I am considering a bobcat skid steer with tracks and getting a tree spade attachment for it if there is a market for it in my area. Thoughts? Here is a link to a the sort of machine set up i'm looking for...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPO8xCeuINo ..... I wont be buying the skidsteer new but may have to buy the spade new as I figure there aren't many out there, I cant find a price on the bobcat website but I'm sure its pretty pricey.
I have rented a 42 inch tree spade on a couple different occasions and used it on my approxmately 50 HP LX565 New Holland with no issues. I used it just on my own property and picked a time when soil conditions were favorable to hold the machine but still had decent moisture in the soil. I was surprised at how well it worked on my machine for moving some 2" to 3" diameter apple trees that I wanted to save when I added another building. They all survived.
We have a 32" vermeer tree spade we run on our ASV RC-100, it handles it pretty well. Our Cat 247B won't lift it out of the hole with a tree in the spade. I can't tell what size inch wise that bobcat spade is, what size machine will you be running it on?
that thing's amazing
Bobcat had three different shapes for there spades and 5 different sizes, The bigger diameter the better from what I've heard so I would probably want the biggest they got which is a 44". As for what machines can carry it I think the smallest machine you could go would be a T-650 (I am interested in the tracked models only).
Yeah, I would question if you could even run the 44" on the 650 effectively, it specs at 2,600 ROC and the spade weighs 2,100 empty, plus another 600-1200 lbs of rootball and you will be maxing it out. It might work on dry hard ground, but if you are in very soft conditions plus any roots that don't get cut all of the way, you won't be getting the spade out of the hole. And remember, most of the weight is going to be at least 40" or more away from the attachment plate, that is a lot of weight leveraging against the front of the machine. I would definitely demo whatever combination your wanting to buy first haha I probably wouldn't go much smaller than a T770 from just looking at the specs. Years ago before we got the 32" Vermeer we had a 44" Caretree spade we ran on a ASV MD70, we ran 400lbs of extra weights on the back and even then sometimes it would need a little bit of help from another loader to get the spade out of the hole.