I have been planning on doing this for a while and will post some pics of our work. We are a family owned operation and do a little bit of everything so that is why you will see us doing all kinds of stuff in the pics. I w ill try to put some pics aon at least once a week. Wolf requested some pics of our demo work so i will start with a few of those. These pics are a few from a hotel complex we demoed. There were 14 buildings in all.
Thanks for posting and keep 'em coming, everybody loves pics!
Nice Peterbilt and Cat's. Looks like a good day on the job. Do I see palms and sand. I too love pictures.
Thanks Fastdirt. Yes there is sand and palms. Not a lot of fun keeping demo debris out of dry sand!
Thanks for posting the pictures, keep them coming.
Wow, Chris, those are great shots. I love to see the demo in action. Also, it looks like you have beautiful equipment that you keep in really good shape, which is especially difficult when you are doing all that crashing and crunching. What kind of building is this that you are demo'ing? It looks like you are in Florida with all those palms in the background. Is that right. Thanks, Chris. Love it, and keep it up, bro.
It does look clean and well cared for. Good to see in these times.
Thanks for the compliments on the equipment. We do try very hard to keep everything in good cosmetic as well as mechanical condition. It is hard to do when doing demo and clearing! The wood building was one of two, two story wood frame hotel buildings built in the 70's. The concrete is from a one story wood frame with concrete slab. Like I said, there were 14 buildings in all on that job including two, three story concrete. We are in SC so that is why you see all the palms. I have so many pics of our jobs and will try to keep posting on a regular basis. Thanks again.
Nice looking operation! Keep the fotos coming, It's always interesting to see how others do it and what iron they use.
Where are you at in SC? Good looking work and machines.
Demo,, clearing and grading, pics added 5/19 Thanks CD. I also enjoy seeing your pics. Scenery is a little different than mine( I prefer yours). Sawdus, we are just South of Charleston. Here are some pics of a 7000 SQft house we did last year. Enjoy
Oh ok thats a pretty nice area. I love Charleston and just the low country for that matter. But could you do a little company bio? How you got started? How big your fleet is and so forth.
Sawdus, As for a bio, well my brother started the business in 89 with a GMC flatbed and a Komatsu D31s track loader. I worked for him while I was in school and have been there full time since 92 and my other brother has been there since the beginning. Equipment wise, well we have a good bit, we figure good help is hard to find so we try to do as much with equipment as we can and as few people as possible. Will give a rundown of the equipment, might forget something though. kubota 121 kubota kx080 Cat 315C Cat 320D Volvo 300d Deere 450j Cat D6k Cat 928G Cat 963C Kubota SVL 95 2 kubota tractors TigercatM726E Cat 120h 2 Cat rollers Peterson Pacific 5710c Cat 430D IT 2 KW tri axles 1 Pete 389 1 Pete 337 dump I think that is it. Chris
What was wrong with that house you demolished?
The owners wanted a landscaped lot in front of their house so they bought it an wrecked it. The house was in good shape though.
Here is another demo we did less than a year ago.
Impressive, what was the deal with that one? Were those steps solid? How do you like the kubota svl 90?
This one burned. Fire was in the back and attic area. The steps were block and brick filled with dirt with poured steps. We love the SVL 90. We have not had a bit of trouble from, operates great and well thought out from a mantanance standpoint.
Some grading pics Here are a few grading pics from different jobs.
Great pictures! How do you like your peterson grinder?I have a rotochopper B66-T , but was really comparing it to peterson 4710 before we made the purchase
We love the Peterson. We had been running Morbarks for years but tried one on a demo and fell in love. I think it is built and designed well. There are a few minor things I would change like anybody that runs a grinder but those are little things. I think the feed system is what makes the machine so productive.
I have been pretty busy but I figured I would post a few pics of our clearing work. Chris
Nice pictures, and I'll comment again on the appearance of your equipment. It's immaculate. Hats off to the team, it's clear they take pride in their work.
I appreciate the compliment. We try take pride in our equipment as well as our work. A guy I know once said that a scratch is one inch away from a dent he was right. Chris
Looks like you all have some pretty jobsites. Nice work.
Hey CD, some are nicer than others but nothing like your scenery! I will trade the mountains for our "lowcountry" anytime.
Beautiful equipment and grinder, keep the pictures coming!
What measurements do you have to take when doing a demo? I live here in North Carolina, so, we do not get to see a lot of the demolition, just a bunch of logging. I assume that you need permits, maybe multiple. Just trying to learn a little about what you do and the hoops you have to jump through.
Thanks, I will try to post a new set of pics at least once a week.
Jesse, the only measurements we do is to find the sq footage, that helps in figuring the tonnage when bidding. As for permits, in SC it is not bad. You only need to get a demolition permit which I think is $25 and that is it. On commercial buildings you have to prove that the lead and asbestos have been abated but not on residential stuff. Chris
That does not sound terrible, but, I'm would say that it can often be a headache with the asbestos and lead. I have ran a 320 some, but, mostly run a 318 on a regular basis. Have you found much that the 320 is incapable of doing? We are doing a clearing job in Augusta, GA at the moment and I use the 318 all day to stack brush and load the trucks. Great machine, yet sometimes I wish it had a little more HP.
Jesse, most of the residential demo that we do, we use either the 320 or our 315. I like the 315 because most of the sites we work on are real tight and they won't let us take any trees down. The 320 helps with the height on some of the jobs. I am doing a clearing job now and I have our 963 and 300 Volvo. To be honest I am glad to have the 300 because of the size of the trees.
Here are a few pics of a pip[e job we did about 4 or 5 years ago. We were laying 54 inch RCP and used the 332C we had at the time.
Going to add a few pics of the concrete part of the demolition we did. This is the same job as the first pics. These were toward the end of the job, we did the concrete demo last.
Nice work. Did you plug your lifting holes on the RCP with popits? Is that your concrete pulverizer or a rental? I would like to have one but don't do enough heavy concrete demolition to justify one.
Hey CM, We very rarely get RCP with holes in it but on that job, they actually gave us little concrete plugs to go in them. As for the pulverizer, it is ours, we got it with the 320D. It is a bit heavy for the machine but does a great job.
I imagine it's a bit heavy with the hyd. thumb. Had a 321CLCR with a prog. link thumb and QC - it was a bit heavy with the 48" bucket extended. Like the way you took that 2 story concrete structure down - let gravity do some of the breaking, less work crunching. How did you go about it? Did you weaken the far side of the building's walls or columns? Can't tell exactly how it was constructed. Having knowledge of how a building is constructed is invaluable when it comes time to demolish it. Don't know if you have used them before but if you lay anymore RCP with lift holes, tell them to send you a box of popits, quick and cheap. http://www.popitplug.com/index.htm
Good looking work. Seems like you guys got a hand in a little bit of everything. You got any pictures of the work trucks? Don't be afraid to keep sharing!
Hey CM, yes with the thumb and coupler it is a bit awkward but once you get used to the way it feels it is not bad. The section we pushed over was block walls with concrete floors. We did weaken the far side and pushed like hell. A lot tougher than you would have thought. We did that one section like that and were not happy with the outcome. The floors were like a stack of concrete pancakes and made it hard to pulverize and separate the rebar. I sure do like the Popits! Way better than the concrete plugs. I think that is the last job we did with holes in the RCP but if we do more I will definitely ask for them. Sawdus, yes we do lots of stuff. Some things are better than others but it does help to keep us busy. When you say work trucks, do mean dump trucks and lowboys or pickups?
All of them haha, I'm a truck nerd to say the least.
LOL, aren't we all?
Sawdust I will post some truck pics for you. I try to post every Sunday but since I have a "special request" I will post one night this week. We have 2 triaxle Kw's a Pete tractor and a 6 yard Pete. Chris
That sounds great. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do that. I'm not too active on here but since you live in SC it makes it that much better. And don't forget the pickups!
Hey no problem, I will get them on there. Chris
Hey Sawdus, here are your truck pics. I need to grab a few of my work truck and service truck. The 2 triaxles are going to get painted the same as the two Petes, just need to find time. All of the trucks were bought new and we decided to change our colors to the blue/gray color. LIL Pete Not all dump trailers are created equal. The red trailer is a truck we hired on to help out.
Beautiful trucks there Chris. I appreciate you being so quick with posting them. How do you pay your drivers? By the mile or the day?
Wow beautiful lil pete. Whats the gvw and actual payload on a truck like that?
Chris, It's always great to see what kind of work you boys are into. Sawdus22 the Otter's are a family business just a bunch of brothers that take ready good care of their equipment. John
Hey Sawdus, John pretty much nailed it, we don't have " truck drivers". We do it all, from driving truck to operating to standing in a ditch with s shovel. Allday, the gvw is 33k. We have it licensed for 55k so we can pull the tag along. John, Glad to see you back on here!
Whats the empty weight?
Same here.:thumbsup There are no operators, laborers, truck drivers or mechanics - if you're on the crew then one might have to perform any of those duties during a given day. I was blowing filters out at 7 this morning, washing radiators and then moved topsoil. Tomorrow, ditch man laying some 18" RCP arch pipe. Love it.
Allday, the empty weight is about 17k. CM, glad to see someone else operates like us. It is hard to find guys that are willing to do it all so that is why we don't have a lot of guys. I was on 963, 300 Volvo and the chainsaw today, one man clearing crew.
Now that's some pride in your ride. Makes going to work a pleasure. Looking forward to learning more about your operation. I like your business plan and the gear is great. I have two brothers that I would love to have join in, but it's not going to happen. I need to adopt a son Lol. I would be just fine at your level. I have worked for some monster companies here in Georgia and didn't like it a bit. I was thinking when that pretty Cat hoe was sitting on that demo job in that concrete with all that rebar around that there must be an operator in there who cares. That could get ugly quick. I love your trucks and how they match and look just right. Big fan of Peterbilts and those KW's look great. I was thrown by the 315 on the single axle though. Also like the pipe laying pics. I'd like to turn in that invoice
Hi Fastdirt, I am sorry that you can't get your brothers involved. I know a lot of people say they can't work with family but we have been doing it a long time and it is nice to know you have someone you can always count on. The 320 sitting on the concrete pile is almost 4 years old now and still looks good. It takes some effort but it can be done as you know. I don't think there is a mark on your 312 either. The pipe job was pretty good! We also laid 72 inch galvanized pipe in the same industrial park. I wish I had pics of that but that was before I got a digital camera. Thanks for the compliments, Chris
I can't say I dont blame you for doing it all. No one is going to treat your equipment and trucks like you would personally. There's just no way around it. Plus the quality of work is much higher since you or one of your brothers is always there.
Sawdus, you are 100 percent right. It is very hard to find someone to take care of trucks and equioment. We try to have top notch equipment and do top notch work. A friend of mine always said anything worth doing is worth doing right.
Some thing a little different today. Here is a pool I dug a year or two ago. It was 7000 sq ft. We rented the little Hydrema to haul the dirt on site. It had to be stockpiled on the other side of a bad area that no triaxle was going through.
Nice clean job on the pool dig. :thumbsup
Agreed. (I fixed it for you)
Ahh...thats just a nice little swimmin' hole.
Thanks guys. I was happy with the end product. I dug that pool again in the spring at a different neighborhood about 40 miles away from the first one.
A few pics of a lot I cleared a couple weeks ago. Pretty big for a residential lot around here. Had plenty of room to bring the grinder in. We also filled it and in a week or so have to come back in and fill the inside of the foundation in lifts.
Nice clean work once again. Always enjoy the pics!
Thanks JNB. I appreciate that. I also just took a look at your we site, very nice work you do. Again it is nice to see someone taking pride in their work. Chris
Looks like a fun project, neat and clean. Is that your feller buncher? How well does the Peterson handle those palms? I could use some of that sandy topsoil to cover up some nasty stuff down here.
Hey CM, yes that is our buncher. We have a Fecon mulcher for it as well. The Peterson does great on the he palms. I don't think I have ever choked it on a palm. If we have a lot of them to grind, I will put the 6 inch screens in it. I am sure we could import some of our topsoil for you!
Wow that pool is a monster. Is that final grade all done with the dozer on the house lot? Ive never ran one. Very nice
Allday, yes that was a big pool, I think I have only done one bigger but not by much. I did the grading on the lot with a dozer then rolled it. I am lucky, I get to operate all kinds of stuff so I never get bored.
I finished this clearing job last week. I think we are going to wind up hauling out 11 or 12 loads of logs. I was the buncher, excavator, trackloader, grinder and chainsaw operator on this job. First pic is a big red oak stump, see the saw on top of the stump. This was one of many.
Looks good! How many acres was the project? Were you running 4" screens on the grinder? do you guys re -use or re sell the mulch or leave it for the developer to deal with?
I feel ya'!:drinkup However there is quite a sense of accomplishment when you can look back over the job knowing you did it right by yourself. The rip-rap ditch job I did was the same way, did it by myself. Funny, that was the most profitable job I did last year. Do you mainly do just clearing and demo? Or do ya'll also do the grading? There is a hole in the Birmingham market for clearing contractors that can harvest the timber and handle the debris, the debris being the biggest issue. Any grading contractor can clear a site whether the trees have been harvested or not but the amount of debris to dispose of is the issue. We can burn from Oct to the end of May. The county in which I am located in has very little restrictions (other than the state burn ban) on burning, just pile it up and let it go. The county that Birmingham is located in requires a trench burner, inspections, etc like I posted in my thread. Since construction is a year-round process in our neck of the woods, that leaves several months of the year where getting rid of the green debris is a headache. Small sites no problem, just load and haul it to a brush dump. Larger sites obviously create an issue. The way I see it is you have to either be a large company in order to own, operate and most importantly make money with a grinder. Having multiple crews - one can clear the site, go on the next one and then the grading and pipe crews come in. It doesn't make $$ sense to me, as a small contractor, to own a grinder for what I do, unless that is what I focus on. Such an expensive piece of equipment needs to be earning billable hours. I could see myself being a clearing only contractor, well demo too. My right hand guy cut his teeth in the woods and knows a lot about timber, sizing, market value, etc. Do you sell your chips for boiler fuel and/or pulp? Do you haul the chips or contract it out?
Thanks! It was about 5 acres but it was not continuos. I was running 3 inch hex screens. We have a guy that hauls it for boiler fuel and we also regrind it and sell it for landscaping.
Hitachi225 beat me to the punch while I was replying.
CM, I really don't mind working by myself. Like you said, it makes you feel good when you look back and see what you did by yourself. I think I would say we do 40% clearing 40% grading and 20% demo. You are lucky about the burning. Not many places you can burn around here anymore. Other than a farm cleanup job we did, we have not burned a job in 10 years. We had to grind because if you don't grind, you don't clear around here. If you did clear and pile something and tried to hire a grinding contract to come in, he would kill you on the price. Dump fees are out of sight so like I said, you have grind to clear. We are unique because one day we might be clearing and next grading and we don't have many people. I think we are always busy because we do so much but that means you need a lot of equipment. As for the chips, the only chips we haul is what we are going to make into landscape mulch out of. We could haul our own but that means another truck, another diver and more headaches. If you ever decide to jump into clearing and need a grinder, I would be more than happy to talk to up you about them and give some insight and opinions. Chris
Oh those mulch piles under the conveyor remind of a job I had in my 20's working for a clearing contractor. I ran a 963 pushing those piles out from underneath a Diamond Z grinder all day. Open cab and sawdust in my eyes, ears, shirt collar etc. It was very itchy. Also my buddy's family clears for Georgia Power and they use those tracked machines like yours. Those must be the new way these days. We had to make roads for the Diamond Z and use a Military tractor to get it to the piles. Maybe that has changed but it could be the tub grinders will do more than those you feed I would think. I'm just not up on it these days. We sure ate up some acres in a days work, but that was after D8's piled it all up. Your pics are great and I love that you run all the machines, saw, and control it all. It sounds ideal really as long as you have your health. Obviously you are not a lazy man. The pool pics were great. I got a similar big commercial coming up and am looking forward to it. Very nice gear. Thanks for putting the saw in the pic for scale. Without a reference you just can't tell size of stumps. It's like fishing stories
Fastdirt, I feel for you. Pushing down mulch piles with an open can is no fun. I have run Morbark tubs and to be honest, I would not trade the tracked Peterson. The tubs can handle huge stumps without any processing but tree length stuff and palms are a problem. With the 300 Volvo, breaking down the stumps is not a problem. With the tracked machine, no need to push down the mulch, just move the machine up. I bet you are looking forward to doing a big pool. I can see how tight some of the pools are you do and it would be a nice change to actually have a little room to work. Be sure to post some pics! As for the stump,I figured in better put the saw in there or like you said it would be a fish story.
Landclearer- I'm in South Florida, granted a quite a few mile away from you. But I was wondering, what are you guys charging per acre on small sites say 1-2 acres to clear?
Contractchaser, it all depends on the site, ground conditions and what is on it. With that said $7000-$10,000 per acre. Hope that helps.
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions in detail. There might come a day I take you up on the offer, we're far enough away not to be competition.
Nice looking work, I was always interested in the grinder business, I think its something I took to when I lived in Florida. Your equipment and trucks are beautiful. What are the specs on the little pete? Do you have to deal with snakes a lot? Seems like you would see a lot of rattlers in those woods.
CM, no problem. I feel pretty certain we won't be taking any work in Alabama so you are right, not going to be in competition. Nedly, thanks for the compliments on the trucks and equipment. We try! I have always enjoyed clearing and grinding and with the Peterson I enjoy it even more. The little Pete has a 300 Paccar motor with a 10 speed. 12000 fronts and 21000 rears with 4:56 ratio. The body is an Alfab with a barn door and is all Hardox. As for snakes, we have them but you do not see as many as you would think. We have rattlers, copperheads and water moccasins plus a bunch of harmless ones.
Funny side story about snakes. Last week we were prep'ing some sloped paved headwalls to pour and had an extra piece of re-mesh left over. I went to throw it out of the way so one of the machines wouldn't "find" it. Tossed it next to the woods and then heard all sorts of commotion, the very end of the sheet pinned a 3' green snake, I never saw it. I was going to catch him and bring him home but he wasn't having any of that. Lifted the sheet and he took off into the underbrush. Other than that I haven't ran across one in a while.
Ive always liked those little petes, theyre just so danged expensive Im sort of surprised you southern boys dont see more snakes..CM, why would you want to bring him home...?
I really don't come across too many, they are reclusive and try to get far away from any human interaction. The reason I wanted to bring this one home is to let loose in the back yard. There is a creek behind our fence and a 1/4 acre of woods between us and the subdivision behind, a nice habitat. A green snake is good to have around, non-posoinous and eats rodents, insects, etc. Good for the yard and the garden if they stick around.
i am in homestead and do allot of work from palm beach down to the keys and for lets say an acre depending on the conditions it can be any where from a 1000 to 8k+ for a single acre there is allot of variables to consider.
the only good one is a dead one in multiple pieces
I second that commit!!!! matter of fact I made a good snake out of a 4' snake this morning!!! it was completely self defense on my part
I figured it might be for rodent control! So once you start running equipment and disurbing the area, theoretically they move away? My cousin ran equipment in Maryland and I remember as a kid hearing him tell stories about having to get the snakes off the equipment in the morning. Sometimes they would tape the sprayer open on a can of ether and throw it in to the operators station and then remove the snake to go to work. I guess it was probably during colder weather and they were taking advantage of the heat from the machine.
How are you liking the peterson so far? Do you have many hours on it? I can only imagine that the palms, and the amount of sand you have there would make the wood very abrasive for the teeth. Are you running hard faced hammer style teeth or a chipper style tooth?
Hitachi225, the Peterson is great. It is a great machine that has been very well engineered. I love the tracks, so much easier to pull the machine up than to push down the chip pile. We run the carbide teeth in a stagger pattern with every other one being a sharp. If you don't hit any steel I can get 200 plus hours before we flip. The Peterson teeth seem to standup way better than the Morbark did. As for snakes, not a big fan of them. I don't see a lot but I will leave black snakes alone but pretty much will get rid of any poisonous ones I see.
Same here, if it has fangs with poison it's dead. Black snakes, green snakes, chicken/rat snakes are ok, I let them be.
A few pictures of a bank parking lot we graded after the 4th. I think it turned out pretty good. They did a good job on the paving as well. We used crushed concrete which I love.
Good looking base work! Is that an SVL75 or 90 I see in the background?
JNB, thanks. That is our SVL 90.
Sick lot grade. Ive never seen it that smooth, looks like poured concrete
I'd be very proud of that work. Looking good. Don't tell me that's your motor grader too. Love the Deere dozer too, they are a pleasure to operate.
Allday, thanks! We have always tried to do a real nice grading job, that way when they pave they have nothing to complain about and can't charge for overruns. I think a good grading job makes it a lot easier to do a good paving job also.
Fastdirt, thanks for compliment, we try! Yes that is our grader. Doesn't get a lot of hours put on it. That parking lot was a bit small for it but we used it on some of it. I like the Deere dozers. Like you said, it is a pleasure to operate an is very comfortable. I wouldn't mind a cab and ac .
Here are some pics of 3 different jobs I worked on this week. The first is a firehouse demo. They built the new building and the parking lot goes where the old one was. Got the building down and hauled off then the rain set it. I was also filling the foundation on the house lot in a few of the older pics on this post. Same problem, the rain came and now waiting for it to dry up as well. Finally found a job we could work on Fri and Sat. We are clearing another lot, same deal with the foundation so that should be going on in a month or so.
Did you salvage anything from the fire house? Those two garage doors are awesome.
Nice pics, keep em coming!
CM, I hate to say it but we scrapped them. The GC is in a hurry so we did not have time to salvage anything but scrap.
Thanks Zaxis. Hope to get some better pics this week.
I understand that, I've done the same in a time crunch - stuff I would have liked to have the time to salvage. Really like that demo/debris trailer. What brand is it?
The demo trailer is an Alfab. They are great people to work with and build a great product. What is nice about them is everything they build is a custom product and they are very one on one.
What's going on with all the sand? Is that import from another job? I know it is tough on undercarriages, but what a dream compared to what we deal with. Keep up the good work and thanks for the fotos. Very nice equipment and trucks. It shows in the iron and organization on the job. CD
Hey CD, The sand comes from a pit. That is our version of fill dirt. The stuff you see in the truck is real good to work with, it is angular and has a little bit of clay so with a bit of water, it packs great. It is hard on undercarrages. We got about 2100 hour out of a D3G LGP and that includes a bushing turn. I do think we have it a little easier than you on our soil conditions. No blasting here . Our fight is with dewatering so I guess no place is perfect. I like your scenery better than ours! Should have 2 of the three jobs finished this week and hope to get some finished product pics up.
Got a few pics of the finished foundation. It took about 1200 yards of fill to fill it and outside the house. We put it in in lifts. The next group of pics is of our demo loaders. Had a 930K and Volvo L70. We put them in about the worst conditions you would want to try and run a loader in(around here anyway).
I figured I would post something a little different, We had to change the screens in our grinder to fill a good sized order of landscape mulch. I also put in a couple of the finished product coming up the belt.
Nice pics Landclearer! that chipper looks awesome!
Thanks Zaxis, it is a beast.
A few pics of this weeks work. First pics are of a lot I cleared. I graded it off on Monday. Then went to the conduit job that has been on hold due to the rain. You might be able to see what I mean . The last pics are of all the Kubotas on one job. I do not think that ever happened before.
Looks like you got a brand new dozer to grade with, only wore half the paint off the blade. Nice looking equipment and work.
Thanks 390. We have had it for a couple months now. Tough paint and not a lot of hours
I did a little demo job this week. I started on Weds. at 2:00 pm and finished Fri at 2:00 pm. We have about a 75 mile round trip to the dump. The last two pics are of a little pipe job I did on Sat.
Second set.
Looks good as usual LC. Nice, neat demo. I can't imagine having to deal with your low water table. What's the small hole in the catch basin in the last pic for? An under drain?
Thanks CM! Yes the water table is a real pain sometimes. You are right the small hole is for under drain. The road is 1200lft and it has it run down both sides continuously with only 2 sets of catch basins spaced about 400 feet apart. If it were not for the mudhogs at both boxes, the water would be well over the small hole.
When you have to rim ditch an area to be cleared and run 2 mud hogs, it's wet! STUMP KNOCKER
It's powder dry 4' down here in virgin material. The ret. pond I cleaned out last week was dry down 3-4' before the silt turned to pudding.
