What equipment for the task at hand, clearing yaupon/brush

[CCOUGHRAN1]

Here's the deal. At my place in Leon County, TX I have 4 acres of brush to clear, with the exception of a few hardwoods I'd like to keep. Most of the brush is yaupon, and the soil is sugar sand.

In the past, I have hired out a dozer with a root rake to clear most of the property, and he used a backhoe to dig out the occasional stump. That operator is too busy at this time to come handle my small job, so I'd like to tackle it myself over the holidays.

Here's the equipment I have access to, looking for feedback on what you would use.

Kubota mini excavator with a thumb.

Kubota M5040 4x4 loader. I don't have a grapple, or front hydraulics to rent a grapple.

Skid steer with bucket and teeth, has aux hydraulics for a sheer or grapple

Deere 450 dozer with blade, no root rake.

I've toyed with the idea of trying to rent a tree shear for the skid steer, then using the tractor with forks or bucket to move the fallen trees, but i'd rather get all the roots out too. I have had some success using the mini with the thumb to pull the brush out roots and all. My concern with the dozer is the amount of sand/dirt i'll be pushing into the burn piles, only to have to go back later and smooth things back out.

What would you do in my situation? Keeping in mind that the equipment is sitting 140 miles away from the site, and I'd like to keep it down to two trucks and trailers for transport.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[blunosr]

Hi Chris, I most often use pallet forks on my Bobcat skidsteer (A300). I don't even cut the trees, just stick the forks in the ground and pry up, I get the trees and roots out clean and easy. And I'm talking about full sized spruce trees, some 50 or 60 feet tall. Pallet forks are the way to go in my opinion.

Good luck with it. It sounds like you have loads of great equipment to choose from!

Merry Christmas!

 

[F250DSLPWR]

Push the trees over with the dozer, back up, drop the blade behind the tilted up root ball and push the tree out. For the smaller trees use the skidsteer with the bucket that has teeth, you do the same thing to push them out. If the trees are too small and just bend over, get a rachet rack, they supposedly work well for those type of sapplings (I don't have a RR so I have not tried it). Today I just pushed over about 20 or so 6ft to 14ft ashe juniper trees with my M5040 tractor. with this same method. I now have a grapple bucket with the teeth. I would love to have your dozer, cause I have a bunch of bigger ashe juniper trees to remove. You might check and see if your dozer had the mounting holes for the root grapple? You could easily have a root grapple built.

 

[CCOUGHRAN1]

The guy I was going to use to operate the dozer flaked on me, so I was left with only myself and one additional operator to clear the brush.

I ended up hauling the Kubota M5040 with a gannon rollover blade on the rear, and I picked up a Loflin grapple for the front. Also hauled the Kubota U25 Mini excavator with thumb, and the Kubota UTV to travel between the work site and the house.

Here's part the load as I was about to head out.

I was able to get a few pics of the progress.

We only managed to clear about 1 acre in 10 hours seat time. The brush was about 1-2" diameter and spaced out about every 6".

While it took longer to clear than I had anticipated, the good thing is that everything is burned, and I don't have any large dirt piles left from the dozer pushing. Sure was handy having access to the grapple for moving the brush, and shaking out the dirt before it went on the fire.

 

[F250DSLPWR]

Looks good.