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“Skid steers are more of a power unit than anything,” remarked Mike McPherson, vice president sales, Glenmac, Jamestown, N.D. “You fix an attachment on the piece of equipment and it will do anything.” This flexibility – the appeal of a jack-of-all-trades tool – interests those who offer diverse service mixes to their clients, agreed Pam Gruebnau, director of marketing, FFC Attachments, Lee, Ill.
Besides, one man and one machine cuts down labor needs, slashing a project’s overhead and boosting profitability. “With a soil preparator attachment that takes the place of two to three laborers, you don’t have to stop the project to wait for someone to show up, and if someone doesn’t show up you won’t get behind because you can do the task with one machine,” she pointed out.
Workout: Rake
WORK-SAVER: Soil preparator, landscape rake
New construction sites require clean-up before green-up, but this doesn’t mean contractors need to dedicate hours to labor-intensive hand raking. A preparator attachment connected to a skid steer can do the job, Gruebnau said. “It removes debris, but also has teeth so it fluffs the soil and then grades the land so you have a smooth surface without all the curve,” she described.
Power rakes, another option, grade, remove rocks and debris, and dethatch and spread fill or soil, she noted. “A power rake can do the whole job in one pass, saving time and money,” she said. George Forni takes soil preparation to a different level. His Alamo, Calif.-based company, Aquatic Environments, is heavily involved in lake remediation efforts and dredging, which churns up mucky, but nutrient-rich, soil. He turns this soil into usable material by letting it dry out on flat land and blending it with a skid-steer loader attachment. “We use an auger made for mud that aerates [the soil], pitches it and makes a windrow out of it,” he explained. “The material dries out and we repeat this step two to three times.”
Workout: Shovel
Work-SAVER: Auger, bucket, tree spade
Mike Hennessey can install a Bradford Pear tree in 45 minutes. “I pulled up to the job, put a set of forks on the skid steer, unloaded the tree from the truck, put the auger attachment on, and then dug the hole,” recounted the owner of Hennessey Landscape Services, Plainstow, N.H. “I took the auger off, put the bucket on, rolled the tree into the hole, backfilled it, mulched it, and the process took 45 minutes from start to finish.”
Hennessey’s own employees were surprised at this time-saver, but they certainly weren’t new to using skid-steer loaders for back-breaking work. Planting trees takes between three to six man-hours using a shovel and some elbow grease. “Now, using a skid-steer loader, we’re basically down to one man-hour per tree,” Hennessey reported.
Different-sized auger attachments accommodate various tree sizes, and partnering them with pallet forks or buckets to transport trees from the truck lessens the load even more, Hennessey added. In addition, compact utility loaders can access tight spaces like fence gates and cramped landscape beds – situations that otherwise might require hand-labor.
Hennessey has even seen some contractors crane skid steers onto rooftops to spread aggregate. On the lower end of the spectrum, the machines can dig out basements in homes before pouring concrete, he suggested.
Besides these installation ups and downs, skid steers can remove stubborn vegetation instead of digging out rootballs and carrying away the plants in a wheelbarrow, Forni added. He downsized crews and increased profitability on a project to remove noxious vegetation, which originally was bid as a hand-removal operation. “We convinced the agency to allow us to go in with skid steers and use a bucket to uproot the plants,” he said. “We cut 10 bodies off the payroll by replacing them with two skid-steer loaders.”
Workout: Shovel, backhoe unit
Work-SAVER: Trencher, vibratory plow
Backhoes can disturb soil, but hand-digging trenches takes valuable time. Hennessey used to assign backhoes to irrigation installation projects, but now he relies on a trencher to install irrigation lines. “We were disturbing a lot of soil,” he said. “The trencher attachment gets into tight areas, digs the trench and backfills it very quickly. So, instead of digging this huge hole – a 3- or 4-foot pit – we’re doing a neat, clean straight line with a trencher. Not only does it take less time, it’s less invasive.”
What one employee could accomplish in a day with a shovel, Hennessey’s crew can finish in less than an hour, he noted. In addition, labor-saving qualities of skid steers with their attachments allowed him to slim down crew size. “Instead of having a five-man construction crew, we’re down to two guys,” he compared. “There is working smart and there is working hard.”
Workout: Wheelbarrow
Work-SAVER: Pallet fork, bucket
Pavers, bricks, trees – these materials aren’t so light weight if your employees are lifting and moving them manually. Wheelbarrows make carrying them easier, but then the project shifts to a chore. “If you use a skid-steer loader with a pallet fork to get materials to where you need them, it saves time,” pointed out Doug Laufenberg, business analysis manager, John Deere, Moline, Ill.
Besides pallet forks, buckets also take the load off of employees, Gruebnau added. “You can have people move gravel over by hand or you can move it with a bucket,” she said. “You can also use the bucket to position bushes and trees – or you can use specialized attachments like tree spades that open up to place the trees.” Buckets are also a skid-steer basic, she noticed. “It’s like having a wheelbarrow – you just need a bucket.”
Once contractors have these staple tools, they can diversify their service options to clients. They can even take advantage of all four seasons, using snowplows and snow blower attachments on their skid steers, Gruebnau pointed out. Also, small companies can market themselves to large-scale clients when their machines can handle more intense workloads, McPherson pointed out. “Managing labor is the difficult part of many jobs, and if [contractors] are managing equipment they operate themselves instead, they can do large jobs,” he figured.
The author is Managing Editor – Special Projects for Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at khampshire@gie.net.
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