Stump Knocker, The pics with the mudhogs are of a little pipe job but we have had to ditch clearing jobs before. We have also had to knock the trees down and work off of them like mats. I have a lot of pics of muddy jobs but I do not think they were taken with a digital camera. CM, we can go about three foot on average before we hit water. Depending on how close we are to the marsh, the tide will actually affect the water table. The retention pond you did looked like one of those jobs that if you did not know what you were doing, you could get in trouble real quick.
If it weren't the height of the dry season, that job would have required a long reach to clean the entire pond out. Property manager said it hadn't been cleaned out in over 5 years. Used the dry material you could reach to build a "bridge" out far enough to reach the back side of the pond and the machine still sank. Had to keep filling in the pad the machine was on with dry material. This was on of my friends jobs he hired me to do with exc. He took his PC78 out earlier in the summer and tried to do the same thing - build a road with the dryer material. He was successful for a few feet and then his machine started to sink, stuck the boom down to level the machine and it disappeared after it broke through the soft crust. He quickly swung around and pulled himself out - then waited until August.
CM, I hope your friend told you that it was bad before you started . It was smart on his part to get out while he could. I never could figure why some guys keep trying and trying to get a machine out when all it is doing is going down. Sometimes it is better to just stop.
LOL, yeah he did. It's his trucks we were loading, same one I share a yard with. We have been planning that job for a while since the 78 incident and I had some free time and it's dryer than a popcorn fart here.
I can see where the dry weather would help out on that job. Does your friend do all of your trucking?
Most of it. We have a special arrangement, I own a 55K tag trailer and he moves my equipment with his dump truck by the hour. He also uses my trailer to move his skids and 78. He keeps up the maintenance for use of the trailer -just bought a tire last week for it and I keep tags and insurance. We've know each other for 30 years, our families go way back. Sometimes he can't get to me but we have a network as everyone does, of independents who can fill in. I hire out the 321 moves on a lowboy, have two friends in the business who can do that. I have another good friend who runs roll-offs and has access to 60 yard trailers for demo debris. Gotta love this business, the networking that goes along with it and the good friends you make along the way.
Thanks for the info CM. That is pretty much what I thought. It sure is nice having people you can depend on like that. We do the exact same thing. We have our own trucks but we cant do it all so there is one company we use on bigger jobs and a women that owns her own truck we use on smaller ones. We try to be loyal to them and they appreciate it. There is another guy that does lot clearing, we buy dirt from him and he throws demo jobs our way. Like you said, it is interesting the people you meet over the years.
Same here, we know the people we can be loyal to and the ones we can't. Sometimes it's like being in high school all over again except its adults and money is on the table - some never grow out of it. Birmingham is a "big little city" of over 1/2 million people but everyone knows everyone in the grading business. When times were tight, it was cut throat and you knew who your friends were and weren't.:cool2
You nailed the construction business all over I think. Charleston is the same exact way. You can't sneeze without people knowing it or calling to find out if you heard about it. Same here on knowing your friends. We have some good people we work with and we are real lucky in that way.
I didn't really do anything exciting this week until Friday and Sat. We put down 900 tons of rock and fine graded it but when I went to take some pics, the battery in my camera was dead so I figured I would post a demo job we did earlier this year.
Looks like here, although different architecture. These people up in Aspen are nuts, tearing down perfectly good houses only to build bigger ones. Looking good!
This house had fire damage and the insurance company totaled it but we are wrecking more and more houses to build bigger and better ones. There is not much ocean front land left so they are wrecking the olde smaller ones.
Where about are you in charleston? My in laws just built a house in mt. Pleasant.
We do most of our work on Kiawah Island. We do work in Mt. pleasant though.
Did some work on the firehouse job this week. Finished the pipe and got an area ready for concrete slab and dressed the site up for the surveyors to come tomorrow. After we finished what we could there, we moved to a little road job we finished last week. They paved it on Tues and we started to grade the shoulders on Thurs.
Here are the pics of the shoulder grading.
That's a nice house demo. At first I thought it was a "tear down a perfectly fine house to build a bigger one" until I saw the fire damage on the roof. That looks like a Frank Betz design. On Alabama's little sliver of Gulf Coast the architecture is generally the tropical/spanish style. Stucco and clay tile roofs. I like the low country style architecture. All that sand kills me. I can see on one hand where it's a dream to grade and on the other it's a PIA. Curious as to where you get your crushed stone from or is it recycled concrete?
CM, If you like different types of architecture, this is the place. They build all kinds of stuff from something that looks like Frank Loyd Right to Cape Cod style houses. The new fad around here are shingle sided houses with green windows and trim. Sometimes I complain about the sand but if it rains, you keep on going. Grading is a pain sometimes but once you get used to it it is OK. It is nice to get in some clay sometimes! We have 3 choices for rock, one is crushed concrete which you just about cannot get because everyone wants it or you go to Jamestown or Eutaville for crushed limestone. If you use use limestone, you can get about 3 loads a day and around $30 a ton. I prefer concrete because at 660 pounds a sqyd on your estimate you never have over runs because you are not buying water like you do with limestone sometimes.
Not a very exciting week. We tore up and put a new deck on a golf course bridge. Not a lot of fun. The new boards were 3x10x14's. We used the mini ex to pull the old ones up and the skidsteer would bring in the new and take out the old.
Whatever it takes, sometimes the boring weeks are good for catchup and shop work. I don't think we could get away with the shoulder grading after the black top went down. Maybe it was the first lift? Everything looks nice, you can tell you guy's care about the finished product. Regards, CD P.S. Did you decide on the loader?
Landclearer, this is probably a different thread but how do you like the Kubota CTL? We are looking.....don't want Bobcat, we want ISO controls, saw and sat in a Kubota at Big Iron last week. I really like the excavator-style window in front. Call me crazy but sometimes it's nice to have the front open while working. Without having to remove the damn door.
Hey Cd, It was boring but not much fun . We have three more bridges to do and we do them when the course is closed. As for the shoulders, we always do the final grade after the asphalt is down. It was only one lift so we do have to be careful. No curb so no matter what, we would have to get dirt to the top of the asphalt. We did decide on a loader, went with the Volvo L70. It sure is a nice machine. It is so smooth including the hydraulics, transmission and ride. I was on our 928G all day yesterday and there is a difference. It is a good machine but the Volvo is so much more operator friendly,
Shimmy, I would not hesitate to recommend or buy another Kubota. We have had zero trouble from the machine. I can't say enough good about it. I pushes great, has good reach which is nice because our triaxles have high sides, comfortable and yes I also love the front door/window. We had a Cat for a very short time and I always hated the door. If the bucket was up a little you could not get out. The Kubota is very neat and well engineered and easy to service. The only thing ours does not have is a radio which they did not offer when we got ours.
Your projects are as varied as mine LC.
CM, you got that right. I think that is why we always have something to do good or bad!
Haha I just demoed a 15k square foot house was only twelve years old.......
I gotta ask, if they demoed a 15k sqft house, what did they build back?
Have you ever ran next to a Cat? I just want to be sure. Have ran another guys 299C a lot and until last week thought that's what we were going to get. Now that I know I can get ISO controls in other brands it kind of opens things up.
Shimmy, We had a Cat for about 100 hours. I think it was a 289D, We hated it. If you were trying to grade and raise the bucket, it would not move then it would jump sometimes 3 inches. They flashed software and I think changed a valve and no luck. It wound up on Ironplanet and was sold. We got the Kubota and fell in love. I think if you ran one you would be very pleased!
landclearer have you seen the grading bucket that volvo makes for there loaders it looks like a large skid steer bucket with a long bottom and low profile so you can see cutting edge i've have never seen one in person but would like to try one out seems like a good idea they used to be in the volvo brochures seen one on utube also
I'm going to call Titan on Monday see if they would be willing to demo a Case and Fargo Tractor about the Kubota. Does Kubota have ride control?
Another 15k house
Clintm, ours will have the standard bucket with the rounded back but I have seen that style bucket you are talking about. I think their light material buckets are designed that way.
Shimmy, ours does not have ride control. I am not sure they offer it.
I hear you.
Stupid money all too common around here but keeps us all working
I've noticed quite a few Kubota CTL's running in my area. One of the independent rental houses has a couple. So edumacate me on the control patterns since all I have ever ran is old school Bobcat hand/foot controls.
ISO is Cat style, left hand lever runs the drive (direction, steering) right hand lever is joystick control for loader. H-pattern is Case style. Forward/back on levers is forward/back, Left lever side to side is loader, Right lever is bucket. I can run Case/H pattern but look like worst rookie you ever saw.
I have very little skid steer experience, (probably less than a weeks worth, spread over 28 years). I do ok with H pattern, am pitiful with Bobcat, never tried ISO.
CM, if you can run your 5G you can run a Kubota skidsteer only difference is you hold the left lever forward or back instead of having a detent to lock it in forward or reverse. The further you move it the faster it goes. They also have a gas pedal which I like.
Thanks Shimmy1 that's what I thought ISO was but all I know is BC standard controls. Personally, I see no reason to switch to H pattern. LC the problem I have is retraining my brain. If I'm sitting in a skid steer then I want to use my feet to operate the bucket and levers to drive. I know what you mean, I took the D5G rather quickly as it was intuitive and a totally different operator environment - it wasn't a skid steer if that makes any sense. However when I bought the 953, it was the most expensive case of buyers remorse I've ever had, couldn't get the hang of steering with your feet and the V control. It took several 100 hours in the seat to really get everything out of the machine, at least for me. Now I wouldn't want a track loader without V steering control. I know I can do it, it's just the aggravation of learning a new control pattern on a machine I have ran for 25 years. I'm too old and ornery.
CM, If you want to try something fun, get off an excavator and get on a log loader. Two joysticks and a T foot pedal for swing. First time I ran one, it took me about 5 minutes to get one log in the delimber because I kept dropping it trying to swing with my had instead of my feet. Don't feel bad about not getting the hang of something. I cannot run and excavator with backhoe controls to save my life!
Not feeling bad just ornery and set in my ways. I run backhoe controls on excavators.:tong
How is your backhoe setup? It has joystick controls right? Our 430 does and setup for excavator controls.
The 420D has joysticks with a pattern changer, the one located on the left side by the rear tire.
I knew I liked you CM. Backhoe only way to go with controls. Whoever thought they needed to break up the stick/bucket combo obviously never cut grade for a living. Just my opinion tho.
Do you run excavator or backhoe controls on it? We run excavator.
If you're asking me LC, I run backhoe. I can switch, just takes me about a day to run excavator and about 3 to switch back to backhoe.
Funny thing is, I own a Case backhoe and a Cat trackhoe, I can jump from one to the other and never miss a step; but, I can't tell somebody what handle does what. Also, if I get on a buddy's Deere trackhoe, I'm lost.
Our 430 has excavator controls which I like, I can run a Deere with wobble sticks but can't run an excavator setup with backhoe controls and I can't tell you what lever does what either
LC if your 430 is an E model, I believe there is a rocker switch on the panel that changes the pattern. The D's have the mechanical one. Same here guys, I couldn't tell you what the individual levers do on the backhoe or track hoe. Mitch I'm the same way jumping from Bobcat to 953, operates totally backwards from each other but I can swap no problem. I think it's the cab/operating environment - your brain automatically compensates.:beatsme
CM, We have a 430D and love it. That is a great backhoe. No need to change the pattern, it is just how I like it
I hear ya, just a general equipment conversation. My 420D has been a good backhoe, it's the IT version with bucket and forks. It's a nice support machine for laying pipe. Wish I would have bought it with a 4n1 bucket.
Our is an IT as well. We got a cab, estick, forks gp bucket and through a heck if a deal got a 4 in 1. I guess it was about 5 years ago, our Car dealer would buy lots of stuff from Cat including attachments. Our product support guy mentioned they had gotten a bunch of 4 in 1s for IT backhoes and were selling dirt cheap. If I remember, I think we got it for 3000.
Couple little jobs this week. We did a double wide demo. Used the 300 Volvo for the reach because we could only get to it from one side. We also did a little piece of parking lot. Used the mini ex as a paver. I think it turned out real good. The edge is a little ragged looking but the old parking lot is a mess so nothing really decent to tie into.
#2
I've spread gravel with a mini holding a railroad tie with the thumb, but paving with a mini? Don't that beat all. Looks good!
Thanks JNB. It actually works real good. If you take your time there is almost no shovel work and next to no loot work. For small areas, that is the ya to go.
Nice asphalt work with the mini.:thumbsup An old operator one time told me that the key to being a good operator is to be lazy - in the sense you learn how to make the machine do the work. I think the term "work smarter not harder" is a better description but this was an old school guy and he got his point across.
CM, you got that right. That is how I learned to run a dozer. When I was in school, I worked every weekend and my brother would have me grade houses. He told me it better look good whether I use a rake or the dozer so I figured the dozer was the way to go
Great work LandClearer!
Thanks Rctech.
LandClearer what thumb and quick coupler do you have on your 121-3 I just bought one @ auction about a month ago a utility machine looking for a set up is it the kubota Quick coupler and do you like it.I can't find a used coupler any where the bad thing is there was one @ the same auction that sold in another ring as soon as I bought the machine I walked/run to the other ring and was already sold couldn't find out who bought it
Hey Clintm, the thumb and coupler are both Kubota. The nice part is the thumb mount is already on the stick so no need in doing any welding if you go with the a Kubota. The coupler works great. No issues with it at all and it keeps the tip radius short unlike some pin grabber style couplers.
thanks, I don't like pin grabbers ether .I run the similar style wedge lock on my larger excavators but they have the wedge in the back to take up the play in the coupler where the kubota has a pin in the side . I called US attachments in king NC they said they built the kubota style couplers and thumbs that will use the factory bosses on stick
I like the wedge lock also. Our big machines have them also. We had an Amulet thumb on our first 121 and it was a good thumb but had to cut the bosses of the stick. If you get one from US Attachments, post some pics.
ok will do whats the widest digging bucket you run for digging It looks like you have about a 36" smooth clean up bucket in the asphalt pics just trying to decide on a digging bucket
Clint, we have a 12, 18, and 24 with teeth and a 36 like you said plus a tilt bucket. It handles the 24 just fine for hard digging.
We have been known to do little paving here and there. Just patches though...when no one else is available. Regards, CD
I do not know about your area CD but around here there is actually decent money in patches and little stuff. No one really wants to do so when we do, we make out pretty good. I bet it was a little hard getting the corners cleaned out on that half round
thank's
Hi all im near Melbourne down under,I just imported this used cbi grinder has a 765hp cat engine.Hoping to get a good run out of it!
Very nice! Hope that it spits nothing but profit. off the end of the belt for you!
I hope the machine does just what you want. We do not see many CBI machines in the south but why are very popular in the NE US and have a good reputation. I sure do like the cross belt magnet better then the magnetic head pulley. Does the machine cut up or down? I would like to see some pics of the mill also.
We have been having a lot of rain here so it has been hard to get anything done. Did a demo job until we got to the foundation which was flooded so we are waiting for that to dry up. Went and did a grinding job that was in an old junkyard. The guys that cleared it really didn't care how much steel, dirt or concrete went into the piles so it took a long time to separate it out before I even did any grinding.
I did one of those jobs not too long ago. Pile was littered with rocks and steel. Nothing major went through but we did have a piece of 2.5" steel rod by 3' long go through. Sheared 2 teeth off and screwed the holders up pretty bad. Luckily they are replaceable on our rotochopper and not welded to the rotor. How hard is it to change screens on the peterson?
I was lucky on this job, the worst thing I had go in was a little bit of rebar but I still hate to see that. That was a pretty good piece you got in there. I bet that made a heck of a racket. Peterson does a pin rotor and the drum style. We have the drum style under protest by me I always like to be able to change a hammer instead of welding it on. As for the screens it is not bad. You need an excavator to change the top screen. It takes a little over an hour to change with two guys. We never change the bottom screen, it has no wear so basically nothing goes through it. How is the Rotorchopper to change? What size motor do you run?
Did some grading this week. Had to get the firehouse ready for landscaping even though we can't finish the parking lot. Turned out pretty decent. Then we went to a clearing job that is also pretty wet. Some places are high and dry, others are in the bottoms and are holding water.
Looks good. Lot grading/shaping for drainage is one of my favorite things to do...if the dirt is good. I'm on a residential project now with 600+ yards of "free" dirt provided by the owner that's full of rock. It's not too much fun, but at least there's 12-24" of fill going in pretty much everywhere to lose most of the rock (he doesn't want to haul any rock out.) I'll finish it off with topsoil which will be much more pleasant to grade I'm sure.
Nothing worse than grading dirt full of trash or rock. I had a good bit of grass to deal with on this job but still looked ok when we were done. We have sand so when I do get to grade some topsoil, it is a treat for me
We have a material here called "builder's sand" or "grade sand." Builders love to use it for final grade surrounding structures since it's cheaper than topsoil and sod takes hold in it quickly. The problem is that it comes from an area that also has a lot of small "goat head" sands burrs. If the homeowner decides to seed instead of sod, you can guess what else grows.
We have something in common, we both have sand spurs. I can't stand the things. We did a bunch of work on the Ocean Course and that place is full of them.
Right now I live in the natural gas rich Barnett shale. Home of nasty black clay with shale pockets of varying depths and foundation pronlems. We're in escrow on a home just 25 miles Northeast of here and the ground is sandy soil above reddish clay with sandstone....and sand burrs. I'll take the burrs over huge ground cracks in the summer months any day! I've stuck a tape measure in the cracks down to 6' or so before hitting an obstruction. Who knows how far down they really go.
I think I would take the sand spurs over the cracks as well. Nothing as interesting as that around here but when I was growing up in KY, we had sinkholes. It does seem like your soil conditions vary like ours. Sand along the coast, sand with a little clay in land further than we get some clay further in. The stuff is Ok if the ground is high but in low areas that stay wet, it is nasty stuff.
We have sinkholes in our area due to the limestone. Haven't had any spectacular ones in a while but there have been a few that closed roads and threatened homes in the past. As far as general ground conditions go in my area, they are pandora's box. Nasty clay, chert, sandy clay, rock - we have it all and it can change very quickly. Looks like work has been steady in your area LC, congrats.
The sinkholes in Ky were also from the limestone. I do miss seeing rock and clay. We are real busy. I am happy to see it. It is better to try figure out how to do it then it is trying to find work. I wish we could finish some jobs. Everything is wet. The worst part is we have several jobs that only need a couple of days to finish once it dries out.
Here are some pics of 2 different clearing jobs this week. The one with the 320D is a little job. Moved the grinder there yesterday and will finish it in about 1/2 a day. The other pics are from the same job as last week. I was running the cutter yesterday and caught up to the surveryors.
What type of project are you clearing for? Really like your set up and the way your jobs are organized.
Hi CM, Thanks, I appreciated that! Both clearing jobs are for residential streets. The one with the 320 is about a 700 ft long road and the other is a bunch of phases on a different job. I think there will be about 5000 feet when we are done.
Had a busy week, we finished the demo job that was flooded, got our new Volvo loader, starting cutting the wood on an apartment complex that we are clearing and cleared a lot on Saturday.
Man you guys do some awesome work! love that tiger cat buncher!
How do you like this bucket? I have been thinking about getting one.
Thanks Zaxis. That is my baby
Sterff, the bucket is great. We use on all of our demo jobs that have concrete or block. No more picking up pieces by hand
I dug a pool this week. It was about 7000 SQFT. I think around 100 loads came out of it. We tried out a 160 Volvo, very nice to operate. The Bobcat mini belongs tot eh pool guys. After the pool, I went back to the clearing job that is a little soft. The only thing that has not been stuck is the 320.
That's some nasty looking ground. So what do ya'll do with muck like that, how do you go about prepping sub grade for buildings and roads? Here we would either undercut and bring in fill or use some sort of geo-textile to bridge it.
Hey CM, yeah that is some nasty stuff. It gives you no warning and it breaks through. We are just doing the clearing on the site but they will undercut it until they find something decent and bring in offsite fill. I hope the owner has plenty in the budget for mucking. I would say at least 1/3 of the site will need 2 feet of mucking done. We have used the ego textile in the past but not to often.
what did you think about the volvo
Clintm, I really did like it. It was very smooth and very fast. The cab was the same on our 300 so it was comfortable.
I had a 360b one of the smoothest excavators I've ever run but gave me the worst service of any I've ever had
We have had our 300 for almost 2 years and the only problem we had was with the regen. They came right out and had me up and going in about 4 hours so we have done pretty good with breakdowns and service. Who was you dealer?
LB Smith/ASC purchased it from them approx 3300 hrs out of rental fleet from Alabama I think.Not really bad service from dealer per say just machine problems before unloaded it from lowboy started showing computer code found out that they had just put a new computer on it 8 meter hrs before. bucket cyld chrome turned black not leaking bad chroming after about a year they wanted something like $6,000 for a replacement rod that was a discount.main boom pin broke ,final drive went out (had been walked very little set in one place most of the time feeding crusher fuel/grease van came to it every day),numerous cab heater cores leaking ,leaking injectors hard to crank, broke end off of bucket cyld rod. machine was feeding a concrete crusher lite duty could feed it with a 150 size machine and keep up with production but needed the reach. @ 10,000 hrs junked the machine like I said one of the smoothest machines I've run liked the power of the machine just couldn't keep it running
Rental fleets are hard on machines.
Yeah you never know how something was taken care while it was rented.
It was not a good week. On Weds. my brother topped off a load of saw logs to go to the mill. On the way tot he mill, a car crossed the line, hit the truck which caused it to tun over. Here are a couple pics after it was turned back over. The driver of the car was cited for crossing the line.
Damn! Is he OK?
I hope your driver is OK. I hate to see that. Darn 4 wheelers.
He has 5 broken ribs, a gash on his head and a ton of bruises. Thank you guys for asking!
Glad to hear he is OK, truck doesnt look so good. Do you think its totaled?
Thanks Nedly. I think it is totaled and so does everyone we spoke to including the Pete dealer we bought it from. The adjuster looked at it and the trailer on Fri so hopefully we will know something ASAP. We are already spending money on hired trucks so we really need to know.
Glad to hear the injuries weren't worse, not that he won't be feeling it for a while.
Thanks CM. Yeah he will be sore for quite while.
glad he's ok . the insurance company should and will pay for truck rental and down time just don't take no for an answer don't forget they are trying to get out as cheap as possible and that is normally to get the claim payed off as soon as possible. what year is the truck and miles? most adjusters that I've ever had any dealings with don't understand trucks the value or the cost and long life of them. Car's they can tell you almost down to the penny what they are worth and how much it cost's to repair them
Did it bend the frame?
Clintm, not sure if the frame is bent. It sheared the bolts off the rear suspension, the front suspension is messed up. The cab is junk, one of the rear ends is leaking oil. The rear ends are so messed up that the driveshaft between the rear axles came out. She had 25k for insurance so that is enough to cover the log trailer if it is totaled so our insurance company is going to have to take up the rest. It is hard to believe that the state only requires 25k.
I know and we have to have at least $1,000,000. to walk on the job. just be glad that they didn't try to say that your truck crossed the line that's normally what happens to me. what year is it?
We were lucky, there were witnesses that came forward and said she crossed the line. The police report said she was at fault. Yes, same here on insurance, we have a million plus an extra million umbrella policy. I think the truck is a 2011.
pre DEF good luck finding another one. Good Used truck prices have gone out of sight this year so keep that in mind when settling with insurance co .my broker always tell me that he must replace it with like when totaling but theres the problem they don't understand specs on truck's .I would be on truck paper right now locating replacements and cost's there wasn't that many truck sold between 2008 and 2012 good luck finding a replacement
That is a good point. I did no think about that. I think it would be nearly impossible to find something equal to that truck it the condition it was in.
Man that is a bummer the truck did look pretty darn good. Glad that no one got hurt to badly, thou will be sore for a while I bet.
Yes it was a good looking truck. I took a picture of it before it left the job that morning. I don't even want to look at that picture.
