machines with a CTL by the week. These attachments take a LOT of abuse and beat the cr@p out of your machine operating them. You WILL break something. Good luck finding parts.

I learned my lesson buying a cheap chinesium chipper. After rebuilding and remanufacturing a lot of parts I now breakdown every hour instead of every 15 minutes. If you have a machine and fab shop you will enjoy your new hobby. Top up your life insurance if you have a wife and kids.

Lineman North Florida · Friday at 9:53 AM

mikester said:
I rent these machines with a CTL by the week. These attachments take a LOT of abuse and beat the cr@p out of your machine operating them. You WILL break something. Good luck finding parts.

I learned my lesson buying a cheap chinesium chipper. After rebuilding and remanufacturing a lot of parts I now breakdown every hour instead of every 15 minutes. If you have a machine and fab shop you will enjoy your new hobby. Top up your life insurance if you have a wife and kids.

I have been using a 6' forestry mower for the past 2 years with carbide teeth on the bottom of the blade carrier and it does a good job after you back drag over the material but there are jobs where the customer wants smaller mulch/debris and I can't justify $25k for this, that is the reason for looking into one of these, if I was thinking about mulching full time I wouldn't even think about one of these. As far as upgrading my life insurance I lived closer to the edge as a lineman for my work career and am now retired but I know when it's your time , it's your time, we all have designated hour to meet our maker/saviour. Out of curiosity was your's a Raytree?

2manyrocks · Friday at 11:56 AM

I would wonder if the sand content in Florida soil would be really hard on drum mulcher bearings when mulching the top layer of dirt?

When I had forestry mulching done with a drum mulcher a couple of years ago, the guy did a great job, but I still had chunks of debris which I believe was unavoidable due to the size of material he was mulching.