I went back and looked at your pict's of it earlier .you should post it on here ---min before and after. you will most likely have to prove to insurance what it will cost to replace it so start printing off ones listed for sale now. what was it's specs, if you find something in my area I'll be glad to go look at it for you so you don't waste a trip up here my yard is next to all the truck dealer's new and used but everybody want's a good used day cab petercar. there is a local over the road dump trailer company that has a lot of day cab pets air ride daul exhaust but I think they are all 10 spds
Clintm, we went to the dealer we bought the truck from and he might have something for us, not sure yet. The truck was speced heavy. 46 rears, 18 speed, 550 Cummins, dual wetline, fancy interior plus all the gingerbread. I really do appreciate the offer to look at a truck for us! That is also a good idea about finding something close and printing it out for the insurance. Can never have to much info.
kinda figured it was heavy specs probley double frame too. you might find some thing close specs in west virgina coal area but most of the time those trucks have been road hard and never put up. thats way I try to buy truck's over spec them and keep them forever there are also some big horse power ,rears,18spds in Utah area for pulling double trailers. Also go on richtie bros .com and see what they have been selling lately. you may want to look at a glider kit and reuse your engine and trans the only drawback is the down time. Fitzgerald trucks in tenn. builds a bunch with pre emission detriots in them you may want to look at them I heard that the local dump trailer fleet has some coming because they can't keep their new one's out of the shop
LandClearer, What a bummer! Glad to hear there was no fatalities except a for the truck and trailer. I agree with Clint, you are going to have to be proactive if you get anywhere with the insurance. Hopefully they take care of you and you have a unit back on the road quickly. The 25k in liability on the other driver's part is crap. Good Luck, CD
Awesome thread, love seeing great work and nicely cared for machines sorry to see the wreck, maybe Fastdirt will sell you his Pete. haha
Wow. Just wow. I gotta say I got a sick feeling in my stomach when I saw that picture. I'm glad your brother is ok and no one got seriously injured. It's crazy that our state only requires 25k for insurance thats nuts. I haven't posted much on your thread lately but I have been looking! Everything looks great and I hope yall bounce back from this accident. Stay safe.
We have been thinking about gliders. Some loggers around here are running them with good results. We have found a few new trucks speced good. Hopefully we will hear from the insurance company tomorrow so we can get a better handle on what to do.
Glad you enjoy the post. I like posting pics on here and hearing from guys like yourself and seeing jobs and how they do things In other parts of the country. I am pretty sure Fastdirt wouldn't give up his Pete
I appreciate that Sawdus. I know about the sick feeling like when I got the call about it. That was bad! The 25k is a joke if you ask me. When you think about it, what would that cover other than a minor accident. Thanks for the compliments on the post and we will keep plugging along. I will keep everyone posted on things as they come along.
Sorry to hear about the accident. Glad he will be ok though.
Thanks, me to.
Sorry to hear about the wreck. Glad he's okay, but it sounds like he's going to be feeling it for a while. It's a shame about the truck, too. I hope the insurance company treats you right.
Land clearer I sent you a PM on one of my customer's trucks call me if you are interested.
Thanks! Yes he is going to feel it for a while. You should see the bruises!
I couple pics of the apartment complex I am clearing. Sorry for the pics but it gets dark early
did you get your truck yet
They delivered the trailer yesterday and the truck should be here tomorrow. Should have pics next weekend!
What did you get?
Got another Pete. Same spec other than the motor. Got a Paccar instead of the Cummins.
LC Cummins makes Paccar engines so it should be the same truck if the HP is the same.
Hey CM, the small Paccar motors, the PX series are Cummins, the bigger MX are actually DAF motors. The MX are a lot more like Cats. The torque is on the bottom end.
Sweet, good you werent too awful long without a truck. Is it brand new?
Nedly, yes we got a new one. We needed a truck bad and did not have time to go looking for a good used truck. We will keep it forever so we figured that was the fastest and best thing to do.
I did not know that, thanks for the info, I thought they made the whole line. Isn't the new "Cat" engine in the Cat trucks a Man/International joint venture engine?
I am not sure about the new Cats. At one point Cat and International worked together and came up with the Maxforce but I am not real sure about the details. It will very interesting to see how the new truck does with a load.
Me neither, I've just read some stuff about them. Makes one want to drop a reman 3406 with your choice of trans in a glider and call it a day.
Hard to beat a 3406! We looked for a glider at a couple of Pete dealers and Carolina Cat but they did not have anything.
Here are a couple pics of the new truck before it left the dealer. My camera batteries are dead and the charger seems to have walked off somewhere. You could not ask for a better experience than we had with the dealer(Whited Pete). Great people and service. He said they will sell a truck anywhere in the country.
Landclearer, I've asked before, I believe, but have you ever ran a Cat CTL? Going to buy a new loader and just wondering how SV 90 stacks up next to Cat.
Hi Shimmy, I have run a Cat ctl. We did not like the machine at all, sold it and bought the Kubota. Not sure you could ask for anymore than our SVL 90. I think you can even get ride control on the new ones. I would not think twice about getting another Kubota. Easy to run and easy to service. Very well built and designed.
What didn't the guys like about the Cat? We are demo-ing a Case right next to the Cat and can't stand it. Slow hyd, noisy as hell in cab, ridiculous front door design, I could list more. I like the front window design of the Kubota, just wonder if they are as seamless in the cab as the Cat.
The biggest trouble was with the electro hyd controls. No response and when it did move it would jump. They flashed software a bunch if times and changed settings and nothing helped. We got tired if paying for a machine that everyone hated so we got rid of it. Yes the windshield on the Kubota is great. No matter where the loader is you can get in or out. The Kubota also has a little trap door so you can sweep the floor out
Thanks, LC. I did think the Cat was a little jumpy, but it's been around 10°F and contributed it to the temp and things being a bit stiff. Even so, my opinion of Case next to it was junk. Pretty harsh but I wasn't the only one to think so. I am going to try to get a Kubota to try.
Not taking into account the problems I've had with my CASE, I have to say that the door, and cleaning out the tracks and plumbing behind the drive motors ticks me off the most. The slow hyd. settings can be changed easily. Baring any unforeseen holdups, I'll be trading the CASE for an SVL90 in the spring.
Hi there JNB. I have the settings maxed out, still a good 30% slower than the Cat. If you're operating the loader or tilt separate, it's not too bad. Soon as you try and rollback and drop loader at same time, everything slows to a crawl. My biggest complaint after the hyd. is how cheap it feels in the cab. Noisy, seat is garbage, radio sucks, don't care for the aux control button, this is a new machine!! I'll get off my soapbox now. Maybe I'm just too fussy. But if we're going to spend $70,000 on a skid it had better be worth it.
There is nothing that I can say bad about the Kubota. I have never tried a Case but have heard others say bad things. Keep me posted on how you like the Kubota. JNB I think you will be very happy when you trade.
Sweet new truck, I'm jealous!!! Some daay down the road I'd like to trade my cat MTL for a kubota SVL 75. I'm glad to hear they're getting good reviews!
Thanks Nedly. It came from Maine so it was pretty close to you. I have not had a chance to run the SVL 75 yet but I do see a good number of them around here.
Congrats on the new truck! I'm glad you got the insurance worked out quickly, I've been there and it can be a PIA. Hope the new truck serves you well!
When you said Whited, I figured it came from Maine.
Thanks CM. I think it is going to be a good truck. Hope to get more pics of it. We are getting a headache rack built and light bar for it so it should have all the goodies on it in a few weeks.
Crazy to think we had to go that far away to find a truck speced the way we wanted but it was a real good experience dealing with them.
Now that Pete is serious. Very classy. I know you will keep it clean and proud.
Thanks Fastdirt. We like it and still has to get the gingerbread put on
A few pics from this week. We are demoing a swimming pool, filling it in and then going to dig it back out. A couple pics of the new truck and a few pics of the clearing job.
Where does the timber and pulpwood go? STUMP KNOCKER
I love looking at your pics man!! That new truck makes me drool, looks sexy hitched up to the log wagon!
The pine pulp goes to the Kapstone mill in Summerville.
Thanks Nedly. My brother likes it better than his old truck. I like the way it looks to!
Beautiful truck LC! I agree it has a way better look than the old one. I got a question, have you thought about doing youtube videos of you operating and videos about what goes on your typical day? I think it would be great to see a couple videos a week from you! Keep up the great work buddy.
Thanks Sawdus. I am looking forward to the new headache rack and lights, should finish it off nice. I have thought about doing videos and actually have a gopro but it is a ton of work to get the videos off the camera. Thanks for the compliments.
Really liking the grey/silver color. That's a sharp looking truck!
Thanks CM, I think it needs black fenders!
I hear ya' but I wouldn't change a thing.
Absolutely. :cool2
Happy Thanksgiving LC, enjoy your day off and I hope you aren't working Friday either
Thanks Sawdus, same to you. I hate to say it but we are working tomorrow and Sat.
Well that's a good thing it's better to have more than enough work rather than not enough work. Get it while the gettins good!
It is much easier to do the work than find it so no complaints here.
I just read through the entire thread. Some nice work Landclearer, Keep the pictures coming.
Thanks Blackdog. I try to put up new pics every Sunday.
Here is this weeks installment. The first pics are of a job my brother was on. My jobs are mudholes and I helped him for 3 days last week. The next pics are of the trucks first load. Pretty good sized load 87000 The last pics are of the pool I have been tearing out. We had 4 days of rain last week so Sat was the first day I made it back there. The big chunk is the kiddy pool.
This is why I look forward to Sundays. Sweet regular cab by the way.
Thanks Sawdus. Glad you like the pics. I really enjoy looking at other peoples work so I figured I would put our stuff on here as well.
I'm the same way. I love looking at other peoples jobs, trucks, machines, trailers, and most importantly the work. Of course I love the big mass grading but I just like the average contractor site work. Love pictures. I just prefer pictures. Thanks for sharing again. Man what a truck that Peterbilt is.
Real nice pics landclearer Beautiful shots of your powerful machine in action! Gotta love that 315
I agree, I like big dirt and so on but I guess I just like seeing the same type of work we do. I like the pics as well and I think it is real interesting how things are done so differently from area to another.
A few pics from this week. Back in the mud again. Can"t find anything dry lately.
315s are great machines. Lots of power for a small package. I have done a lot of work with that machine.
Enjoying the photos as always. Man, that new truck is a real looker!
Thanks man, I appreciate that. I am looking forward to seeing it with the new headache rack and lightbar.
LC is it more economical to chip those hardwoods instead of sending it to the mill as pulpwood? Like the '63 with the rake.:thumbsup
Hey CM, in this case it was not worth hauling them all the way to the mill. I guess it about 50 miles one way to the mill and we have our spring mulch orders coming up so we need a lot of hardwood mulch and it is a short haul to our stockpile. Yeah I like the rake on the 63 also. After you run a trackloader with a rake you would never want to get on a wheel loader again and try to grub.
Love the 63 with a rake! That would be an awesome machine to work in the timber. Are the teeth on the rake heavy enough to grub stumps and clear with? Or more for stacking? John
Hey John, Oh yeah you can clear with it. Stumps, trees it does not matter. That is a Cat rake for a 950 that we had the backs changed to fit the 63. That is the second one we have done and never had so much as a cracked weld.
Looks like a Pemberton root rake. I have only saw 1 with a busted weld. STUMP KNOCKER
Stump Knocker, it is a Cat work tool, we got it from an auction that our local Cat dealer was having and got a heck of a deal on it.
How do you like the kubota kx080? do you have any pics of it?
Hey Nedly, Yes we like the machine. It is strong and smooth and well balanced. I would not mind if it were just a little bit faster on the boom lift when digging deep but it has been real good and no mechanical issues at all.
Sorry for the odball picture in there. Here are a few more.
Now a few work pics from this week. We got some fill for the pool demo this week. Should get that finish graded tomorrow and finished ready for forming. Also a couple pics of a little lot I cut with our buncher.
I know some of you guys have seen these and or used them but I figured it was something different. We get this guy to put underdrain in for us anytime we are going to be well under the water table with our storm sewer pipe. Here are a couple pics of the machine and installation.
Thanks for the info and pics LC. How many hours on the kubota now?
That under drain machine is awesome! How many feet per day with that beast!
I think it has between 750 and 1000 hours on it now. I think he can do somewhere around 2000 feet a day if he does not have to start and stop to much. The runs we are doing are short runs anywhere from 150 to 300 feet so by the time he gets going, he has to start all over again.
How does the kubota lift? Do you think it could handle 4000 LBS? Thats what 1/2 of a 1000 gallon concrete septic tank weighs around here, so it would be nice to be able to set one of those.
I am not sure on the exact lift capacity but I have set precast catch basins before. I wish it was on the job with the trencher, the concrete boxes are there and have all the weights written on them. I would try to find one around 4000 and see if it would lift it.
Somehow my last post just got erased, all but the last sentence. I had a 307b that had great lifting power but that was before so many of them came with swing booms. How does the underdrain work? He installs the pipe lower than all of the work you do and it dewaters the whole site? Do you dig his tie-ins in with a hoe? Where does that water go? do you end up pumping it somewhere else? Interesting for sure. Thanks for the fotos. CD
Hi Cd, well the under drain is a 5 inch perforated pipe with a sock. If our cut is 8 feet, he will go about 12or 14 feet deep. We hook a well point pump to it and start pumping. As for the tie ins, he will leave heavy duty piece of flex pipe on either end so we can hook the pump to whichever end we want. We will pump it to a pond or existing storm pipe or ditch. If you have good ground, you can be 10 feet below the water table and the hole will be dry as can be. He can go 19 feet with that machine so you can dig 15 feet and still be dry.
Thanks for the info on the Kubota LC! You guys do some awesome work, very interesting how the underdrain works. We are so mountainous here, usually to dry up a site we have to go uphill and put in some sort of drainage to intercept the water and send it another direction. We just got 2' of snow here, makes me wish I was down working with you for the winter LOL!
Two feet of snow will keep the frost out of the ground for you nedly, but will be quite a mess. CD , I figured you would be spending a lot of time pushing the white stuff by now. Glad your work load has kept you busy, what a beautiful place to be working.
I miss the snow, I always loved playing in it but it does make work a little difficult We have been drier than usual here but when we do get rain it has been bad for the jobs we are doing.
That underdrain machine is a beast! Interesting as always.
How do you like running the wheeled buncher vs a tracked one?
I like the wheeled buncher. For what we do it is faster. We cut and bunch everything including brush and we do a lot of easements and I will carry everything out of the easement. If the job is small, I will carry everything and put it in one pile.
Got a few jobs done this week. We cleared and filled a lot. The guys doing the sitework supplied the fill dirt, we just spread and compacted it. The sand was wet, very wet and full of roots. Turned out OK I think. Couple pics of loading a load of mulch early in the morning and a little grinding job we did on Sat. morning. took about 1.5 hours to grind and 2.5 hours to move in and out.
Looks like you all are staying plenty busy out there. What's the deal with the tree spade? Palm tree business on the side? CD
Hey CD, yes we are busy and happy about it. No tree spade business for us. That belongs to the community association that we did the grinding for. We don't need any more irons in the fire
LC how much do ya'll undercut on a lot like that? Do they build the houses on spread footings or do they use piles? On our Gulf Coast they mostly use piles capped in the footing.
Hi CM. Things vary greatly around here. They go from one extreme to the other depending on the engineer. They will go from 24 inch wide footers and sometimes wider. They will drive piles from 15 footers to 60 foot concrete with pile caps or the piles will extend to the first floor. One house might be on 40 foot piles and the one next door will be on footers. No real reasoning to how they do it. We have even sir charged house sites. The lots we clear usual just get stripped to get rid of any organics so maybe 6 inches or so. Did you get my PM?
Work is looking great LC. Glad to see yall are getting some work done finally.
Thanks Sawdus. The dry weather has helped us to get things done. We are looking at three days of rain now but Christmas is coming. Getting the new truck on the road has been a huge help also.
So employee wise, is it just you and your brothers, or do you hire outside the family? Your pics are making me jealous this time of year. We shut down and don't dig much during the winter, just snow and ice managment. Gives us a chance to get all caught up on maintenace though.
Nedly, there are three brothers and we have one guy that is full time. We also have a couple guys that work on weekends sometimes and a another guy that is our part time mechanic. So to answer your question, it is pretty much just the 4 of us. We are lucky because we can work all year. We get some rainy times like now but can usually find a place to work that is sandy. A winter break and some snow plowing would be ok with me
thats the problem here if not's raining and their windshield wipers are not on these city slicker project managers think we should be moving dirt cause it's not to wett in their office don't worry about that rain thats coming tonight and all day tomorrow . so we don't get to shut down on go over our equipment like y'all can but with that said y'all can have that white stuff
Bad weather and the holidays have slowed things down a little. Spent two days loading logs and riding to the mill because of the rain so I figured I would put a few pics of the mill on here. The Volvo loader will pick up at least 31 tons. That is what we had on our first load(5 tons over). The next batch of pics is of the cab guard on the new truck. Took about a day to install and do all the wiring for the lights.
Damn good looking truck buddy! I'm jealous. The weather has sucked down here too. Worked last Monday and between rain and holidays haven't worked since. There were several roads flooded last night and this morning in my area, another front coming in now..
Thanks CM. Seems like everyone likes it better than the old one and I know my brother loves driving it. We seem to be in the rainy cycle down south now. Talking about rain tomorrow and again at the end of the week. I feel for you, I know your clay is not rain friendly. We have a couple of jobs that we don't need rain on but we do have a couple that rain is ok.
The frustrating part is predicting the weather. Natural ground not disturbed or compacted fill will be OK to work on after a day or so of sun. However the tough part is predicting the next rain shower and not have exposed, loose dirt on the ground. The PM's think if the sun is shining right now, we should be working. What they fail to take into account is it rained 3" the day before and another front is coming in the afternoon. Last Monday was a perfect example. Site was wet but sun was shining and there was a chance of rain later on in the night. Had a straight run of 18" ADS in good virgin ground to lay beside the building, so I decided to chance it. The slab is ready to pour but the rain chances moved the pour into the next week. I wanted to get the line in and be away from the building before the slab is poured and steel erectors show up. We had a good day and laid 120' of pipe. However the rain came in early in the afternoon. Ran around like crazy trying to get the nice dry backfill material into the ditch but the last 8" or so got soaked. We'll have to blade that out and let it dry or mix it with import material.
I think it should be some sort of law that a PM or an engineer should have to work in the field for 10 years before they get to be in charge. Just like you said, if it is sunny they think you should be working. The job with the logs in the pics above, they are in a big rush and did not care if it was raining so they wanted it cleared. Sure are doing a lot of mucking now because of it. My favorite thing is laying pipe down a 10 foot easement 3 foot below the water table and they want to know why you are getting so close to the trees and putting dirt around them.
that's why I quit doing grading job's years ago the superintendents started out as a laborer if they where lucky a carpenter and worked their way up and knowed how to build the whole job from the clearing to the flashing on the roof and there were no PM's . now they can't find their way to the job without GPS. You would be surprised how much concrete I get every day .wett and just poured because they either forgot to cancel it or poured it wrong
The good ones are hard to come by for sure. It's surprising how they get by with knowing so little. Most PM's are just paper shufflers but every now and then you will find a good one. Can't beat experience!
Doing some clearing on a pond we are going to dig as well as a park that some of the dirt will go. If anyone needs some palm logs let me know I figured I would also put a pic of the 63 rake on there since there are several guys that liked it.
LC what do ya'll do with the palms? Are they any good for mulch?
Unfortunately palms are good for nothing. We grind them up and compost them. If you need some we can make you a real good deal on them The only other thing we do with the mulch from them is make temporary roads to travel in the sand.
Landclearer, saw that you had a lil pete and had the Cat 315 behind it. Wondered how it handled the 315 on the tag? braking? power? etc. Thanks, Justin
Justin, I does good pulling the 315. We will move it on short hauls but use the lowboy if we are going any distance. It has 300hp and the trailer has air brakes so it does pretty good. I would prefer a 25 ton trailer but the 20 ton does ok.
They make pretty good forts.
LC, Good thread!, It sure is neat to see what others have to deal with in different working conditions. I noticed you guys have gravel boxes on all the trucks, how do you deal with all the c&d? Does your long trailer have a barn door? I guess if you are mulching everything you don't need high lift tailgates. But for the stumps and other strangely sized stuff the needs to be dumped and can't be mulched? Is the Volvo loader holding up well? I'm going to be looking to upgrade my loader and dozer for 2015, also would like some new fleet pickups, but that may have to wait. We are back to work tomorrow after 2 weeks off and over 2' of snow and the temps are in the teens. Ya'' deal with rain and quiksand and we deal with snow and frost. Best Regards, CD
Do you need a fort, if you do we can supply the palm logs . If I could find something to do with them we would be rich.
Thanks CD. I agree other peoples work is always more interesting than ours. Yes the big trailer has a barn door and we wish the others did as well. Well the little Pete does but that is more for access to shovel asphalt out of the bed than hauling debris. We will haul concrete in the one tri axle since it has a Hardox body. The other tri axle does not haul any debris at all.the loader is doing good. We have been using it sporadically but is about to go to work. Great machine to operate for sure. We took off 3 days for the holidays but have been getting rain on regular basis. I love the snow but I feel for you. Rain and quicksand is a lot easier than snow and frozen ground.
Mitch and I have this plan for play forts to sell through Lowe's, PM me.:tong
You pay for the fuel and we will haul them wherever you want
I did see a show the other day where some of the old fort's were built out of them and the cannon balls would just bounce off them
Fort Moultrie was built out if them. I guarantee a cannon ball would bounce off of them. The things are nothing but stringy fibers and water.
LC, Did you all look at the next size up with the wheel loaders? L90 or 938? Does the 2.5 yard fit you all well? I have a 2.5 yarder now and feel like the 3.3 maybe a good fit. Regards, CD
CD, we did try a 938 and we hated the hystat trans in the K series. We have a 928 and the L70 and they both do everything we need. The L70 has a 3 yard bucket and with the rollback the way it is, getting 4 yards at a time is no problem. It also does real good lifting boxes, better than the 928. I am not sure about your Volvo dealer but I would give one a try.
we have to be careful in our soil's over here with wheel loaders because the weight of the bigger machines will pump the sub grade out and ruin it.
IF we move inland some we have the same problem with pumping ground. On the coast is nice and sandy but inland the ground for the most part is sticky clay that like you said will pump if you run to big of a machine on it.
Same here on wheel loaders, that's why they're not common on dirt moving sites. Pipe laying crews may have one to shuttle materials. We need the tracked machines to spread the weight out. Lulls will destroy a wet site here for example.
Like I said, in the sand we are ok. A lot of guys now run skidder tires on the pipe crew loaders. Years ago a big sewer contractor was laying sanitary on a job we were on and had an old 936 with a set of 44 skidder tires and the only thing it would do was carry rock from the hill down into the swampy area they were working in.
That's what people with deep pockets can do. I drive a frameless dump in Columbia for Carolina Wrecking
Finally finished up the pool I demoed and fill back in. Did the dig this week. Started grinding on the palmetto job also. Nothing to exciting. Talking about 4 days of rain this week so that should be interesting.
Is there a market for the grindings on the palms? It looks kind of stringy in the pics.
The stuff is good for nothing it would be even more stringy but we are using small screens on the grinder so it gets chopped up pretty good.
Many things great about this picture. View attachment 128784 What a great truck. Like them short pipes. View attachment 128790 Another great picture. Looks like it is in great shape. I worked for a local clearing company on that setup...... and I remember a quick connect that worked great now and then but I also remember a sledge hammer in there sometimes. That is the exact rake. Isn't that set of little teeth on the top for pushing over trees. I want to load some trucks out of that mulch pile. View attachment 129063
Can it be used for erosion control? What do you do with it, do you have to pay to dump it?
Thanks Fastdirt. Seems like everyone likes this truck. It has been doing great so far. My brother loves driving it and likes the Paccar motor so much better than the Cummins he had before. I should have done it before but we need to give Alfab credit for the great job they did on the headache rack. The 963 is my baby. Nothing else I would want to run on a clearing job. Yes the teeth on the top are for pushing trees. On previous trackloaders, we had quick couplers but they would tend to get sloppy so we decided to go with the old pin on when we got this one.
Nedly, it would make great erosion control, even better than straw. It locks together and will not wash. Only trouble is nobody uses anything other than hydro seed around here. We dump it at our place and spread it out and let it compost. Fortunately most of our jobs have nowhere near that many palms. If we move inland a mile there are none.
Got started on a grading job this week. Had to cut a bunch of dirt to get ready for the power and telephone conduit. Got the first section done and have almost caught up to the sewer contractor again. I also got the try out the chip bucket on the Volvo. Doubles production on regrinding since there is always something in the hopper now.
Noticed the rippers on the D6K, I would've thought ya'll wouldn't need rippers. And how in the hell do you keep your equipment so clean..lol.
Hey CM, as for the ripper, we got that instead of a counterweight. The dozer is out of balance and we told the salesman it need a counterweight so he suggested the ripper. Like he said, it cost more but it has function instead of just being a big chunk of steel. We do try to keep the equipment clean. It usually gets a bath at least at service time if not more often.
Landclearer, I was wandering how you keep it that clean also, with only a bath at service time do you ever find any mud or dust or always working in sand? My iron is always needing a bath but doesn't get one very often.
Sometimes the stuff needs a bath in between. Our trackloader is a muddy mess right now and needs a good pressure. The trucks get washed as needed so they get more attention than the equipment.
Worked on two jobs this week. The first is a little clearing and cleanup job. Had to clear about 1/3 of an acre, load up all the concrete and spread the rest of the dirt out but got rained out on Friday. The next group of pics are from the clearing job we did a few weeks ago. Loading up the wood chips, stripping the organics off and getting ready to dig the pond. Most of this area was wet or underwater when we cleared. Had it uderdrained and hooked the pump up on Thurs. Nice and dry now.
Got a few jobs done this week and off the books. Started the week digging the first part of the pond and moving some dirt onsite. Then went back to the little clearing job and hauled off the debris then dug a hole to bury the "bad dirt" and used the clean fill to build a pad. Only problem was the dirt was saturated and the owner wanted it done that day so I had to level the pad with the 315 by side swinging and tamping down the high spots with the bucket. Turned out pretty good for as wet as it was. Finally did a little demo job of a burnt metal building.
Nice demo, how much steel did you take across the scales? Hows the D6K doing? Is it a K2?
Hey CM, It was 11 tons of steel at a very disappointing 6.5 cents per ton . The 6K is a series 2. It is OK, we have had no trouble from it and it pushes good. Grades OK but not as good as a 6N. Not a big fan of the controls and cab, kinda loud inside and I don't like the giant control handles.
Pretty interesting soil varieties in the last photo of post #400. Is that caliche near the bottom?
Wow, that is low. Last 30 yard I sent was $.14 a pound but we have several furnaces here so the scrap stays local. A D6N is one of my favorite dozers. Had a D6N and loved that tractor.
JNB, if you don't like the dirt around here, move over 10 feet . The top layer was topsoil then some yellow sand and a thin layer of hardpan. The white stuff you see in the bottom is pure sand, white and clean as can be. I would love to have a couple hundred acres like that and I would open a dirt pit and be on easy street.
.14 is great. The best we ever got was .12. We have a Nuccor plant about 50 miles away but they don't take from he public. We had a 6N LGP when the economy went south and that was a great dozer. Once you got your pass going you could almost take your hand off the blade control because it rode so good.
Well it's colorful anyway. I had a brand spankin' new KX040 on rental for a job on Friday. The dealer said to keep it for the rest of the weekend for another $7, so that was a no-brainer. I dug an 8' deep burn pit out behind my place yesterday. Black clay and not a pebble in sight. Headed five doors down the street to my FIL's place to demo an old garage and dig another burn pit. Six inches of topsoil then tan gravely clay and hit a solid limestone shelf at 4'. Looked like a finished slab of tan concrete.
Sounds like you are in the same boat as us with different ground conditions. Fortunately for us we do not have rock. We do have marl which is like soft limestone while digging it but turns to slop once it has been dug. Along the coast, if they are driving piles and looking for tip friction they go down to the marl.
The work is looking good LC! I'm going to have to ride down to Kiawah one weekend and check yall out. I cant get enough of yalls equipment and work.
If it wasn't so far I would drive and spend a few days watching them at work. STUMP KNOCKER
Thanks Sawdus. There is always something different going on. Glad you like the pics. It is nice to hear from other guys that love equipment and construction!
We have a good friend and fellow forum member that comes down from NC several times a year.
I agree with you LC. I love construction it has always interested me even when I was little. I just wish there was more people posting on here. But it seems as the years go by people get less and less interested in construction and the love for the work. I myself am only 18 and can think of only one other friend I know that has the same interest I do. So that kind of puts it into perspective how the youngerror generations have no interest unless you're born into or your dad owns a business.
It's sometimes a small world, but a good one.
I could not have said it better myself. Seems like kids today want to play video games and mess around with cell phones. I was always out side when I was a kid. I ran a JD 310A when I was about 5 and that was it for me. Nothing else I would rather do. I think people that love construction are the ones that are the best operators and take pride in what they do and the equipment they run.
Same here, I was always outside as a kid playing, building forts, digging holes and getting in trouble which resulted in a butt whopin'.. We grew up in different times LC. It seems like kids now a days are so disconnected from what I call real life - getting dirty and playing outside. I didn't get to run equipment at an early age but I've had yellow iron fever as long as I can remember. Started working summers in residential construction like a man at age 13, go to work at 6 AM and get home at 6PM. I did every nasty job they could throw at me. Started running a Bobcat at that age as well. Quickly learned how to use the machine to perform tasks that would other wise take back breaking work to accomplish. Worked every summer from then on through college as well as Christmas and Spring breaks and holidays. I loved it and still do. Absolutely.
Thanks CM! I was the same as you, outside all the time and once I got old enough, off to work I went. Spent every afternoon, Saturday, vacation day and summer working with my brothers and we are still at it. I am really not sure when construction became such a bad occupation but seems like you can't find anyone that "wants" to do it. That is one reason we have a lot of equipment. Unfortunately equipment is more reliable than people for the most part. When I was in high school, we did a lot of residential work and my brother would send me to a house with a dozer and rake and it better look good one way or another so I figured the dozer was a lot better choice. I guess pretty much everyone on the forum loves construction, equipment or trucks, if not they wouldn't be on here and that is what makes this such a good forum(not to mention the moderators )
I really really enjoy your pictures. It's hard to take good pictures without stalling the production... and if others are looking you can look a bit foolish taking pictures. I just wish others would share some but I understand wanting to be private. I know my local competition has seen my stuff. I've heard hear say about it but I really have nothing to hide I guess. Sawdus I feel ya on the nobody is interested in this stuff unless it's in your blood like us. None of my friends have ever even climbed in my machines or trucks and that includes one of my brothers. I even have friends who run some of the biggest grading/pipe jobs in Georgia including the new Falcons stadium. They could care less about it like we do and they are overseeing 650 excavators and everything else along those lines...they love their guns, Harley's, and beers though. They are not burned out on it, it's just that they don't have "it" like us. When I was close to your age I could tell you the weight and horsepower of all the equipment. What I would do to have a neighbor like you.... or even more so a right hand man or even somebody to train if he's serious. That's why I haven't hired anyone yet. I had a guy last week come on but no passion for this work so we cut ties. I'd rather do it alone than have somebody who isn't passionate. When I was 19 I was polishing the boss's Peterbilt, customizing my(his) F700 dump and washing my(his) 853 Bobcat every weekend in hopes of moving up to the loader. My priority was getting the dirt on grade and slicking the swales and entire job down. Kind of a lonely feeling.... wouldn't trade it for nothing though. I can't hide my fanaticism and fascination LOL. I grew up building forts, riding my BMX all over the county, then riding dirt bikes and four wheelers every chance I got. I begged my Dad to rent a Bobcat and let me work the backyard the way I envisioned it. He never bit on it though. My first real tractor experience was my first day on the job. I was on a 785 New Holland with metal tracks and remember mud peeling up through the slotted floor board as it ate. I was hooked immediately.... then I broke the bucket hyd. by going into a load of dirt with the bucket completely dumped down. Whoops. I was scared the boss that I hadn't met yet would get mad but he was the furthest thing from that. He said we got a rental on the way for you. It was a huge rubber tire loader and I remember looking down at tandems. My first day in grading. Loved it. Yep, if we're here and posting we definitely have "it". My new ad for an employee says " Will train the right candidate". I'd love to be the guy my first boss was to me. I knew nothing my first day. That ad has been ran for 5 months on and off over the last year. I also tell everybody I know that I'm looking. No luck..... or "oh I don't drive big trucks" or " I'm not a laborer" It's great that we have this forum...
Thanks fastdirt I really appreciate the kind words. I've always looked up to you so it's nice to hear that from you. you run a great outfit and I wish you were closer because I would take you up on that like a fat kid on pancakes. I don't know what happened with the industry when it got its bad rep. Not a lot of quality people out there completing the work and I think that's part of the problem. No one gets excited about putting on their work pants and their boots everyday. And that's what excites me I love that feeling. How great is it that you get to drive big truck and even bigger hydraulic toys everyday? I think it's the greatest thing in the world.
Normal week here. Several different jobs. At least I don't get tired of one job Early morning load of mulch. Some more of the pond digging. Clearing another road of the same project as the pond.
Cutting in for curb, Please take note of my GPS. It only cost $.11 And last but not least, a little grinding job, just started grinding some live oak.
Looks good! I'm curious what made you decide on the 5710 and what you really like or really don't like about it ? Did you compare it to competitive brands ? Ie - morbark, cbi , etc . I am looking to possibly add a new grinder in the next little bit . Thanks !
Hitachi225, yes we did compare the 5710 to Morbark machines. We even demoed a 6600 on wheels against the 5710. The production of the 5710 was as good as the 6600 and we fell in love with having tracks. The 6600 on tracks weighs over 100k vs around 85k so it would be real tough to move the 6600 around. We also like the airbag system on the Peterson vs the torque limiter. The only things I don't like on the Peterson are small things like some grease fittings that are tough to get to and I would like to have some bolt on wear plates inside the grinding chamber. Overall the Peterson has done everything we have asked of it plus some. As for CBI there are no dealers which is a turn off for us.
That GPS is one slick trick! It's been a while since I graded for slip form curb but I'm using that next time. Most of the small commercial sites have form curb and we use the ol' 4' level and hubs.
Thanks CM! Sometimes simple is just better. I had it on the 6K, set the speed to 1.0 and ran it full throttle. Curb machine guy was happy as can be, never even ran the trimmer on his machine.
How do you like your EC300?
We love it. It has been a good machine and a pleasure to operate as well as very easy on fuel.
Finished clearing the road and a ditch we had to fill as well as getting the trees ground up. Got most of the fill on the road as well. Should get that finished tomorrow. The contractor we cleared for wanted us to strip the road and fill so they supplied the ADT's and the fill. Clearing the ditch 1600 gpm pump To lazy to get the 3 inch pump! Getting ready to grind
Grinding a live oak log Grinding and loading mulch Terex ADT getting about 12 loads an hour
Thanks, LC for that comment over there. As always some great jobs with great equipment here. Love that contractor's hire your outfit to clear and if we didn't know better I'd say those machines never spent a day around clearing by how good they look. 12 loads an hour is getting it done. I guess you would call that "fill" and not dirt obviously. Looks very green in all your pics like it's nice and warm and easy pushing too it looks. Bet those trees/stumps go right over too. Living the dream
Thanks Fastdirt. You know as well as I do that nobody is giving out machines for free so we better take good care of the ones we got just like you. I think the way your equipment looks is also a reflection of your work, not true all the time though. I have seen some guys do great looking work with stuff that looks like it should be in a boneyard. As for our "dirt" it is the sand from below the water table and yes it is a bluish green color. Not bad when it has some moisture but a pain when it is dry. Depending on the type of tree and the ground elevation determines how the trees come out.
First group of pictures is of a big conduit job we have. I guess we put in about 8000ft so far. The next group is of some emergency beach work. We are hauling the sand for the sandbags and placing them with the 300.
LC, I look forward to your Sunday updates. Thanks for sharing.:drinkup I'm behind on my pic posting, I need to catch up. What's the conduit for - telecom, power?
LC I really enjoy your thread and all of the variety of work you get to do. I would post more pictures, but most of my customers have no picture clauses in their contracts. I take them anyway, but don't post anything, as that would cause trouble.
Thanks CM, glad you like the updates and yes you are behind on your pics Yes the conduits are for Power and telephone. I would have posted earlier but had to put more sandbags on the beach today.
I do like the variety as well. Always something different. I do understand the no picture deal. Not many jobs we work on do we have to worry about that. I try to put something on every Sunday and thanks for looking.
What's the deal with the sandbags? Are you lining the entire outer bend? Thanks!
They are going to line the entire cut until they get a permit for the renourishment. Seems to be working. They have another 2000 bags on the way.
Just a few pics this week. Set more sandbags, a total of 1900 or so. They wanted dozer to scrape on the beach so we rented an 850. It had been stockpiling salt so it was already in rough shape. Worked 3 days and then they pulled the scraping permit. Sorry for the lack of pics with the dozer but it is hard to get pics when you only have a small time window with the tide. In the one pics you can see the start of a new cut for the water to go out.
Neat looking project, so sad to see a nice dozer like that so beat up.
The sandbags were fun for the first day, that got boring real fast. It was sad to see what the salt had done to that dozer.
Another somewhat boring week. Just a couple shots of laying subgrade drain and a little access road we built. Here is the little access road Here are a couple of the sgd ditch.
Here are a couple pics of the 121 and 080 for size comparison. 5:00 Saturday See anything wrong with this picture?
Warning tape buried along side the pipe and not a foot or two above the line?
That didn't take long. A lot easier to find when it is actually above the pipe
On the last sewer connection I did I had to go under a 3" water line that was part of the sprinkler system for a warehouse.....they put the warning screen under the waterline. :laugh
I've seen that before also. I dug thru a 1 inch power conduit that nobody said a word about and had no tape and was not on the plans and the electrician wanted us to pay him to put it back in.
You've got to commend the guys for having the foresight to warn the tunnel workers of overhead utilities.
We replaced a 100'+ run of storm pipe next to a city side street on the project I'm finishing up. Line Locate comes out and supposedly the only thing buried on that side of the street is a phone line, gas is on other side - good no problem. Blowing and going laying pipe and snag an old 2" galvanized gas service that was live, as if that wasn't bad enough there is an elementary school across the street. Took a wooden silt sock stake and fortunately it fit perfectly in the pipe. Sealed it off pretty good, Alagasco crew joked saying - "Ya'll already got it shut off". No hit for us as we had a current Locate # and an "Alagasco all clear" marked on our side of the street.
That's a good one
Sounds like your locators are as good as ours. They usually come out the day after the locate is up. I really like it that way, let's you dig like hell and you hit something, keep on going. We dug up a cable tv and phone line, finished laying the pipe and was backfilling, a guy walks up and asked if we hit something, and then said he was the locator. Whoops! You were lucky on the gas line. That could have ended bad!
Some more great pictures you've shared LC. I really like the KW dump truck. Wait I mean I love it. That is the exact dump truck I want. I like Pete's in front of trailers but KW's in front of dump bodies. A couple of weeks ago I referred to your pics being so green. What I meant was the trees. It doesn't even look like winter there. Could be a coastal thing but lot's of color for winter.... and those clean machines. I'm not a fan of utilities. About three weeks ago we were digging in a back yard. All utilities were marked in the front including the red marker paint. Well we were re routing a trench for the sewer line that we knew we would hit that runs to the back street. All of the sudden a cloud of smoke comes from the dirt. We hit the power line. Turns out the utility marker guy just threw some paint down in the front yard for what ever reason. Maybe he couldn't find it and just cheated his way out. So a couple of head GA Power guys show up to investigate and the utility marker guy gets there and says "I guess we bought that one". I learned a lesson that day. Not to trust the utility markings and if there is a street at the front and back of the lot anything is possible.
Fastdirt I assume you have the same locators we do, they probably have a contract with Southern Company. I won't mention the company name. The problem that locate company has is high turnover of the guys and gals in the field. We may get one locator that actually seems to care out of 5. You got lucky on the power line Fastdirt.
Thanks Fastdirt. I like the KW's also. I wish the black tri-axle was a bit shorter, it is hard to get around on some of the residential jobs we do. If we ever sell it, I will let you know . At least your locator came out. Our guy is always late and I mean always. I do feel for him, I think he is way over loaded with the amount of stuff he has to locate and the area he covers.
Lol, thanks I've been looking at the KW's for fun. Pricey I'll say. My main hauler guy I use has a T800 that he loves and I have come to like it more and more. I do like the bigger hood on the 900 though, especially the 900L but not very practical.
Fastdirt, here are a couple pics for you. I was driving our W900L hauling off some muck and figure I would post a picture of it for you. Busy week, lots of different jobs. Here is a little wetland job we cleared, mucked and filled. Bringing in the fill W900L A little demo job, 2 car washes and and then about 2 acres of clearing behind it.
Big piece of brick. Last but not least a mulching job we did on Sat. I guess it was about 1500 feet long.
Nice. These pictures are great. Dang I do love that KW dump and it even looks good with the bed up showing the tinted glass, dual stack, and 4" lights on the back of the cab. Yall don't mess around. Black with a pintle hitch and all, it really is my dream dump truck . A guy I use often has a T800 and I finally sat in it today and was a bit let down at the size inside. I always though it had a wider cab than it does. I pulled out the measuring tape and measured 67" from window to window. I was thinking it was bigger. I checked my old Ford L9000 and it was at 71". I just measured my 379 and it's the same measurement as the KW at 67" from window to window. Only a factor in my world because I take two guys with me to every job. Well great pics and jobs again.:notworthy
Yes the KW cabs are small, like you said same as the Pete's. I guess if you wanted a big cab KW it would have to be a T880 . They are selling a lot of them around here but I like the old school look. I think the only cab smaller than ours would be a R model Mack. The old Western Stars were small too.
Love the mulcher, any videos of it in action? We have a fecon mulcher mounted on an excavator and its amazing how quick you can make a tree disappear.
Sorry no videos. It depends on the tree, the pines you see take no time at all I guess about a minute. That is just a guess, never really timed it. Sounds like you are happy with your mulcher. Do you have a power pack or just run off the machines hydraulics? What type of teeth are you running?
We just run it off the machine hydraulics, does pretty well on trees up to about 8-10" at the base. So far we have only ran the double carbide. Run into a lot of rock in my area and the teeth seem to hold up fairly well. I would love to run one on a machine with a power pack, it would be unstoppable!
8 to 10 inches is pretty good for no auxiliary and double carbides. What size machine are you running? If you did not have the rock, I would say do a stagger pattern with double carbides and chippers. That is what we do but fortunately we don't have to deal with rock. It makes a huge difference in production and the quality of the wood chips.
I was gonna say if u think the kW cab is small sit in a r model mack my 99 t800 is like a stretch limo compared to my 99 r model also I'm very jealous of your "fill" lc being its sand
Wow, those are some nice pictures and it's pretty cool what you guys do. I have always wondered if that's the easiest part of your job but just looking at home much mess it leaves and find it could be hard to clean up the mess. Well, what do you guys do with the mess or is there another crew that does the cleaning up? http://abbottsconstruction.com/Our-Services
You ain't lying. A guy I work around a lot has an R model dump and after he dropped some stone today I measured his glass to glass and it's 63" compared to a W900 and a 379 at 67" and the L9000 at 71". R models are cozy. I just always assumed the KW was wider, it looked wider. I too am jealous of that "fill".
Yeah, I think you don't get much smaller than an R model. At least it is easy to roll down the passenger side window I never really minded a small cab but I don't have to carry anyone around with. I would really like to know how wide an old Western Star can is. The sand has good points and bad points. When dry it is hard to grade or drive in but when it rains it doesn't turn to slop. I know what you work in Fastdirt but I am wondering what you have you work in 450SMrider?
Thanks Correy, which mess do you mean, that is one thing I am good at, making a mess
A little of something different. We had to put in 11k feet of 1" and 1.25" HDPE pipe for a cattle watering project.
I am guessing it did not take long with that I wish we could plow our stuff in but water lines, water and sewer services would not stand a chance.
The worst part was figuring out how to run the machine and weld the pipe. There is a very steep learning curve and at $5k/week rent you don't have much time to goof around learning.
I can see where you would not want to mess around at 5k a week. How deep did you plow?
It would do 60" we only went about 18-24". The reason for the large machine is we had about a 1500' run down a ridge back in heavy rock and another section through a heavily wooded section with 4-6" diameter roots.
You just answered my next question about rock. If you don't mind me asking, how feet could you get a day?
It really depends on soil type. Rocky soil you have to pre-rip the soil. In normal soil, about as fast as you can walk Maybe faster. Since I had to unroll the pipe as my dad drove he couldn't go any faster than I could walk backward. I think we did 300 or 4000 feet our last day in good soil.
3000 - 4000 feet is pretty good. No way to dig and install that fast by conventional methods.
Nothing to exciting this week. We did finish the demo job and started the clearing part then the rain came like always. Did a little grading job behind a house. Turned out good but could have used more dirt but that was what the owner wanted to spend.
Got started on grading a section of road. It is pretty well roughed in and all we need to do is brush over it with the grader, roll it and get a proof roll done then we can start putting down the base.
Great photos as always! Its good to see someone getting some work done. With the expansive soil we have locally and the rain we've had for the last month or so, just getting a one day job completed has been a chore.
Thanks JNB. We are also on a every three or four day rain cycle. As long as we are right on the coast in the sand, we are ok. The clearing job will now be a swamp because it is in poor clay. If they want to get right back on, they will be doing a lot of mucking.
Cool looking road job. Seriously what's up with all this rain all over this forum... and it's not even "April showers bring May flowers yet". Good stuff you are sharing with us!
Hey LC, I'm new to the site. I've read through this entire forum and I must say, you do amazing work :notworthy. Thanks for sharing! I just had a question about towing your 315 behind the little Pete. How does it handle? Do you have any hills it has to climb? I'm looking to start a demolition company when I graduate college this December. I want to get a single axle dump and tow a 314 on a 25 ton tandem axle trailer. I'm in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, so no need to go highway speeds. I'm just wondering if it would be adequate for stop/go city traffic and moderately steep but short hills? I've done a lot of research about it and everyone says you'd be pushing it with a single axle. Any input? I know a 314 is a few ton lighter than your 315, but it's fairly close. I know a tandem would be better but straight out of college getting established I'm really gonna have to keep costs down at the beginning . What do you think?
Not to hijack but steelers1993. I live in the northern pittsburgh area. I have spent time hauling a 315 from the strip district to mercer county and back numerous times. I wouldn't do it with anything smaller than a tandem. It's not the getting it to go part it's the whoa. We have a lot of curvy hilly roads. That's a lot of weight on a single axle. Have a friend with a single axle r model and he won't haul above a 312 and he said that's pushing it. Don't think you can get the right weights on the axles to be legal anyway. That's my 2 cents from a guy in your area
Thanks Steelers, welcome to the forum. As for the 315, we only do short moves and don't have any hills. Like 390eric said the problem is not getting started. You would be better with the setup you are talking about since the 314 is a little lighter and a 25 ton trailer would be a tri axle so you have an extra axle and an extra set of brakes. If we do a longer move we don't even think about the tag and use the lowboy. Don't get me wrong you could do it but I would be way more comfortable with a tandem.
Hey 390eric, thanks for the advice man. It wouldn't be long distances, only about 30 miles max one way. I was worried about the braking power, that's what others warned about from what I've read so far. With the hilly streets in Pittsburgh, I figured it would be a challenge. I was hoping I could get away with it for such a short distance though with air brakes and an exhaust brake haha. LC, I was thinking about getting a 25 ton ProLine trailer (here's a link http://newtrailer.us/dual-tandem-trailer/ ). I know it sounds stupid, but I'd rather tow a new/more expensive trailer with an older/cheaper truck rather than tow an older, cheaper trailer with a newer/more expensive truck. Especially with the weight and the expensive machine that will be on it (at least that is how I justify it). Definitely don't want to buy an underpowered truck and be getting pushed down a hill by the trailer though, just want to figure out what would be the best most cost-effective combination for my needs. That's why I'm doing all the research and as many opinions of people with experience as I can now!
Why not go with a 10 wheeler? You can haul your own materials and transport the excavator too. We haul a 35k lb excavator behind ours all through the narrow coastal mountains with no issues.
How much horse power is your tandem? What engine/transmission?
Steelers that trailer you posted is the standard 20 ton tag sems like they just rated at 50k to make the sale. Most true 25 ton trailers are configured ike this http://www.eagerbeavertrailers.com/products/easyloaders/25xpt/
Hmm ok so the 20XPT from Eager Beaver is the same as a 25 ton from ProLine. Only difference appears that the ProLine is 50k gvwr, take out the 10k for the trailer and you're left with 20 ton payload. Compared to Eager Beaver's which is advertised as 20 ton (48k unloaded) but after you take out the 8k for the trailer you're still left with 20 ton payload. So ProLine is advertising an extra 5 ton but that's the weight of the trailer not payload...kind of false advertising a bit isn't it? Here I thought I'd found a gem lol
Pretty much thats why landclearer mentioned triple axle
My dad has had a about 4 different trucks over the years. I am not 100% sure on the specs but I believe they have been between 350 and 425 hp mostly with 13 speed transmissions with spliters.
I don't know if it is false advertising but you might want to call it creative. They are trying to make you think the gvw is the load capacity. I am not sure their advertised price includes FET. I cannot argue with you on having a good trailer. Whatever you buy, make sure the truck has a good hitch. As for trucks, a tandem or triaxle would be the best but I do not know your budget so it is hard to say on a truck. You mentioned horse power and transmissions but you also need to be aware of rear end ratios.
Unfortunately it's pretty common among trailer manufacture's. You have to read the details on how they rate their trailers.:beatsme
Not really sure of a budget yet honestly. Still have a lot I need to figure out. Ultimately try to keep it as low as possible and buy newer better stuff as I can. I'll throw out the single axle idea and turn my attention towards a tandem or tri axle. This is probably a dumb question but, have any of you considered using a skid loader mounted mulcher to grind up wood from residential demos? If they can take down 12" thick trees I don't see why they couldn't handle any dimensional wood, right? Just came across some videos on youtube of them being used for clearing and the thought popped into my mind :idea. I imagine it would greatly reduce on the # of cans/dump trucks needed to haul out. Just curious to hear what yinz think :beatsme.
My only question is the added cost and tme worth saving te money on hauling for a residential demo.
Personally I would not try it. We have a mulcher for our skid steer but there is a lot more in a house than just wood. Steel and concrete are hard on teeth and I would not even want to know how much wire would get wrapped around the drum. Like Monster76 said, I don't think the extra work, were and tear would be justified in hauling savings. You also have to think about the cleanup then. We try to always keep the debris inside the footprint or on the slab. With a mulcher I would imagine you would get a good bit spread out over a good sized area.
I agree with Monster and LC on the mulched for residential demo. Also I would think the mulcher would have a tendency to launch a stray 2x4 or piece of metal flying through the air from time to time.
This would be my fear, that it would send a 2x4 flying. I was just wondering if it could handle just the straight wood, maybe even some plastic once you separated out any steel/concrete. They are really expensive but if you could munch up a pile of debris pretty quickly I imagine the cost of purchase would be worth it in the long run with time savings and cost of trucking. Like I said, I was just curious if anyone has tried it. Thanks for the input guys!
Here you go... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bWchty4J-M
Nice video, tkoden. I was referring to one of these though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HC049D3LNs
Yeah. I knew what you were talking about. Those would be scary as hell, especially with as fast as they spin. I can imagine hitting a nail plate and shooting nails out the top of that thing like a machine gun.
Not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I would also have to say that a mulcher wouldn't really help much for a demo.
A mulcher can easily throw a tree trunk, limb, steel T post, or a 2x4, as far as 300' in any direction. I can not see how you could use one for chopping up demolition materials if any home, or other structure was within that 300' radius. If I work near any roadway or public area, I have a spotter who lets me know when the danger area is clear of vehicles or people. I often do a lot of sitting and waiting for the area to clear before resuming mulching. Jeff
As usual, another week with rainy days. We were able to get a little bit done. I dug a pool as well as subgraded and rocked a good bit of road. Here are a few pics of the subgrade ready for rock. A load of crushed concrete ready to be spread. Spread and rolled for the weekend.
L.C., I'm looking for a brush/rock/rake bucket w/ grapple for my T770. I've been looking at quite a few, have had some good answers, wondering what your opinion is on the buckets that the ends of the teeth tip up? Can I assume that I could ride on that heel so it would be easier to point the teeth into or out of the dirt to pick up debris? This is what I'm referring to.
Hey Shimmy, I would prefer the teeth to not tip up. If they are up, you will always have to have your rake rolled over partially to get anything on it. I always liked a regular loader style rake instead of the L types. Solsbee Mfg builds one for a skid steer that is a baby version of our trackloader rake. I would also look at Bradco rakes. I do think a good bit of it is about personal preference so what I like might not be what others like. I would stay away from the crossbar if possible.
Here are a couple of the pool dig. Moving the KX 080 in and the dig itself. I just do the digging, they supply the trimmers.
Nice work as usual buddy!:drinkup I assume the crushed concrete is base material? Do ya'll usually put down the base on subdivision roads? In my area we cut the sub grade and get it passed then turn it over the pavers who put base and asphalt down.
Thanks CM. Yes we put the base down and fine grade it for paving. Yes the crushed concrete is base. On this job it is 6 inches of base and 2 inches of asphalt. The only time the paving contractor does the base around here is in DOT jobs where they spec black base.
Cool, I like learning how things are done in other areas. The standard spec around here for "light duty" paving is 6:2:1. 6" base, 2" binder and 1" wear course. "Heavy duty" paving is 8:2:1. The light and heavy duty mostly pertain to the small commercial jobs we do. Heavy duty paving for areas where the delivery and garbage trucks come in and out, light duty for everything else. Most residential streets that will dedicated to a municipality are 6:2:1.
Light duty for us is 6 and 2. Heavy duty is 8 and 1.5 and 1.5. Often the two layers of asphalt are both surface and no binder. Like you said, delivery and dumpster areas are heavy duty. DOT specs vary on the job.
No doubt, when it comes the DOT. I've got a small intersection improvement CO on the current auto store we are working on. I don't remember the exact spec at the moment but it's a 4 or 5 layer build up of asphalt. When it comes the DOT, overkill with over engineering is normally the course if someone else other than the DOT is paying the bill..
That is one thing about DOT, they are going to get everything they can out of a developer. Every time you build a subdivision, they make you widen the road in front of the project with turning lanes and so. We joke that they widen roads by making the developers do it around here.
LOL, same way here.
Funny how different paving is across the country, around here most residential roads are 8" base, 3" crushed surface, 3" HMA. private driveways/parking lots are usually 6" base, 2" crushed, 2" HMA
Wow, that is a lot different than around here. Inland, we have some real bad ground, you would think that they would do more than they do here.
Wow you guys have it nice with the paving. Around here it's 4" of 25mm then 1.5" 19mm then a 1.5" of wear ( usually 9 mm).
Interesting! Here on county subdivisions we are generally 9" pit run, 3" 3/4 minus crushed, and 3" asphalt that usually has to be seal coated prior to passing it off to the county. More similar to tylermckee's area. Occasionally we are required to put down geotextile fabric and/or geogrid beneath it all if it is a wet area.
Hey Buckfever, after hearing what you and Oxbow have to do, we do have it easy. The funny part is parking lots are heavier than a residential street. Oxbow, so you put down 15 inches of rock an paving. That is double what we do and hardly ever use geogrid.
Buckfever is that just a 7" buildup total? Oxbow that's one hell of a street buildup. At 15" that road is going to last. Do you have bad soils as the reason for the spec?
No, we have generally good soils, and in the valley bottoms there is river rock under everything. We do encounter pretty severe frost though, and our aggregate is pretty cheap relative to other areas of the country as we have plenty of it. Our base is also pit run, not crushed. Some of our gravel folks here produce a 2" minus, no naturals rejected and all fines included, that is much nicer to work with and you don't have the problem of hiding the 6' plus rock on the edge of a driveway and at the end of a fill. Without enough base we encounter problems in the spring when the frost comes out of the surface, but the water cannot sink into the ground yet. Usually only about a week or two long period, but I have seen garbage trucks sink through the asphalt and get stuck, pushing mud up through the base to the surface.
I would've thought you had good soils, had to ask. The pit run not being crushed affords the extra depth without the extra expense? Here we are looking at $10 a ton at the cheapest for 3/4 crush or DGB plus tax and freight.
I would say that the price and short haul distances are the reason, as you suggested. Our pit run can be as low as $3/ton, with 3/4" minus crushed around $7/ ton. Our conversion on this is usually about 1.4 tons per cubic yard. I should add that our cities and counties now require storm water retention ponds for new commercial developments. It is often viable to remove topsoil from the low corner of the property (usually no more than two feet), excavate the river rock (pit run) for building pads and road base, and then shape in the excavation for the retention pond.
We pay $15 to $18 a ton plus trucking so that job in the pics above, the crushed concrete is right at $30 a ton delivered.
That adds up quickly. A fellow doesn't want to mess up on the quantity calculations, or forget to add in shrinkage for compaction. Even at our rates I had a somewhat painful education on neat line quantities vs. actual years ago.
Oxbow I use 1.33 tons per CY for our limestone. Must be nice to have such good material to work with, here I usually have to deal with nasty clay soils that are hard as a brick when dry and similar to playdoh when wet. I knew your rock costs were high LC in your area, that's what I would've expected if not more.
If we use limestone base, the trucks can only get 3 loads a day from the quarry and most of the time the stuff is saturated so you are buying water.
Sometimes I don't mind paying for a little water if it means I can get by without a water truck, but it has to go down pretty quickly for that to work. We are usually not more than five miles to the closest gravel pit.
A little water is ok, we have had it so wet that it had water laying on top of the loads when it came in, not good. We are at least 80 miles one wy to the limestone quarry and 150 miles to the granite quarry. They do ship granite in by train but it is about 40 or 45 miles to there.
Wow, we have it nice having a rock quarry about 10 minutes away, about $10-11/ ton for most crushed products. Have to bring a breaker to 70% of our jobs though so I guess we don't get off that easy. And most of our soils are clay and extremely hard glacial till.
Some great shots. Looks like some gratifying work there. The rig is looking good and ready to dig. Nice dig. Lots of kickers on those forms but understandably of course in the sandy stuff. I guess the bright side of driving in all those stakes is they go in easy I assume. A Kubota rep pulled up on us this week trying to get the word out of their new location under construction down the road. He said Kubota is coming out with a 22k lb. or 23k lb. excavator soon. Sounds good.
Thanks Fastdirt. I am sure the dig was a lot easier than yours, it was good sandy fill other than a layer of asphalt near the bottom. I know it is a lot better trimming sand than clay. As for the kickers, yes there are plenty but fortunately for me, we just dig with the machine. The pool company has another sub that is a great guy do all the commercial pool forming, trimming and steel. That is interesting about the Kubota. I wonder if it is a beefed uped KX-080. I think it weighs 20600 pounds. I might call our dealer and ask him if he has any info
Back in the mudhole this week. We got all the logs hauled out and I just about finished stumping it. As you can see, not the best ground. Had the stop the lowboy in the median to raise the deck so we could get over the sidewalk which has a good size hump in it. Will finish clearing tomorrow and get to grinding.
How big is that site LC and what's going to be built?
A little over 2 acres. They are going to enlarge the storage buildings next door. They are doing three in town and I have to move to the next one this week.
Well LC, that is a nice feature on a hydraulic trailer. I can't do that with my mechanical neck, so I have to be ready for anything. I can unload over the rear though, but probably wouldn't with something like your grinder. That is a great looking combo. Does the grinder pretty much have you at max weight on the lowboy? I look forward to your weekly updates. You have some interesing projects.
Hey Jerry, Thanks, I am glad you enjoy the weekly updates. I just like to talk to other guys about how they do stuff in different areas and conditions. The drop deck trailer is just about a must for us. It would be nice to have a dove tail for certain thins but definitely not the grinder the trailer is a 50 ton and the grinder is around 87000. With the truck, trailer and grinder it grosses around 130k.
That is one nasty site there but good job getting all the tree limbs picked out of that mess. It looks well cleared now. Guess the fun begins dealing with that soil if it's getting built on. That grinder sure is heavy at 87000! Still love that Pete and the Eager Beaver too. I am surprised y'all didn't get a tri axle with those weights but then again I see it does end dump duty a lot too and that might be the reason? I know you might have posted this before but I am fascinated by your trucks and trucks in general really. Isn't that Pete a 2014 since y'all just got it? engine and trans? Also what year, engine, and trans on the KW dump? It is a W900 and not a W900L right?
LC What are your allowable axle weights? I am trying to figure how you get to 130K without a 20K front axle. My heavy haul I can gross 126,725#, and net 90K payload. axle weights 20K steer, 46,725 drives, 60K trailer with 2 rows of 8 on 5'9" centers
Hey Fastdirt, Yes that was nasty little job. Finished it up today. We just have to haul the mulch out now. We just did the clearing so we are not going to do the muck and fill. The grinder is heavy and the way the trailer flexes, you would think it is the whole 50 ton capacity. A tri-axle would be nice for the grinder but we go in so many tight areas especially with the dump trailer. Now for a quick rundown on the trucks and their specs. The Pete is a 2015 with an 18 speed and 4:10 rears and the motor is a Paccar. My brother loves it and says it is so much better than the Cummins in the truck that got wrecked. We have 2 tri-axles dump, one w900 and one w900L. The 900L is the truck I drive when we need it. We got it new in 2002, 20K fronts, 46 rears 4:30 rear ends, an 18 speed and a 500hp kitty Cat. The w900 is the same spec other than a 475 instead of the 500 and it has 4:10 rear ends. The little Pete has a 10 speed and a 300hp Paccar motor.
We move it on Saturdays to be legal we would need a tria-axle truck.
Even better on the KW's having big block pre emissions single turbo Cats. Being a W900L makes it that much better. All great stuff on those specs of the trucks. But the greatest thing could be that the KW's are 6NZ Cats. They were put in 2001's and 2002's. The most sought after Cat engine going. Most of the glider kits use them. As long as they are 475's they are good for up to 1000HP too. 475 is the 550 just a different ecm file 90% of the time. There is a guy in Charlotte who knows his stuff on those Cats. He flashed mine to 600HP.. not that you want that but he's there. ...and that low rear end ratio w an 18 speed. Somebody really knows how to spec them. Wouldn't change a thing. I agree the T880 is not a good looking truck. That's why I love the 379/389 and W900l. They are timeless and classic looking. Why change such a great thing. Glad they are still available amongst all the ant eater trucks.
First, I just read thru this entire thread. Very impressive and nice work especially the grading on that parking lot! What model is the little Pete? 337? Got any Pics ? I have a Pete 337 on order and should be built this week. How do you like it?
Thanks earthmover. Go to page 36 and there is a pic of the little Pete. It is a 337. It has been a good little truck. I am not a fan of the motor. It is a Paccar but it really is a Cummins. There is nothing wrong with it, it is just my preference for Cat motors. We have had no trouble out of it. Good luck on your truck and don't be afraid to post some pics.
I am also glad that KW and Pete have kept the classics. There are other trucks that look good but like you said, those classic lines. I think we spec our trucks heavier than anybody around here. We went to Maine to get the tractor because it had 46 rears. Hard to find anything more than a 40 down south.
Must have missed that page but that's a nice truck! Is it the PX7 or PX9? I ordered mine with the PX9 with 300 HP but I spec'ed it with the Allison Trans. This is my first truck with an automatic I figured I would try it. I will post pics when it comes in!
Personally I love the Allison auto's. Had a Mack Granite MP7 425 with an Allison - that truck was a beast.
We got the PX9 with 300hp. I must admit I have never driven an automatic so I can't give any good input on it. What rear end ratio did you get? CM, how did the automatic do in the dirt? Clay is different than sand but I am curious just the same.
Landclearer- its got a 5.25 rear ratio CM- I know in my area automatics have been getting very popular. I've talked to a lot of other guys and they love them.
With a 5:25 it should have plenty of power. Ours has a 4:88.
LC the auto did great as an on site dirt shuffler in our soils. The area here is a typical heavy traffic congested suburban/urban area. The ease of operation in stop and go traffic is the real difference, for me anyway. I could put an inexperience gear shifter but a knowledgeable operator in the truck and move dirt on site without any damage to the truck - guys that know how to run equipment but had no truck experience. For the record, I wouldn't buy another heavy truck without an Allison auto, that's my preference.
I much prefer the true torque converter automatics much better than any of the AMT's Automated manual Transmissions. That use a clutch have been nothing but a giant pain in the rear
Thanks CM for the info. The reason I asked was because I have seen a few trucks with autos do real good in the sand and I have seen some do incredibly bad. I guess it all depends on how the rest of the truck is set up.
As usual, I worked on more than one job this week. We move the feller buncher into the next storage building job and started cutting it, dug a pool the next day and finished the week with some fine grading for asphalt. Here is what it looked like at 9:30 then again at 4:30. We had a brand new 160 Deere for a demo on the pool dig.
Here are a couple pics of the fine grading for asphalt. They are supposed to pave tomorrow but I do not know with the weather. They say we are going to have rain every day this week.
Nice work as usual, how did you like the 160 Deere? It's nice not having a thumb when all you have to do is sling dirt.
The dealer where I bought all my stuff from just started carrying Deere this past week. He called me and was teasing with me with a brand new Deere 160 with the plastic on the seat but I already promised Cat I would rent the 312E. The Deere looks good. I see they still put them out with the chrome pipes which is kinda cool. Nice looking work pics, all of them. Funny how work pics are from the cab or of an empty machine from getting out to take the pic. Wish there was a camera guy to get action. Pool looks great. You are getting a lot of those lately. Looks like they are amenity pools. You got it made, thanks for posting!!!
The 160 was really nice. It was quick and smooth. It had good power but only had a 36 inch bucket but it did have the long stick. Yes there is nothing better than digging with no thumb and no coupler but we gotta have them.
You should take the Deere guy up on a demo, I do think you would like it, maybe to much Nothing wrong with a little chrome on a machine either. Sorry for the lack of action pics. I am in the same boat as you, if I am not on the machine it's not moving. I promise to try and get some action shots. Hopefully my brother will be on my job this week and he can grab a few pics.
Nice work as usual! I been wanting to try the Deere 160 but I'm not a fan of my local deere dealer. I've been sticking to Cat because of dealer support. I think we all have trouble getting action shots!
Nothing to exciting this week but did get a couple action shots as I was not the only one on the job for a day The Volvo digging stumps. It is raining again Mucking and filling a construction entrance. The 963 pulling out 3 oak stumps. One half the job all grubbed and cleaned up.
As always, thanks for posting the photos...I enjoy your updates. We've had on and off rain for months now and the coverage is so random that it's made scheduling a nightmare. I worked until 9:30 the other night to complete a gravel access driveway and parking area trying to beat the incoming "severe" storm. No rain until the next afternoon.
Thanks JNB, glad you like the updates. Same thing with us trying to work things around the rain and the forecast. Not sure which is harder. Supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow but who knows. We are lucky as we have a few jobs that rain does not hurt but it would be nice to finish some of the other jobs
LC do you have any problems running the 963 in those soil conditions? It looks nasty in the const entrance pic but then nice and fluffy after you grubbed it with the loader.
Hey CM, yes the front of the job as well as one side is nasty. I cold run the 963 in the front area for a little while but not long. The back corner is nice yellow sand, the rest has a thick wet layer of black topsoil. More than likely I will have to do the rest with the excavator.
Nothing like drastic changing soil conditions on a small site. At least I'm not the only one dealing with it. Current project we're working on one side of the parking lot was undercut 4' and then backfilled with surge stone, #2's, 3 layers of geo-grid and 1' of DGB - and it was still moving slightly in one area when the compactor went over it. Other side of parking lot stable, even after all the rain we've had and backing loaded tri-axles of stone over it.:beatsme
It is hard to believe how things can change in a few feet on a site. They would never go for a 4 foot backfill with rock around here. Sounds like you have a good soil guy or at least one that wants to make sure he is covering himself.
Both - we have a good geotech engineer of record and an owner that doesn't want any problems down the road. The owner understands time is money and once their store opens, they want it to produce revenue without interruptions. That and rock is much cheaper here than your area. Actually there wasn't any way around it. It was the same type grey/green clay that has no bottom that we encountered on the auto parts store job we are finishing up. I liken the consistency to a 1/2 baked cake.
You are lucky and have a good owner that wants it done right. Most of the time the people we deal with want it done cheap and done now. The clay you describe is what we call gumbo. It takes forever to dry out than an eye dropper of water turns it back to paste again.
Got to finish up the clearing job this week. Only thing left is to haul the mulch out and a couple loads of logs. This site was 3 acres and heavy woods. The tress went from 4 inches to about 20. Once done, we will have loaded out 5 loads of pine. It took 12 hours to grind so I was doing an acres every 4 hours. I would have done it quicker if I had someone on the trackloader raking up and pushing the pile to me.
Great work. Did you say ya'll had a mulch yard for your grindings? If so what's the end product for it?
CM, we make landscape mulch out of it.
Here is a pool I dug the first part of the week. It was not really ready as you can see. I had to go under a bridge inside the building the get in there. They dug about 2 feet of dirt out so i would have clearance.
After the pool, went down to the road job to help finish it up and get it ready for grassing. After that we started conduit on the next section. Take note of the intersection of ditches to get the turn outs right.
I was doing some grinding yesterday and my brother came in with a load of mulch and figured I would get a few pics. Sorry about the sun. Not much I could do about that.
Good shots, seems like the timing on the pool dig could have been a little better thought out, by the GC.
Looks good buddy. Love that dump trailer, I would like to have one in the future. Is the conduit for power and telecom? There can be good money in running conduit.
Thanks digger. Yes the GC does not run a clean or organized site but I will say they were good to work with.
Hey CM, we love that trailer to. I would have never thought it would get used as much as it does. When he brings a load with it, you know it. The conduits are power( red ones) and telephone. It is lot of work keeping everything going where it should but like you said the money is pretty good.
Love the pool pics. That 315 is looking good too. Looks like some nasty conditions. You don't even want to let the measuring tape hit the ground in that mess. I see all the water in the bottom too, gotta love that. Nice of you to set the rebar in there for those hard working guys. Like the crazy trenching shots too. Great pics of the Peterbilt and trailer too. Is that at the company yard? Was he just getting it off another Job? Or why did he dump the mulch on you. I do see some big piles back there. Just curious why.
Lots of cool shots LC, pretty intense having to walk a 315 through the house to get to the pool area! Is the red power conduit roll pipe? We use stick pipe for everything except fiber, that comes with the wire inside the roll pipe on a big reel usually.
Thanks Fastdirt. It was a wet one for sure. We used 66 tons of rock in the bottom and they had a pump in the rock but the slits they had were to small and got clogged up. Once they cleaned it, everything was ok. They had 4 bundles of rebar and I figured it would be lot easier for me to move it than for them to do it. We were hauling in mulch from another job to stockpile. We let it set for a while before we regrind it
It was hard to get a good picture but there was a bridge inside the tunnel that I had to go under. I only had about 4 inches of clearance on the hoses on top of the boom. Yes the red pipe is roll pipe. 2000 feet on a reel. They make us use that because we are in the ground water and stick pipe leaks. Life would be. A lot easier if it were stick pipe
Referring to the pool job, are those apartments or condos? Either way the project looks like it's going to be nice. Having sand to use to backfill curbs must be nice, makes a smooth slick finish. Good job.
Hey CM, yes they are going to be apartments and they are going to be real nice. One of the nicest things in the area and everyone who lives there fought it. The sand does finish out nice but if you get heavy rain it washes pretty bad.
Nothing to exciting going on this week. Early part of the week we had to fine grade a road for paving. We did not subgrade or rock it but had to do the fine grade. Turned out OK. I am not a big fan of grading after someone else spreads the rock and puts the bluetops in. The next group of pics is loading and regrinding some mulch.
Regrinding mulch with the 928 and the Peterson.
Nice LC. Why didn't the ones that put the rock down and blue top it not do the final grading? About the mulch operation. When you re-grind it is it ready for market? Do you color it? I would like to get into the mulch business one day. We're in the same temperate region with an abundance of vegetative growth, there's always trees and brush to get rid of.
Thanks CM. It is a little bit of a long story but to give you the short version, the paving contractor got held on another job so the company we did the work for thought it would be a good idea to send them to this job before their own crew could grade 2500 feet of bike path and 1100 feet of road. While the paving crew was starting the other crew was grading path ahead of them while I was grading the road. Yes after we regrind, it is ready to be sold. I was grinding on Saturday morning and my brother hauled 2 loads out that afternoon. We don't color mulch but would like to some time in the future.
Thanks for the explanation on the fine grading. I understand where you're coming from, I like to finish my scope of work and turn it over to the next contractor. If it's not right, I'll fix it. I don't like the "hybrid" scopes of work either. Do ya'll sell the mulch retail, wholesale or a combination?
We have a few customers that buy from us but most of our stuff goes to for lack of better words a distributor.
Good stuff there LC. Can you load that trailer to the max with mulch or will go over weight. There is an outfit around here that moves mass amounts of mulch around Atlanta. They have a little bigger trailers with mesh swing doors. They take in tree trash from all the construction and recycle it all three different locations. Seems to be a very profitable business from the looks of it. Clean looking work pics as always. Thanks again.
Sorry for not replying sooner. With the single ground mulch we are legal and with the double ground we go over a little. That is a heavy trailer but it is an all around trailer from mulch to demo debris and scrap. There are a few recycle yards around here but they are not pretty. I would like to open one to the public one day but you have to have the right location to make it work.
Well we got a new toy this week. Sold the 315 and got a 160 Volvo. The offer for the 315 was so good we could not refuse it. It should be about 2 or 3 weeks before our bucket, thumb and cab guards come in for the 160. The first job was a pool about 2.5 hours away from home. Moved about 600 yards of dirt on it. the pool was an ellipse and not a straight line to be seen.
The other fun for the week was spreading mulch over about 1.5 acres. We moved back to this job. We have actually had over a week with no rain and the site has dried out. They are talking about a good chance of rain for several days this week though. The area in the pics has 14 inches of base and 3 inches of asphalt. I put the base in in two lifts. That is the first lift in the pics.
Cool! Nothing like getting a new machine. How does it compare to the 315? Does the new Vovlo require DEF and if so, how are ya'll handling it on the job site? So far all I have that requires DEF is my truck so it's easy. Not looking forward to the day of needed to fill tractors with it.
Hey CM, the 160 is nice. Super smooth and fast. The cab is also real nice and comfortable. It does not use DEF but we have other stuff that does and it is a pain. We buy it by the 2.5 gallon jug. We have enough stuff that uses it that the jugs are a pain but not enough to buy it in bulk. We might start buying it in drums soon.
Nice that the 160 doesn't use DEF. Are all the new Volvo hoes the same? I don't know much about them as we don't have a Volvo presence here.
Nice looking little addition LC. I really like Volvo machines. Too bad the dealer support out here is so bad. I am done with them due to the dealer. Nice work, as usual.
Unless you are getting a great deal on jugs i'd get pump and start using drums. Most jugs i've seen run ~$5 a gallon. The cost difference between jugs and drum will pay for a nice hand pump the first drum or a 12v all stainless pump in under 300 gallons. We have a hand pump for drums in the service truck, a 100 gallon bulk tank in the fuel trailer and 110v pump for totes at the shop. At least you all are just getting in to it, each of our combines holds 40 gallons and that might last 60 hours so drums don't make much of dent.
The 160 is still a D model so it is a tier 4 interim. The bigger machines are tier 4 and do use DEF. The E series also have big back ends but not as big as the Cats.
I think we are paying $3.60 per gallon in the jugs. We only have 3 machines that use it but the Peterbilt 389 uses it and uses a fair amount, so that is why we were thinking of ordering it by the drum.
Some of the truck stops and cardlock stations have it at the pump island now. I know that doesn't help much for equipment, but it sure is handy for pickup s and big rigs.
DEF saving the planet one plastic lined cardboard box at a time.
That would be a huge help for the trucks but the place we get fuel at does not even sell it in the jugs. You would think they would being the only truck stop in the area.
They complain about water bottles and diapers filling the landfills but I guess plastic DEF jugs are ok.
Damn good point. The new travel plazas here (fancy new name for truck stop ) have DEF at the rear pumps but not at the auto diesel pumps out front.
Places I work at are not letting me throw away the empty DEF jugs in the trash anymore. They are worried about possible future problems because of them. Now they are one more thing to worry about, both buying and using, but now also the disposal.
That's just silly. All there is to DEF is de-ionized water and urea. There was a guy that was convinced it would be cheaper to fertilize with DEF instead of 32% liquid fert until several people, including me, pointed out it was 33% urea and not Nitrogen.
The place we fuel up the trucks is just a souped up gas station with 3 sets of truck pimps. They do a great business but they do not even sell DEF in jugs. I hate to say it but our jugs go in the dumpster. How much petroleum does it take to make the jugs as well as electricity not to mention the fuel it takes for the trucks to ship the stuff. I almost forgot the plastic tanks that go on the trucks.
once again just follow the money. it's most likely somebody's brother or inlaw making the def and the jugs . you also forgot all the wrecker bills for towing the broken down def trucks back to the shops.
If that's all there is to it, why does it corrode anything it touches except plastic? I understand that it even ruins stainless steel after only a short time.
it eats cheeper grades of stainless for sure 316 is fairly reliable in a DEF application
Yeah I did forget the wrecker bills as well as the shop bills
That's urea. We have all the same problems with liquid fert. It will eat some kinds of plastic too. Everything needs to be either Polyethylene or good stainless.
LC, how many DEF required engines are ya'll running?
CM, we have 3 now. Hopefully that is it for a while.
Just one for me, my pickup. I don't want to deal with it but I know eventually I'll have too. Certified rebuild is looking like an attractive option in the future.
I here you. It is ridiculous. Let me know if Cat will do a certified rebuild on a D5G
Cat just did a certified rebuild here on a 345C that looks amazing. The owner paid a couple 100K for the rebuild. It was pretty impressive and looked absolutely brand new from the seat to the tracks and everything in between. Go ahead and drop the D5G off at Cat They were very proud of their work on the certified rebuild I saw and rightfully so. LC I like the new machine even if it you traded a Cat for it..... and the pool dig looks good too of course. I like seeing other pool digs.
Thanks Fastdirt. One of the reasons I really enjoy your post is because I dig pools also. I don't dig as many and for the most part nowhere near as complex as yours but I know what goes into them so that makes me appreciate the work that goes into yours. Sorry about trading the Cat for a Volvo but it is really nice. I will say this, if Cat was still, building the C series we would have bought a Cat. It is just my opinion but I think the C's were the best excavators Cat built. I am not sure but I think a certified rebuild is about 2/3 the cost of new. Don't quote me on that as that is just something I heard. There are people on here that could say for sure.
Got our parking lot job subgraded and rocked this week. We are waiting on the paver to let us know when he is coming in so we can fine grade right before they pave. We also got one outfall box in this week. We have another one to do on the same job and should get that one in this coming week.
We are now removing the sandbags that we put in a few months ago. The permit says the bags have to be removed before any sand is placed in the area. We have to work around the tides so that is not an all day job. We are only taking the bags out and the guys we are working for said they will get rid of the bags. I went to there shop yesterday and this is what I saw
The probably could have fit them all in one can if they'd folded them properly.
Looks like my kid's laundry basket. :laugh
Call to dumpster company - "Got the can loaded, it might be a little over loaded but it's not a problem." LC what's the purpose of putting the sandbags in first and then emptying them at the same spot?
You are right, I think there were seven pallets about 3 feet high. Looks like they swelled
That made me laugh!
I am willing to bet the driver is going to be real happy when he pulls up. To answer your question about the bags, you have to take the bags out before they move the sand in the same spot off the beach. You are not allowed to bury the bags but the sand inside them is ok.
Looks like they are going to get practice at unloading dumpsters and reloading them.
They might get it right on the second go round. I find it hard to believe they would do that but they did.
What I was wondering about was what the reason was for the bags in the first place. If they were there to stop erosion to the bank then dumping the sand back out wouldn't stop it in the future.
They are moving 100k yards of sand and filling in a channel. The channel was cause of the problem. When the tide would go out, the current would cut along the area that was once dunes and it kept eroding. Once the channel is filled there will not be that current running the length of the beach and the dunes will be rebuilt partially with the 100k yards. The engineers say the the dunes will them rebuild themselves like they were before the channel shifted. I really need to get some pics to help explain it better.
Finished fine grading a parking lot and got it paved yesterday. Hope the asphalt turned out good. Had to do some patches in a parking lot for one of our customers. I think I figured the problem out. They seem to have been very skimpy on the asphalt, about 3/4 of an inch and the limestone base was about 3 inches.
This is not on our job but thought it was worth showing. It appears that a pile driver does not climb like an excavator It is hard to see but they also broke out the windshield with the hoses.
Wow, that's thin. I wonder what they charged them for.. If I were the owners, after the patches are done I'd put a 1" wear course overlay on the entire parking lot.
CM, the parking lot is old and in poor shape altogether. Every year they have us give them a budget to regrade and re pave but they never do it.
LC what's the story with the pile driver? They should've made an access road for it.:beatsme
should have backed it out:idea
I am not sure what they were thinking. Clintm is right, they would have been much better backing it out but the best thing would have been to dig a nice shallow ramp. It is going to be interesting to see how they get it out.
Looks like most of the weight of the pile driver is behind it, that probably didn't help much.
I agree. The machine is heavy and like you said, going up the hill with the boom over the back made it worse. They did get it out today, they used a 75 ton rotating wrecker. I bet that was a nice bill.
Yair . . . Isn't it amazing how things are done differently in different places. It really seems odd they would empty those sand bags . . .I wonder why was the sand put into bags in the first place? Unless some other factors have changed the sand is just going to wash away. Geotextile bag structures filled on site and installed to grade are becoming common in coastal areas as rock becomes scarce and more expensive. Old mother nature always wins though. . .eventually. (big grin) Cheers.
I agree, Mother Nature always does win. Very interesting that they use sandbags and leave them in place. We are emptying the sandbags because they have filled the channel that caused the problem and are re-nourishing the areas where the sandbags were..
We installed the second and last of the outfall boxes on Monday. This one went much better than the last one did for some reason. The guy we did it for wanted it to look natural when we were done so we put in some grasses and plants as well as some debris to make it look undisturbed. This was the worst pool I have dug. The top layer of uncompacted sand kept caving in so the whole pool needed to be panel formed. The owner is going to have to cough up about 5K for extra shotcrete according to the guy we dig for.
After the pool and outfall box, we subgraded about 2500 feet of road and got it ready for rock. It is supposed to take about 1800 tons of rock. Not sure how many trucks we are getting. It would be nice to get it in one day.
We got the rock down on the road this week. The stuff came in with water running out of the beds so it was to wet to fine grade. We rarely live load mulch so I figured I would put a couple pics up of it.
Just about to finish up this job once and for all. Should finish all the little tidbits tomorrow as well as getting it hydroseeded. You can see we are grading the service area to put down fabric and 789 granite.
That was my story for the week. All of the pits here were flooded for the better part of two months. I finished out an arena early in the week and the sand was so wet I had to toss it out there and wait for it to dry before I could do anything with it. I also set up a metal building pad and the select fill was the same. PITB, but you do what you have to do, eh? Looks good!
It's good to know we all get to have fun with wet material. I like crushed concrete but it is getting harder to get so we used limestone. The trucks would leave ruts and the grader would make it pump. No fun to have a saturated building pad, you have two options, let it sit or get the disc out and start turning it over
does your a/c keep up in this heat on your kubota's I have a kubota 4630 tractor that the a/c can barely keep up @ 80 degrees
The skid steer does ok but the KX080 does real good. It gets cold in the cab even with the windshield open. The problem with tractors is so much glass. The temp was 95 plus yesterday and the KX did good on keeping things cool.
Does your KX080 have AC vents on the left side of the cab? I ran a new Cat 308E2 for a week and there was no vents for the AC on the left side of the cab, so running it with that side to the sun, one side of me was hot and the other half was freezing cold lol
That is a good question. It has vents on the right as well as behind but I am going to be on it tomorrow and will find out for sure and let you know. I don't think it has anything on the door side.
I have been kicking around the idea of KX 80 good to see one and hear that they have a pretty good AC if it can keep up in that heat. Just to many jobs that the backhoe I have now, isn't handy for. My excavator is a Case CX 130 which is a little to big for a lot of the jobs and the space that I have to work. Keep the pictures coming as they sure are enjoyable to see other's jobsites.
I think if you ran one you would be impressed. So much more efficient than a backhoe and it can get into some tight places. The swing boom makes it nice also. We have a 24, 36inch as well as a tilt bucket coupler and thumb. We got the extra counterweight as well. Glad you like the pics!
Chiming in on the A/C. My kx057 keeps up but I tinted the glass and wow what a world of difference in comfort also I turn down the A/C a little now. Good looking work as always.
I don't know why but we have never tinted our windows. You have made me think about though
I checked today and there are no vents on the door side of the cab but still it does a good job of keeping cool.
I gotcha, I should have gotten a picture of behind the seat of the Cat, there was plenty of room back there I thought. It was raining and cooler one of the days, that side of the cab wouldn't stay defrosted either, its a small issue I know, but I would have figured of all companies Cat would have had that figured out.
Not sure why they can't put some vents on that side of the cab. It sure would help with the sun coming in the windows as well as the door windows fogging up. Our Volvo has a sunshade you can pull down over the back window and it makes a lot of difference.
We are now officially 100 percent done on the firehouse job. We fought rain for months on that job and now we have not had a drop of rain in weeks on that site. We also cleared and filled 2 lots this week. Sorry no pics of the clearing. Moving the dozer from one lot to the next.
Here is the second lot that has been cleared and stripped. Lot with fill. Start of a new job. it is going to be a pool house and parking lot. Should have more pics of that next week.
Looks good! I always look forward to your update every week. We do the same type of work but up in the great white north. Always interesting to see how it is done else where
Thanks Hitachi. I am sure things are a lot different by you than it is here but the goal is the same. After this week I might trade your weather for ours, we have been in the high 90s all week.
Good looking work. I'm living vicariously through posts by you and CM. Tropical Storm Bill finally got out of here...and it's raining again today. It's like being a dragon slayer and there's no more dragons.
I feel for you. We had rain for months but fortunately we had some jobs that you could work if it rained. You guys have been getting nailed lately. I looked at the radar and see some pretty rough stuff there.
LC, what's the material you're using as fill - crushed concrete? It's hard to tell exactly what it is in the pics.
CM, the const. entrance is crushed concrete and the fill is our version of dirt. It is white sand dug out of a pond near the coast so back in the day(not sure how many thousands of years ago) it was beach sand. You see some shells so it was definitely beach front property some time.
I thought the construction entrance looked to be a different material than the fill. How much does a tri-axle load of crushed concrete go for? We have chert pits in Central Alabama, good stuff to build on it's a rock clay mixture, that will have sea shells in the rock. I've found all sorts of cool fossils in the coal mines. I have a neat trilobite fossil I found on time.
Crushed concrete goes for about $30 a ton delivered. Does the chert get muddy or slippery when it rains? I know a guy that found whale vertebrae well inland digging a dirt pit and have found a sharks tooth in a load of limestone base.
Wow, the crushed concrete is expensive comparing it to what I can get a load of #57's locally but like all things it matters where you're located. I can get a 25 ton load of #57's delivered on the cheap side at $350 a load to the high side of $500 depending on the location. Some chert is great and some is so-so. 10 years ago had a project where we flat-topped a mountain ridge that was solid chert, 30' cuts in the deepest area. This was great material, even ran into seams of pure white sand in between the rock layers. You could dump it out of the truck, spread it with the 953 and achieve 98% compaction without putting a roller on it. The PCF was in the 128 range. Most chert has enough rock in it that it's not slippery or muddy when it's wet. In the winter it's about the only option for engineered fill other than crushed limestone which is obviously way more expensive. We did the site work on a Sonic in Greenville, AL adjacent to I-65 years ago. Ran into some very black dirt that had to be undercut. We run into deep topsoil all the time but this was different, it had a sheen to it. The geotech said it would probably be the oldest dirt we'll ever move as it was the remnants of an ancient sea. The plumbers found a large sharks tooth when they were putting in the sewer line. Greenville is about 150 miles away from the gulf.
Landclearer is sanders bros still in the concrete recycling I've one of their crushers for sale lately
Half the price of our rock is trucking. To pick up crushed concrete is between $16 and $18. Vulcan has a yard we go to to get granite and 57 stone is about $26 a ton at the yard. That is interesting about the chert. I had no idea about it. If you go to the upstate you have clay or rock and the same thing in KY where I grew up. Limestone in KY is like granite and our limestone is very soft here. That is neat about the Sonic job. You never know what you are going to run into and looks like you found a good one. I wonder how long ago it was a a sea being 150 miles from the coast. One interesting thing we run into is sand shell. It is very coarse gray sand that is about 40 percent or more shells. There is usually a layer of gumbo either above or below and if you mix a little of the gumbo into it, it packs like concrete when dry. When you are digging it, it comes out like wet cement.
Yes they are. Can't hardly buy the stuff from them because they keep it for their own jobs. I think they might be selling or have sold one recently because I think they just got a new one. They are paving a job we graded tomorrow and will ask if I see the paving supervisor.
I'm down in your neck of the woods for the week staying with my in laws. Lots of work going in down here it blows my mind. Are you working around the dunes west area? I saw some big land clearing projects going on in this area. It's good for you guys. My father in law has been complaining about the price of real estate going up so high he can't buy anything.
So how do you like the temp? Yes there is a ton of work in Charleston now. I think every one is busy and just about every company in town is looking for operators, drivers , labor, and supervisors. We did a bunch of work in Dunes West several years ago but we have been staying on the south side of town lately. Yeah the price of houses, commercial and farm land is crazy around here. Ever since Boeing came here they have been nonstop expanding and now Volvo and Mercedes are planning on building factories here so hopefully there are going to be several more years like this.
Good to hear that you are that busy, and with hopefully more companies building close by lots of work coming up.
The temps are steamy to say the least! It's a great town we went to shems creek last night and had a few beers with my brother in law and his fiance. Hiring anyone at your company??
Sorry 90plow I already called dibs on their next open position.:tong
Thanks Dirty. I do think things will keep on rolling around here for a while. The people that work in the plants need somewhere to live and shop etc. so hopefully it will keep going.
It took us about 10 years to hire our last guy but I will let you know if Sawdus passes
Just for CM, some trackloader action pics. This is on the pool house job. The 320 handling an 80 foot log. A couple pics of the paving contractor on the road we just graded.
Got my baby delivered this week. Had some guards built on the fuel tank side of the machine as well as catwalks put on.
We cleared a couple lots this week. The first pics are where the first lot is ready for fill and the last 2 are starting a new lot.
What is 57stone? Is there an actual market for recycled crushed and sized concrete? We crush all of our old concrete and can only seem to use it as process seeing everyone only wants natural aggregate up here....and good to hear it's so busy down there work still sucks in ct (yes I know it's ct) and we talk about trying to relocate out of this crap state every morning
Hey 450, 57 stone is really any aggregate that is 1 to 1.5 inches and is free from fines. We get granite 57s but have used limestone in the past. There is a crushed concrete shortage in Charleston. It is getting harder to get as everyone wants it. SCDOT has approved it for state work as well. Sorry to hear about the work shortage by you. Northern relocates an retirees are big down here.
What LC said. In may area it varies from 1/2 to 1.5 inches with no fines, it's a washed stone. All the 57's I use is limestone as we have an abundance of limestone in my area. The thing that makes that size stone so popular is it's ability to freely drain water and when dumped in a trench you achieve 95-98% density without compaction. It's relatively cheap in my area - $13 to $20 a ton delivered. Here is a pic of #57's being used for backfill around a 15" HDPE pipe for example.
Congrats on the 160 LC! That's a sweet looking machine, I really like the guards. Did the dealer fab those or did you have to get a specialty shop to do it? Thanks!:drinkup Nothing beats a track loader for versatility. I'd like to have a 963D in the fleet..
Thanks CM. The Volvo dealer has a guy that does the catwalks for them and we asked if he could do the front guard for us. The 963 is a great machine. I would like to see how the new ones are. I wouldn't mind using the bucket on mine for something
Moved the grinder into the pool house job this week and got everything ground up.
Started clearing a short piece of road late this week. There is a Eagle nest onsite which is in a protected zone.
Congrats on the volvo, I just bought an '05 140blc. As nice as mine is being 10 years old, I bet your C is a dream!
Hi Nedly, good luck on the 140. If it is like ours, I think you will love it. Solid machines and good on fuel. All we need now are some pics of yours
Good stuff LC!!! Good to see some Caterpillars in the shot. Don't trade them all in for the imports . That's a big ole stump about to get ground up. WOW! The eagle nest is super cool... You need a drone to get up there. Nedly congrats on your new digger. You got a whole new rig now.
Hey FD, good to heard from you again. Don't worry, we can't get rid of all the Cats, gotta keep my 963! For being a horizontal machine, it will flat grind a stump. I think the Eagle nest is cool also. Nothing in there now,I guess the babies have left but the job needs to be done early fall before they move back in.
Here is a demo job I was on this week. The house was 4 stories plus the roof( a drive under plus 3 full floors). I had to weaken everything around the center section so the 4th floor and roof would roll into the opening that had already been demolished. The house had a good bit of steel in it as well.
The roof wound up being aluminum:thumbsup Not a lot of room.
looks like a pretty new and nice house...
It was built in 1987 with a few renovations along the way.
Man I am seeing a very technical and strategic demo there. At least up to the point of dropping the top level. The trees too cramping you up. After you demo'd under the top level did you go to the back of the house and push it in. That's the only I can see that you did that. Good stuff. That was a cool house and it seems like it might be on the water.... that would also explain knocking down a great house. Probably be a 2 million dollar home if that's the plan.
I bet the pucker factor was a little high on this one. Good job LC. I too am interested in the play by play to get the widow's walk down.
FD, CM, sorry for the late reply in this. More often than not a job does not go exactly as planned but this one did and I am very glad. I wish I had a picture of the 320 on the trash pile and just being able to reach the very bottom of the 4th floor. I didn't have much room because of the trees and my plan was to go into the center, work my way to the center and weaken everything under the 4th floor then pull it down from the front. No way to get around the back because of the trees. I finally got it to a point where it was weak enough and was going to give it the little pull and the GC asked me to stop so the owner could watch so I backed up and and was waiting the whole time you could hear stuff creaking and cracking so I told him you better start videoing it because it was not going to last. About a minute later the fourth floor and roof rolled down just where I wanted it. Could not have gone any better and I did not even have to give it a nudge. The house is on the ocean and the house and lot was 5 million. It was built in 87 and was in good condition with no rot. Like they say, money makes the world go round. To answer your question there was some pucker on this one
Cool man, love it when a plan comes together even if it's not the original plan - never let 'em know. If you would've pulled the top down as planned, were you high enough on the debris pile to manage it? Just thinking about it coming down on the boom of the hoe. Pics only show so much, so it's hard to tell perspective. BTW - Love the Pete hooked to that demo trailer, that's how to move demo debris.:thumbsup
The plan did come together, even better than thought. The "original plan" was to pull it enough for it to collapse. I had my ramp and a clear shot behind me so when it started to go, I could back out of the way while controlling the top as it came down. If that did not work my back up plan was to take one of the steel beams and put it through one of the windows and pull it down that way. The beam would have given me another 20 feet anyway. I had quite the audience probably about 30 beach goers so I am glad it went good. Didn't want to look like an idiot with a house on top of the hoe
LOL. Well you know if it did go bad with 30 beachgoers around it'd be on youtube before the dust settled. I know exactly what you are talking about with your feet on the pedals ready to back away at split second. Done a few like that fully extended, track up, attack, and backup in one move knowing it's coming down. Now, the fact that it fell on it's own....scary. Excellent job. Love the Pete backed in with that big trailer. Can't believe I was off by 3 million on the house. Geez you know how many Peterbilts we could by with $5million.
I'm confused you have two excavators? I thought you got rid of one? That looks like fun!
I need to check and look and see if I was on youtube anyway. We did one down the street a while back it there was some video on there from that one.. Like you said, feet on the pedals, tracks in high range and ready to back up in a second. When we bought that trailer I would have never thought we would use it as much as we do. It will tote a load for sure. i almost get tired of loading it since it holds so much I talked to the GC and he said the owner basically paid the price for the lot whether it had a house on it or not so in reality, they paid 5 million for the lot. To answer you question about how many Petes that would buy, I will say 25 Petes and 25 Alfab demo trailers
Hey Desertwheeler, we sold the 315 and replaced it with a 160 Volvo, We have the 300 Volvo and Cat 320 so we have 3.
Nothing much going on that is exciting this week. Worked on the demo job and graded some shoulders in between. We can only get 3 loads a day to the dump so it takes a while. We took 2020 pounds of aluminum of this job and 8.5 tons of steel. Not to bad. A couple pics of progress and digging out the piles. Should finish up taking out the garage slab and driveway in a day.
how deep are the pile's normally and how hard are they to get out
Hey Clint, it depends on the job and the engineer. I am not sure how deep these were in the ground, the GC said to dig down about 5 feet and snap them off. We did a job a few years back that were in the ground around 15 feet, dug around them maybe 8 feet and used a 325 with a cable to pull on them and a 315 to wiggle them. They still came out hard. We are on another job they just drove piles on and they were 55 footers with 45 in the ground. Around here 45 in the ground is pretty standard though.
Did a bunch of little things this week. Nothing exciting for sure. Finished the demo up by taking up the asphalt driveway that had brick edging around it. We installed 2 little wing walls by an existing outfall structure. We are going to add some rip rap, just waiting on a day to get a loader freed up.
A couple pics of a job that should not have happened. They drove piles on this job and before they started driving, we asked if they need a pad to a certain elevation which they said no 3 times. Once the piles are done, big surprise, they need a pad to a certain grade so we had to put the dirt in around the piles. Something that would have took a couple hours took a day and three quarters. Had to fill a lot we cleared and here are some pics of the loader at the dirt pile and the finished product.
That's an interesting outfall structure, how does it operate? That sucks on the pad work, had to be aggravating. It seems GC's now a days don't understand a thing about site work and project management is getting worse.
The outfall is called a rice trunk. They are copies of what they used years ago to control the water level in the rice fields. It is basically a wooden box culvert with a riser on the inside of pond that you can take boards in and out of. The side in the pic is a flap gate to let water out or you can use a cable to lift it and let water in. On the pad I don't blame the GC 100 percent. The job is being rushed with unfinished plans and very little answers but they are good people to work for so that makes it more tolerable. You are right though, most supers do not understand site work or care what you need to do it. I will not even mention project managers
Man that is all great stuff thanks for posting I really love this thread. Now for a serious question. A friend of ours moved out to Isle of Palms South Carolina. They want a custom shotcrete pool very badly They say the pool builders are telling them to go with fiberglass or Vinyl because they live at the water. What are your thoughts? Aound here if we dig on a lake or through the water table and I'll install a pump in the floor or if its bad a well point. The pool builder will more than likely put hydraulic valves in the floor of the pool and there you go. So what can I tell them they're asking me?
Idk down here in miami just about everything is shotcrete whether is by the water or not
Thanks FD. As for the pool, I think they must not be talking to the right pool builders. The company we work for does shotcrete or gunite all, the time. We dug one about 10 feet deep right on the beach that I would say was about 5 feet below the water table. That one was on Sullivan's Island which is the southern part of Isle of Palms. I will PM you the company to try and call. They are the biggest in the area by far. I would say they do at least 200 pools a year.
Started on a nice little clearing job this week. Lots of big wood on it. The ground is fair, some good some not so good. As long as we do not get tons of rain it will be OK. I think there is just about every type of tree that can be on that site. I am looking forward to getting the rest of the big trees down but need to clean up some areas to fall them.
Here are a couple pics from Sat. I was clearing a residential lot. Had a huge pine on it, took up most of the lot when I knocked it over. Went to lunch and when I got back the bottom fell out. Sat in the truck for a while til it let up some.
Great fotos, the equipment sure looks in good shape considering all the clearing and demo. Up here at 7500', we really have to keep our screens and radiators clean to keep the iron running. Other wise everything just heats up. CD
Thanks CD. We try to take good care of the stuff. A little easier on some jobs than others for sure. We have to keep the radiators blown out when we do demo and work around the grinder. The sawdust covers the screens on the excavator cooling packs in no time if you are in the wrong spot on a windy day.
Some good shots of some glory work. I call it glory work because of many reasons. Clearing is gratifying, A/C, scenery, some hauling, etc. etc. Good stuff. Found out why the one pool builder was talking them out of shotcrete. Just took a look at their website and that's all they do so they we're just trying to get the job.
Thanks FD. Yeah I like clearing pretty much better than anything else. You feel like you did something at the end of the day. Makes sense that a pool company that does not do shotcrete would not try to sell one. To be honest, there are not many fiberglass polls around here.
Looking good love that Pete!
I got rained out on my clearing job so I did not get any progress pics this week. I did take a few yesterday. I finished a little rip rap job and moved out the KX-080 and grabbed a pic on the lowboy. This is a pipe job my brother is on. The place is so wet from the rain and groundwater, the cut is 3 foot and you can see how much water there is. We have to tie into an existing box and install 6 catch basins and a manhole plus around 700 feet of pipe.
Great photos as always. Gotta love that pic of the 080 on the lowboy!
Thanks JNB. I think that is the first time it has ever been on the lowboy.
LC please explain that dewatering system. I understand the concept but how does it install and work?
CM, it is pretty simple really. Those points are 12 and 14 feet long. We use our little water wagon and it's pump to jet points in. Once you get the point down in the ground, let the water run for a little bit, shut it off then dump either very corse sand, 789s or pea gravel down the hole. It acts as a filter to keep the dirt out of the WellPoint. You hook all your points to the header pipe then hook that to a vacuum pump and about 12 hours later you have dry ground. Once you are done, you pull the points with an excavator and a chain.
Thanks for the explanation LC, it's something I've never been around before. In some places around here we'd need a rock drill to go 12' deep. Are the well points PVC or do you use some other type of pipe? My father built a house down on the Gulf and he told me they sank the 8x8 pilings with a water jet. Stood the piling up with a Lull, stuck the water jet in the sand and the piling worked it's way down. Never seen it done but it's something I'd like to see.
CM, the points are steel pipe with about a 18 inch long area of fine mesh with a point on the end. Yes you can sink piles with water. We do piles and t&g sheathing as well on some of the little bulkheads we build. A lot of dock builders will use a water jet for dock piles. Anything load bearing needs to driven with a driver though. I can imagine there would very little need for a WellPoint in you soil
Here are a few pics of the clearing job this week. Went back to work there on Weds. There are some huge trees on the site and not a lot of room tot take them down with all the tree protection everywhere.
Now a couple pics of the new toy. This is the first load on it and we went light. We are going to add temporary wood sideboards to it for this job but permanent steel ones in the future. It well exceeded what we expected it to do. Once we get the sideboards on it, it should be able to carry about 12 yards.
Too big for my needs, but I always thought they'd be handy for working onsite. Back in the day there was a guy that had one set up as an off road tow rig. He hung out at the local mudbog and made some pretty good change towing out stuck 4x4's. Funny to see him pull out two trucks AND the truck they were trying to extract when they got stuck...all in one tug!
Gotta love those tight jobs with big trees and all the "off -limits" areas. The condo job we're working on has a tree save area. Had to hand demo a driveway, brick sidewalk and rock retainer walls within this protection area in order to not disturb the roots of the two "oaks" they wanted to save. Now the landscape architect designated these two "oaks" and the area the hand work was to be done in. The silly part of it all was one of the "oaks" is a sweet gum - LA didn't know the difference..:cool2 Now the even more cosmic irony part of it was the sweet gum in the tree save area was hit by lighting 2 weeks ago. Now it has to be taken down manually because the building is under construction and the temp. overhead power for the construction office also runs by the tree save area. They want me to handle the removal..:lmao Looks like the new truck is working out well. Is it a BMY? I've been watching them on gov planet and will probably buy one when the need is there. All they need is a Red Dot A/C and it's a cheap off road truck.:thumbsup
We have not had it in the mud yet, just sand and it does great. Hopefully it keeps working good.
You have it worse than we do on the protected areas. We have had to do some hand clearing before but never any hand demolition before inside protected areas. I hope they paid real good for it . I bet you got a good laugh when you came in and saw the gum was struck by lightning. The job I am clearing now has a dead spruce pine that is barricaded. They had to make a decision to see if they wanted it out. The truck is a BMY that came from Gov Planet. Yes it could use some AC but it sure is a lot cheaper than an ADT. A lot easier on fuel also. I will get more pics once we really get started on the job.
Cool shots of the 6x6 ( I don't know the actual name). I used to get to use one to move a tub grinder from pile to pile. I won't lie we had some fun in it and put it to the test pulling A Diamond Z around. I volunteered to drive it on the road once to the next job and that was one scary drive because I didn't unlock the front axle. I like it.... smart purchase. It looks to be in excellent shape. I bet it gets a lot of attention and strikes up some conversations. Looks like another great job y'all landed:notworthy
The official military name for the truck is a M929A2, we just call it the Army truck. We have been using it this week and have been very impressed so far. That thing will go anywhere. We have sand and a regular tri axle does not much care for the stuff but the Army truck will drive anywhere in it without the front axle engaged. It does turn some heads. Everyone wants to drive it to. This is a good little job. The GC is great so it has been a winner so far.
Finished the clearing job this week. Hauled 8 loads of wood out and still have one left to go. Going to move the grinder in this week also. The first couple are of 28 tons of hardwood logs for export.
Looks good! What's that yellow deal there in the last pic?
Looks like a sawbuck
That's right! Thanks JNB.
Ah! Makes sense...trees and all.
Nice load of hardwood LC. Does that sawbuck have a hydraulic saw?
CM, it does have a hyd saw. Sure saves a lot of time and sweat.
No doubt. If you're cutting a lot of wood it makes it much easier. Does it have it's own power pack or do you hook it up to a machine that has remotes?
It gets hooked to the log loader. It has 3 hoses and you push a button on the joystick which turns the saw on as well as lowers the bar. Once you release the button it shuts the chain off and returns the saw back to the house.
This finished job looks picture perfect.. Have I said how much I love the stacks on the Peterbilt.......I think I have but they look great.
Thanks FD. I hate to see roots and logs laying around a clearing job. I am with you, I like the stacks on the Pete as well.
Dug a big commercial pool early in the week. Used two tri-axles for 2 days to haul off about 800 feet. Kept them pretty steady. The ground conditions were poor which was made worse by rain every night. The ground was saturated causing sections of the walls to either cave in or sag. Not the prettiest job but sometimes you can't do anything about it. Rented a Cat 316 since our 160 was busy. Got the grinder moved up to the clearing job. The pile is a monster!
Just a couple more of the grinding. Loading the first load of mulch out. A little track loader action. Grinding a big spruce pine stump.
Looks a bit soggy. What size material can your grinder handle?
I admire ya'lls operation, top notch!:thumbsup
JNB, I had pines that had 38 inch butts on the logs so after a some processing I ground up the stumps. I can put a regular 20 inch or so pine stump in it without breaking it up any.
Thanks CM, that means a lot.
Nice commercial dig. Hate seeing the crack in the second picture. Especially after doing all the work and then it caves in, but like you said what can you do. The ground looks horrible but the job turned out well. Grinder pics are great too. That is a big ole pile on both ends of the grinder.
Thanks FD. Do you have much trouble with walls caving in? Last couple I have done the ground has been so saturated we have had walls go and take the forms with it.
Back in the dark ages when I was trimming pools, I remember a few that I had to use 8' kickers on. Not fun.
CM, heres a video to give you an idea on the sawbuck. Theyre more often called a slasher up here in the north. Circle saw slashers are more popular up here. Bar slasher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf2M8N1WPjU Cirlce saw slasher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNJEdpvaPYs
You guys truly have an awesome thing going LC, I really enjoy looking at your pics! Looks like fun grinding and producing mulch, I'd be scared of snakes!
Thanks Nedly. The ones I see mostly around here are mounted on the neck of the knuckle boom trailer. They have knives for delimbing and hydraulic saw to top with. Like this one -
The second to last one I dug was so bad that after we moved out they dug by hand for 3 days and panel formed most of the pool. Glad I am the operator
Thanks Nedly. I try to get something a little different every week but sometimes I can only put on what I do. If I had to pick one thing to do it would be working in the woods clearing and logging. Don't worry about the snakes. I rarely see any.
CM, the loader has a delimber as well as the buck saw. I will post some pics of the logging stuff. I never put any pics on because I did not think there were many southern logging fans on here.
I'll happily look at any equipment pictures regardless of where its at
I have always enjoyed your clearing photos and have admired your equipment. We do land clearing and logging in New York and always enjoy seeing how guys do it in different areas. You have a top notch operation knowing how hard it is to keep equipment in nice shape in the woods.
Thanks guys. I am glad to hear you enjoy the pics. NYlogger, I agree, I really like seeing how everyone else does the same job in different areas. Yes it is hard to keep stuff looking good in the woods but I guess I am used to it now after so many years.
Worked on a bunch of stuff this week. Finished up a job for now and moved onto a new one. First pics are of the pad we are building for the pool house job. It will be a little while before we are back on this one. These are of a new job. There are going to be 3 building pads and two parking lots added to the existing shopping center. They only wanted the first pad done now and going to start the others very soon.
Here we are hauling dirt to the pool pad ad finishing it up.
Nice hefty load on the M9! What...no Red Dot yet?
The double sideboards look like they did the trick. It's hauling now for sure. Looking good:thumbsup
Didn't you notice he has the AC on, the windshield is open
IT has past our expectations for sure. It will have paid for itself when we move the dirt back out of there.
Not much in the way of interesting work this week. Put in a bunch of conduit in and balanced the road. Took a few pics yesterday of the underdrain going in.
Very good looking work that you have been doing. I don't see many tree roots in the spoils, would of thought digging that close to the trees you would of had a bunch. I spent the last couple days breaking concrete and hauling it away from an old corn crib. It was build when concrete was cheap and so was labor, I guess. The footings were 32" wide and 20" thick with rebar in them. The walls had a 8" top but were 12" to 18" at the footings. With mesh and rebar running through them. Seemed way over built, for a corn crib.
Thanks Dirty, it was because of the expert clearing job That does sound like some serious overkill for a corn crib. That is stout for some commercial buildings. What are you using?
A little more action this week. On Monday I had to grade a couple miles of dirt road for a community association then get the grader back to our road job. Had to use the mini to dig around the existing asphalt and irrigation lines. Got the subgrade done. 24.5 tons of FLBC. Spreading it with a D3K demo machine.
I had to haul about 40 tons from our stockpile to finish up on Sat. Fine grading the rock. Last little bit to get it ready for asphalt.
That FLBC looks like our DGB or dense grade base. I guess the BC stands for Base Course, what does the FL stand for. Can the dump trailer only haul 24.5 tons legally? What can your tri gross? Looks like it has about 25 ton in the pic.
Don't judge me on the spelling but here we go Fossiliferous Limestone Base Course. The trailers can haul almost exactly 25 tons legal. The trucks are light and the trailers even had alum. frames so they weighed right at 30K. A tri-axle can be 69700 so I can be 20.5 on my truck. Yeah I know it is heavy
Shoot I'm not even trying to spell that word but I get the meaning. Here in AL we can gross 80K + don't know the exact number on state and local roads, no interstate. Our normal stone loads on tri-axles average 25 tons.
We can gross 80K on trailers here. I wish we could be 80 on a tri-axle. That is not the interstates, I think tri-axle can be 62K on the interstate. No point in us even going to the quarry with the weight laws. Might as well let someone else do it, we will stick to hauling dirt.
Guess I should of waited till the last bunch of pictures, sure looks like you have it graded off very smooth. Sure enjoy seeing your pictures and the others who take time to share them with us. I have a hydraulic hammer on my Kubota SLV 90, a Case CX 130, and a single axle dump truck. Most of the time I don't have to haul concrete very far, being a one old man show have learned to get it done one way or another. Had to use a few pieces of concrete as a drop ball to crush the two side floors. They had what looked like galvanized cattle panels, on both sides, so had to beat a hole to get the bucket started under the floor. Have to start tearing down a cattle confinement building in a couple weeks. 254' X 54' then rebuild it all. The metal roof rusted through, and leaked so bad it rotted the trusses, and purlins. Going to be a messy one with the most of the floor being slatted with a deep manure pit beneath the slatted floor.
Glad you like the pics. Always fun to show what you do and see what everyone else does. How do you like your SVL 90. We love ours and don't think we could do without a tracked skid steer. As soon as we get the road paved, the 90 will be grading the shoulders. I have had to use the concrete wrecking ball trick myself. Works pretty good! I feel bad for you on the upcoming demo job. Sounds like it is going to be a nasty one for sure. Wouldn't mind seeing some pics either.
I've used the poor mans hammer more than once, it's very fast and effective.
I really like the Kubota SVL, have had a few Case tired machines over the years. Being able to operate with the door open or if you lift the arms a little still being able to get out. It is totally amazing how much it will push, thou I think the Case had a little ore break out force. Took a piece of Plexiglas and made a shield to put in front of the door, when operating the hydraulic hammer. Keeps the chips from hitting the glass door, not the handiest but cuts the chances of breaking the glass in the door. I will try to take a few pictures of the cattle shed demo, luckily they have not had cattle for a while so the odor and flies aren't bad.
That is pretty much how I feel about the SVL 90. I think the excavator style windshield is the best. I can see where you would put the plexiglass across the windshield with the hammer on there. I definitely would like the see the demo pics.
I figured the FL stood for Florida :laugh
I carry my camera in my work pickup truck, but being a one man operation, and being old forget to put it in the dump truck to take pictures of a lot of the jobs. The reach when dumping, and the lifting capacity pretty much sold me on the Kubota. Being able to operate with the door open is just a bonus. It s nice to have it open when setting trusses, and I set a few utility poles for the local electrician, too. I can bore the holes and set a poles much faster than he can with his truck, and get into places that he can't. My biggest concern about the cattle shed demo is taking it down under control. With the brackets completely rusted away the old thing holding 250' on the one side is the heavy steel pipe gates bolted to the posts. They all have to be salvaged to rebuild the building, lots of bracing and will probably take my New Holland LB 90 backhoe there to hold the top of post steady while lowering the other end of the truss, and what is left of the purlins and roof steel.
I would've assumed Florida if LC wasn't located in SC.:cool2 Maybe it should be SCBC..:tong
Thanks guys, you made me laugh
I get a lot of enjoyment looking at all your pics and reading all the comments. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Orlando. I appreciate that.
Nothing very exciting going on this week. Grading shoulders, redecked a bridge and worked on repairing some bike paths. The only exciting thing was using the new trailer. We have been picking up more mulch business and figure a big trailer would help out a lot plus cut time and fuel cost by 1/3. Not sure but Volvo, Peterbilt, East or Peterson Pacific could use one of the picks in an add
Thats a nice trailer! How many cu. yds. is it? Its a shame the belt on the grinder doesn't raise any higher or you could belt it right into the trailer as it grinds it.
Hey LC, how many times do you grind your mulch before you sell it? Also, do yinz dye it before you sell it?
That trailer sure is nice...but what a truck / trailer combo! Sweet!
Thanks, it's 120 yards. We can load off the grinder but we were doing a test load to see how many buckets it takes to load it.
Hey Steelers, for the most part we grind it twice. And we do not dye it.
I hear ya. I like the way that truck looks as well. My brother likes it a lot better than his old truck. He's been adding some ginger bread to the inside to.
A company I help uses basically the same trailer but made by Peerless. We do 80yd loads and it's 17.5 buckets with the oversize bucket (4.5yrd I believe) on the Komatsu WA200. Things should speed up once the 3rd function is installed on the new to them WA320 for the 6yd high dump bucket.
The week started out kinda boring. We finished some bike path repairs then built the guardrail to finish our road job. After that things got interesting. Weds. night, we got a call from the fire department and asked if we could bring an excavator to a house fire. The roof was copper and caved in and made it impossible for them to put the fire out under the copper. My brother finished that about 1:30 am on Thurs then I went there Thurs morning and the fire department asked us to stay and help move debris for the investigation. After we finished with that, the rain started, we have had about 16 inches from Thurs at lunch to Sunday and it is still raining.
Did you get to keep the copper
did you get a police escort to move the hoe at night.
Interesting stuff LC. Does the FD think it was arson?
Not yet, we are hoping to do the demolition.
No police escort but I am not sure what the security guard thought at 10:00 PM when the lowboy rolled up
They do not think it was arson. The fire actually started around noon on Weds so it was in the middle of the day and they got us just before 10:00 pm. It was a second home and nobody had been there for a while.
I forget where you are at exactly in South Carolina, but how are you guys fairing with all of the rain you got?
Thanks for asking, We did fine other about 2 inches of water in our garage. Several jobs got flooded out and had to setup pumps but everyone is fine and the equipment is all ok. I do appreciate you asking!
Glad to hear ya'll came out OK.
Thanks man:thumbsup
:iagree
Looks like areal mess, will create a few new jobs, once it dries out. Glad you and your equipment are ok, hang in there it will dry out again.
First I wanted to thank you guys for the post and PM's to check on us. It made a mess for sure but we were much luckier than a lot of people who had some major damage. Everything is still wet but we did get to do a little work. We moved the sur charge off the pool house and placed it in front of the building as well as cut through a hill in front so they can build a deck. You know you have to much water on a site when an alligator moves in.
LC good to see ya'll getting back to work.:thumbsup I though it was pretty cool what LSU did for SC for the game yesterday. Didn't know ya'll had gators? Occasionally there will be one found in the central AL region but we're too far north for them to live year around. Is it common practice to place surcharge loads on building pads? How long did the surcharge load sit on pad?
Glad you came out OK LC. I enjoy checking in on your threads. It is sure a contrast from the rock I am in most of the time.
Yeah I saw what LSU did, that was cool. We got plenty of gators. Not so as many inland as right along the coast but here on the island there are tons of them. It is not real common to do a surcharge but it is not rare either. Lots of times they will drive piles instead. As for time, 3 to 4 weeks if they do not see any settling. If they see movement, it might be several months until it stabilizes. I like surcharges, haul it in and haul it out making money both directions and sometimes you can have a job that needs the dirt
Thanks, no rock around here for sure. I grew up in KY seeing rock and clay and I don't get to work in either one(unless it is mucky clay).
Well we got an emergency pipe repair job this week. We priced it to not get it but got it anyway. We got the pipe delivered and well pointed this week. We got 6 joints in the ground on Friday afternoon but for some reason did not get any pics. As you can see in the pics, the pond is blocked with what they call Aqua Barriers. They work good but from what the guys that installed them said, they are very very expensive. The pipes were supposed to be 48's but are actually 42's. I wish we were laying 42's, it would make it a lot easier.
Looks like a nice job! Love reading your thread!
LC- Do you use swell stop strips or mastic when laying RCP? I have a bunch of 18" residential culvert / precast safety ends to set. Neither the city or inspector specify, so just wondering what your preference is.
Thanks Hitachi. It's not a bad job, just a ton of utilities to dig around.
JNB, we use rubber gaskets or I guess you could call them o rings with joint lube. We also wrap the joints with a non woven fabric. They have all but stopped using the mastic(ram neck). I prefer to use the rubber gaskets since they are technically better than the mastic strips and less chance of leaking. I will say the rubber gaskets are a 2 man job to put on 48 inch pipe
LC the Aqua Barrier is pretty slick. How well did they work holding the water back?
CM, it works real good. No water comes underneath them. The guys that install them come out and check them everyday and if they need to they add some water to them.
We finished up the pipe job this week. Got the curb in and rock down. Here are a few pics of the job progress. Pulling one of the old steel pipes out from under the power, phone and cable lines. A picture of one of the joints, nice and tight. Backfilling with 57's Gently getting some rock out of the truck.
A couple more. Here is the picture of the sagging waterline. We had to put a joint restraint on it. Once we got the dirt off of it it did relax some as you can see in the pics. You can also see the pipe is much deeper than the pond. Hows that going to work out?:beatsme
That looks like a job I would get myself into.. Still don't know why engineers still spec corrugated metal pipe, asphalt coated or not. I've replaced a lot of it and it all rusts out on the bottom and fails over time.:beatsme So the outflow is lower than the pond? Might get a CO to dredge the pond.
So you are like us, you get the junky jobs nobody else really wants I agree, steel pipe is not the answer. It has been in the ground for about 30 years. It was tar covered but it still had some major holes from rust. The salt water makes it even worse for us. We dredged out in front of the pipe but the ponds are only about waist deep. I wouldn't mind dredging them, give me a long reach and I will be all
I chock it up to a challenge and then ask myself 1/2 way through "why the hell did I take this".:bash Regarding the CMP, it's similar here as we have acidic soils that attack the metal, not as corrosive as the salt you deal with but eats the metal none the less. Concrete is tried and true. ADS works well in certain applications and if it's bedded properly.
You nailed it CM. You look at something and think it will be tough but we can do it then you start and your like why did we do this again. It sure makes you feel good when you are done and everything comes out like you wanted. This week was another one of those jobs. It was a demo job that was real tight. No room in front or either side. You will be able to see what I mean from the pics. First pic is from the job where we picked up the 300. Thought it was worth a picture. Bringing a bazooka to a knife fight Needed it for the reach.
Damn good job LC!:drinkup The builders, owners and developers call ya'll when there's a tough job to do, don't they?:cool2 They know ya'll will get the job down and done without a hitch. Good work. I like those tough, tight demos - keeps you on your toes.
Well done! I love those types. Did you have to save the foundation? What was the reason for the demo? I suspect to much money syndrome.
Thanks CM. It makes you feel good to get a compliment from a guy that has done the work. That is our unofficial company motto, if nobody else wants to do it, call us! Like you said, the harder the job the more you stay on your toes. There are a ton of tourist around and you know that since everyone has a video camera in there phone you better not screw up Thanks again!
Thanks digger for the much appreciated compliment. No the foundation is going as well as the driveway. Taking everything down to dirt. You nailed it, to much money syndrome. They bought and talked about remodeling but decided to wreck instead. These jobs are getting more frequent which is fine by me
Nothing exciting this week. Finished the demo job. We did find some huge footers. Not sure why they were like that. Also did a couple building pads on the shopping center job. I will get some pics of that job once we start the parking lots.
Aren't those kind of jobs the best??
Yeah this one was a good one
I'm with you on footings. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense why someone spent so much money pouring such massive footings when they didn't have too.:beatsme Did you use the "poor man's hammer" trick to size the footings for haul-out? It's a very effective technique, not hard to break large chunks of concrete into manageable pieces, even with rebar.
That poor mans hammer is quite a handy tool. Thou the last corncrib I tore down I had to use my skidsteer hammer in the middle so I could use half of it to break the rest of it. Years back concrete was cheap labor was cheap and not many dump trucks to haul in fill, so concrete was used as fill I think.
Yeah the poor mans hammer was used on this job. Like CM said it is effective. Not sure but it looks like they poured a footer on either side of an existing footer pinned with rebar and covered everything with about 8 inches. At first I was thinking we were going to have to what you did Dirty and break out the hammer. We got lucky and were able to break it up into pretty smallish chunks. Fortunately for us concrete has always been expensive around here, no rock
Nice work on the demo LC. Your job pictures are a little like a "How To" guide.
This pic gave it away. It doesn't take much time or effort to break them up, simple pick and drop till they break.
Thanks buddy, I appreciate that!
Still not sure what all the rebar sticking out of the bottoms is for:beatsme
Someones idea to hold it in place so it don't slip away maybe??
It looks like whoever tied the steel drove those short sections of rebar into the ground to hang the horizontal rebar on, which is bad, especially in a corrosive environment. The steel drove into the ground will rust and carry the rust right through the reinforcing steel, eventually. Concrete brick is the best reinforcing support on dirt, even clay brick will wick moisture up to the steel.
Hey CM1995 what is the name of your company
Welcome to the Forums IDODIRT!:drinkup Glad to have ya'. Respectfully, I chose to keep personal information off the Forum. Drop me a PM when you get 3 posts, your status will be upgraded and you will be able to use the private message function.
Ok Cm1995 thanks for the welcome so what it is in your fleet
I was working at a plantation this week. We had to add some rip rap to small areas along the banks. The one lake in the pic is 64 acres and the wind is always blowing one direction so they always have erosion problems. The other pics are of some ditching we are doing. It took almost an hour to walk from the rip rap site to where I am ditching.
Slick digging bucket LC! That trench looks good. Did you shoot it or just use the ol' eye and keep the water flowing? I bet rip-rap is expensive up your way.
Hey CM, Thanks! I was pretty happy with the ditch and yes I did use the old eyeball. This is just to drain a dove field so nothing as nice as what Shimmy does. Yeah that is not a bad bucket for $2000. We bought it about 4 years ago for a ditching job that never came to be and this was the first time it was used. To pick rip rap up at the Vulcan yard is $43.00 a ton plus tax so yes I think it is expensive. It is cheaper if you go to the quarry in Columbia but then you add 3 hours of trucking per load.
Finished up a few odds and ends this week. Cleared this little lot as well as filled it. Forgot to get finished pics. A few pics of loaded up and moving out to a good sized grinding job. Cleaned up our dump before we moved the grinder out.
Did a pool on Monday. Turned out pretty decent. I had to dig backwards so it was a pain. Had to finish on the deep end so it made it hard to get the last 2 corners since the pool is elevated and there was a block wall around it. After the pool we started grinding a dump site. Some of the stuff has been piled up for almost 8 years so it is real dirty. The owner has 2 excavator and an ADT there to help separate.
LC is that a contractors dump site or one within a big project?
Hi CM. That is a dump site from a local residential lot clearing guy. We do some demo jobs for him and we buy dirt from him also. He buys mulch from us and we are grinding his dump.
Nice work on the pool LC; I still cannot believe how well that material stands up. Not so in most of the areas around here.
Hey Chomp. Thanks, we do demolition clearing and grading.
Thanks Oxbow. The guys that put the fill in this pool did a good job. They put it in in lifts and compacted it. The material was also good. It was sandy with a tiny bit of clay that really made it bind together.
Not sure if the pictures are going to come out in the right order but once I describe things it should be easy to figure. We had to install 650 lft bike path this week. It was 6 feet of paving so 7 feet of base and 4 inches of FLBC. They are going to pave it on the 14th of this month. On Thurs I moved into a new clearing job. The site is not the best. Lot of brush in areas and trash from steel to concrete and asphalt. Got started with the cutter and started clearing a deck for the logs. Finally on Sat I did some work on the parking lot/shopping center job. Didn't really want to drive 1.5 hours each way to and from work on Sat.
I hear ya' buddy. Got a chicken shack coming up that's about 1.5 hours away, not looking forward to it but the guys that own them are my bread and butter. Do ya'll install your own silt fencing or sub it out? If you sub it out what are you paying per FT? PM me if you don't want to post it online.
I have been spoiled recently with 15 to 20 minutes to work. This job will go on for about a month I guess by the time we log it, clear it and grind it. This is same as your chicken shack guys. We do a bunch of work for them and they take good care of us.
That dirt sure did look nice in the pool dig compared to what you usually dig in. Looking good out there. Like the clearing and lowboy pics and I see the KW trying to get in the shot barely on one pic.
Missed this one. Appreciate the shout-out, LC. Back at ya. Going to have some dandies the next couple weeks. I have 9(!) waterholes to clean out. Rented a D6K to help. Partner gets to run it though. I'm the excavator guy.
Thanks FD. It did turn out pretty good for a change. Didn't even have any cave ins
Got some clearing pics this week. My camera broke so I am using my phone and it is a pain to get pics from it to my email then to a folder then onto here so I am not putting a ton of them on here. Went through the job with the feller buncher. The skidder coming with a grab of wood. The log pile. 320 stumping. One section that is cleared. Sorry, the pics got mixed up.
Sweet job , man. How many acres did you clear? How many trees down about?
Hi Wolf, This job is 13 acres. No idea on the number of trees. Not a lot of good wood on this job. There is a lot of scrub hardwood on it.
Had a busy week. Worked on the clearing job, got rained out, dug a pool and spent Saturday close to home grinding and loading mulch. Load of pulp wood. Load of 8 inch chip and saw. Quick pool dig Loading mulch onto the Silver Bullet
You been busy LC? I admire your clearing operation, it's something I would like to get into. Two of my guys have logging experience from the old days of chainsaws and chokers, they'd be animals with newer equipment.
Hi CM, Yes we have been busy but the reason for not posting is a new camera. I need to figure out how to get pics from it to the computer. Thanks for the compliment on the clearing. I do enjoy clearing especially the logging part. Don't think I would want to go old school with chainsaws and chokers though going to start grinding tomorrow. Had a bunch of rain again and it is nasty. Should get some pics this week and get them on here.
Winter in the south... which means a boatload of rain. Stay dry and warm, a couple of months left still spring then we'll be complaining about how hot it is.
But we do get about three months of ideal weather every year to balance the scorcher and soaker seasons out. Glad to see the Pete kept clean LOl. I hope you are keeping my future KW clean too
Hey FD, you might have to fight some people for the KW
Got my camera figured out. I have a fair amount of pics since the 1st of the year. Here is a pool that we had to fill instead of dig. It is at a pool house that we are doing. Same place as the sur charge with the army truck.
A few more pics. Load of red oak saw logs off the clearing job. Grinding on the same job. Our new used root rake for the skidsteer. loading some trash on a Saturday lot clearing job.
A little 963 love!:drink up Interesting pool build, that's the way they build them in Costa Rica. Dig a hole, pour the bottom, block the sides and tile the entire pool. Stands up to earthquakes.:beatsme That's a nice looking root rake, can't tell from the pic - does it have pin on teeth? Good to see you've been able to stay busy, the rain has killed us the last 45 days.
Where are you selling the oak sawlogs?
Hey CM, the 963 is my girl. I have always wanted a 73 On the pool, they are actually going to panel form the walls and shoot 8 inches of shotcrete on the floor and walls. There is going to be a 6 foot gap between the block walls and pool walls that we are going to have to fill. Not sure I would want a Costa Rican pool We are lucky, we usually have a sandy job or two that we can go to if everything else gets to bad.
Mitch, we sell the hardwood saw logs to Ashley River Lumber. they are in Ridgeville or Jedburg(just north of Summerville).
I'm very familiar with that area, I used to do a lot of clearing and road building off Hwy 76 in Berkeley County, in the pre-'08 world. I'm about 50 miles from Summerville. 2 out of the 3 hardwood mills around here closed in the last couple of years, now, the guy that's left gets so much wood, he almost wants you to pay him!
Hey Mitch, Its a small world! They pay pretty good money for red oak logs and pretty decent for mixed hardwoods also. We sent a load to the hardwood export place by the cement plants and got $1500 for it. We don't even send hardwood pulp to the mill, we grind it up for mulch.
Couple pics from this week. Finished grinding on the clearing job early Monday and did a little regrind before we left. Moved back to the pool house job to backfill the pool. Fun job. 3 truck loads from one bucket on the KX-080?
Cleared 2 lots on Fri and Sat. Had a supervisor on site 1st lot after Lot 2
All great pictures again. Love the one with the Pete and KW getting loaded up. Now that's getting it done. The new root rake looks like it'll get it done too. Probably fun to run. I can't quite understand the filling in of the pool and the void between the two walls..it all looks like new block and shotcrete. I too love the big raptor and owl sightings. I'll stop everything I'm doing and start watching them and try approaching very slowly while taking pictures and see how close I can get. All the while the bird is probably thinking stupid human. I've seen some footage of hawks attacking drones which is very fascinating. Now I see where they have eagles trained to attack drones and bring them down. Pretty cool. Anyway great pictures.
Thanks FD. It is nice having trucks to get things done in a hurry. It was a pleasure being able to get the trucks on the lot instead of in the street. As for the pool, we graded the bottom, they panel formed it, shot it then we had to fill in between the pool and retaining wall. They figured the dirt would not stand up. This is not the guys we usually dig for. I love watching the big birds to. We have Hawks, osprey and eagles around here. We've worked around several eagle nesting areas. I think eagles are about the hardest to get pics of. I need to see if I can find the eagle and the drone on YouTube, sounds neat.
Bunch of little jobs this week. Finished filling a lot and started a second one. Did this pipe job. Little over 400 feet of pipe and six knockout boxes. The place was wet and a real apin to work in. Did the whole thing in about 2.25 days. Another little pipe job on the golf course. I think it was about 250 feet of pipe and 3 yard inlets. Load of mulch coming in to be reground on Sat afternoon.
That golf course job really cleaned up nice!!
6 knockout boxes in 2.25 days, bless your heart. That's a lot of sawing, sledgehammer work and mudding.:notworthy
Thanks, we did it with a 12 inch bucket then used a cleanup bucket to rake it back in the ditch, track packed it and scraped up the leftovers.
Sounds like you don't like knockout boxes we cut a ring off the ADS pipe and used it to mark the holes then test fit it. Do you do it on the top or in the hole? Worst part of the whole job was setting the frames and grates. One box need about 3 courses of brick.
No - I hate them. Used two a week ago because we didn't have the lead time on a CO to get round structures pre-cast. For knockout boxes what we do is calculate where the pipe needs to come in the box at the invert, layout the hole and cut it before it goes in the ground. It's a lot easier to stand on the box and let gravity work the saw through the cut than try to do it in the hole. Also the dust dissipates easier. Actually the round 48" manholes with pre-cut holes are cheaper than knock-out boxes here. I send the drawings to my supplier and they either cast the holes or core them at their yard. It's so much faster, less labor and mudding than a knockout box. Just set the manhole and slide the pipe in. No need for bricks, just stiff mud to seal the pipe. It's funny but I don't mind setting grates, actually I like to have my structures 2-3 courses of brick low from grade to allow adjustments in the field. We get our RCP and structures either from Foley or Hanson.
I don't mind them to much. We keep the holes tight so there is no need for brick but knocking the holes is a pain. Depending on the job, we use both knockout and engineered boxes. We never ever use round ones. I have always wanted to have manhole style boxes with the rubber boot built in so all you need to do is tighten it atound your pipe. We also do the figuring and make the hole on the top. I have seen some guys do I in th hole though( no thanks) Most of our rcp comes from Rinker and we use a local company for our boxes. They are a little more expensive but very well made.
We started a pretty neat job this week. We are doing a 5000 foot long trail for a shooting club. They are going to have 6 shooting stations throughout the woods and field. We are mowing trails though the woods and filling the path then putting stone on top of that. Started mulching this week as well as the borrow pit. Fueling up the 300. The area to be cleared, about 40 trees to come down. Started stripping topsoil. Last pass on the topsoil. First pass on the slope.
looking good LC!
Thanks buddy!
Didn't get a lot of pics this week but did get a couple. Got a fair amount of dirt stockpiled at the gun range job. Started a little clearing job this week also. Not enough trash to bring the grinder but to much to haul so we decided to haul it
Now that's how you haul tree trash!! Nice stripping and ditching pics too. That spoil/stock pile looks good to0. I'd enjoy getting on top that pile with a little dozer and mindlessly forming a berm. Is that gonna be used as bullet stopper or is getting moved out... I'm sure will get the pics soon.
Hey FD, Yes you cannot beat that trailer for hauling trash. Alfab did a great job on that trailer, we couldn't get by without it. The dirt is going to be used on the trails. They are talking about a pistol range that would need a berm behind it. As far as dirt goes around here, that is about the best stuff you could want to get on with a dozer and build a berm.
Did an interesting job this week. Had to help a guy install a new pump station to replace one that failed. Had to wellpoint it because we dug around 10 feet deep. Once installed we poured 10 yds of concrete around it to keep it from floating. Had to put water in it while we poured the concrete. We hit a 2 inch propane line that apparently nobody knew was there even though it had a tracer wire. Job turned out good, everyone was happy.
After many months of working things out, we now have our dyed mulch going. Here are a few pics of it in action.
Nice mulch pictures. It's amazing all of the machinery needed to make it.
I'm always amazed at all the things you guys do and the equipment you have.:drinkup On the propane line, it seems here at least that the utility line locating service has went down hill over the last few years even though it wasn't that good to begin with. We cut a cable/internet line at the school project we did. I had a current locate number and paint on the ground including orange marks through the parking lot but they didn't catch that line, although it came off the same pole.:beatsme That's awesome on the dyed mulch. That is something that is on my long range plan to get into. Are ya'll planning on just selling bulk or bagging it for retail? There's money in the bagged mulch for retail if you can get in with distributors. Good jobs as always, it's nice to see professional work.:thumbsup
Thanks Sterff. Yes I you would not think it is so complicated to make some mulch until you really look at all the steps involved.
Hey CM. I am amazed at some of the things we do also Maybe I should say the things we somehow get involved in. Not sure about your area but I know the locate guys around here are way overworked so I do cut them some slack. The one guy we deal mostly is pretty good and if you get in a bind, he will come out if you ask him to well before the 3 days is up. It is getting worse every day with all the boring they are doing now. Back in the day, if you were going to dig up a 48 inch oak tree you were pretty sure there was nothing under but now with boring you never know. As of right now we are only doing bulk. I am not saying we will not bag in the future but we are pretty well slammed with our bulk guys. Everyone is moving away from natural mulch because it fades so we figured we better get in it before it was to late. If you get to a point where you are getting serious about it, shoot me a pm and I would be glad to talk about it. We did a ton of investigating and thinking before we jumped in.
Couple pics from this week. We cleared a lot and filled. Took about 900 yards of fill. We also went back to the gun range job and started moving dirt for the trails.
Couple more of the range trails
Looks good LC. Always enjoy your updates and pics. The green beast looks to be earning its keep. I saw one for sale on the way to an estimate the other day and thought...Man those are cool...If I only had a use for one.
LC is that a AM General or a BMY dump? How is it doing performance, maintenance wise? I'd like one for the same uses ya'll have, moving material on site. Can't justify the expense of an artic dump, cheaper to rent if you need that production. The 5 ton cargo trucks go cheaper than the dumps but I don't know if they have the PTO provision on the transmission. It wouldn't be hard to find a used OX dump body and put it on a cargo truck if one could make the PTO work. The sweat season is coming, ya'll installed a Red Dot in the truck yet? Nice grade work on the trails.:notworthy
Thanks JNB and CM. Ours is a BMY. For some reason the AM Generals go for less money. We are the same as you can't justify the expense of an artic truck either. I actually think it will go in worse places than an artic since it is so much lighter and it sure uses a heck of a lot less fuel. The only thing we have done is change the dump lever. The cable broke and we made a new lever for it. As for the pto, we discussed it with a truck upfit company to put one on our cargo truck and he said there would be no problem as it is an Allison transmission. No AC yet, it really is not that bad to be honest. We ran it in the hottest part of the summer and it was not bad at all.
I just love any picture of your grade work. Can tell a man who takes pride in his work did that
Thanks 390 that is an awesome compliment Means a lot.
Awesome finish work!!
Thanks Browning!
Did a bunch of demo this week. First job was a house. Next job was a sailboat. It was up on the beach in Dec. and they got approval to remove it. Had to carry it about a mile or so close to the beach access where we wrecked it and loaded it into the loader bucket. Would have been much easier if we could have gotten a truck to it.
Now that's a demo job you don't see very often - a sailboat on the beach. Awesome.
Hey CM ,it was a fun one. I am waiting to see a video of it on YouTube. Everyone had a camera!
So was the sailboat clean up for the city or private owner?
The town got us to do the cleanup. The guy who owned it was from the Netherlands and said he didn't have any money to get it so the town got stuck with the bill.
I see, so in other words the guy said "sue me" and what could the city do other than foot the bill to clean it up. Was it docked locally?
The guy actually abandoned ship and was picked up by a Norwegian cruise ship in the Bahamas and it floated around for a couple months and yes the guy was like whatever it's your problem.
The back story is as interesting as the demo'ing a boat on the beach. Cool stuff LC.
Hey CM, if you go the The Post and Courier which is the news paper for Charleston, on Sat morning there was a whole article about it. You should be able to find it, I did!
Awesome pics Landclearer!
Thanks Andrew. How are the demos going? If you have any pics would love to see them.
A Couple pics form this week. Finished up the house demo. It turned out pretty good. It was a real pain though, the house was built in the 50s and apparently they had some really bad mortar back then. I do not think two bricks stayed together on the whole job and loose bricks and dry beach sand are no fun In the one picture you will see what we affectionately called the sea mine The last picture is of the pool hose job we are doing. They are ready for the parking lot and we have gotten started. It would have been nice if they had put the pool backwash I before the decks were built. Most of it was dug by hand.
That sucks! I am allergic to manual labor, I break out in sweats... :spaz Did you keep the "mine"?
I have the same thing, I get tired and start sweating when I get off a machine. We sent the "mine " to the scrap yard but did think about for a minute. Got a bank bustin 4.5 cents a a pound.
I hear ya' scrap prices suck. I've got a 45 yard about loaded on a demo job and the only thing I will make is the difference in the dump fee vs. $.07 a lb at the scrap yard. Not much but it's something.
The house we did had 2800 pounds of steel in it, we got $128 for the scrap and it would have cost 77 to dump it at the landfill so it was really worth $205.
That is exactly how I look at it as well LC, it's what you didn't spend and what you got paid that need to be added together. However with such low scrap prices one has to decide if it's worth separating. We have to prep. the demo debris to fit in the can or trailer to maximize the space and reduce disposal costs so the real question is how much extra time does it take to separate the metal? On the restaurant job we're on, the excavator is outside loading the soft debris the skid is sending out of the building. The exc. is sitting idle if it just loads out the debris without sorting. The cost of that machine is running regardless whether it's loading it all out at once or separating while it waits on another load to be shoved out. It's a little more fuel burned operating compared to idle but with fuel cheap, I think it's still time well spent separating the metal. The labor, machine and overhead costs are still ticking regardless of whether it's at idle or operating. Scrap prices where they are it's really a job by job decision whether to separate it.
Yes I fully agree. Sometimes it is not worth separating but like you said if the machine is there and running anyway you might as well. We are lucky, we can send tin, heavy steel, cast iron white goods all mixed in one load and we get steel prices for it so that is not bad. That is one good thing about having your own truck, you can load it up and send it anytime you want.
Same here. We load all the metal in one can - iron, white goods, water heaters, galvanized studs, even MC cable if it's easily separated and get steel prices. Although at the moment tin and steel prices are the same across the scales. I do have to pay a haul fee but I can let the can stay there during the duration of the demo.
Looking good! I have that same allergy as you CM :tong Is that mine explosive, or just more like a buoy?
Thanks buddy! Not explosive it was just an old buoy but we joked about it being a mine.
Got the curb guys hand forming the curb on our parking lot job. It is going slow but they have the machine on another job so they decided to hand from it. Was back at the gun range doing some grading and finished hauling the fill dirt. Only thing left now is to spread the rock on the paths.
Awesome finish work! Grading along the edge of that water would bring back bad memories for me lol
That's exactly what I was doing the last part of the week, managing a sub hand forming 1400LF of 30" valley curb. Time was tight and all the slipform guys were booked a month out. Not to bad on production, we got all 1400' on the ground in 3 days. The slip form guys are so busy here that I might have to consider buying a slipform machine and motor grader...:cool2
Thanks Browning! I have had a few bad memories myself but I dug the slope so I knew what was there. I hate when they want it straight walled then put topsoil back to make the slope.
Maybe you can come on up and motivate our sub. They are doing a good looking job but are so slow. I will be happy when we are done with that job, it has been a pain. We are waiting for the phone company to move two of there boxes so we can't even finish the curb.
I hear ya' buddy it can be frustrating. Add in waiting for the phone company to do anything will drive anyone up the wall.:Banghead Lucked up on these guys, they were referred by a friend and I've never worked with them before but they are now my concrete guys. This was an easy money pour for them, straight shots of long sections. No islands or tight radius's to take up a lot of time. They know what they are doing - like I said I got lucky.
You did get lucky, that is some good looking curb work. Hard to find someone that would even think about hand forming that much around here. I will get some pics of our curb if they ever finish. Fortunately for us the owner is paying the 11k to move the phone boxes. You would think for that much money they could move a little faster
No doubt. I had a project back in 2005 that had a phone pedestal right in the middle of the new road that tied into an existing road. I had to pay $7K to move the pedestal 20' or so. I contacted the phone company at the beginning of the job, got the estimate and paid the bill. 5 months later we are ready to pour curb and gutter and they show up. It was a rag tag sub crew for the phone company that showed up. They spent 5 days trenching and moving the lines. When we went to pave, the new phone lines were just under the base. We paved over them.
We have been dealing with the phone company mess for about 2 months. I wish I had the nerve to pave around the boxes. You got a bargain at 7000 to move 20 feet ours is 11k to move 4 feet
Yea i was just starting out on a dozer and was told to go "finish around that pond" with a 700..i had no clue under the water it dropped straight down. Well as you can imagine on my last past near the water i ended up with the water side track completely gone and dozer about upset..took a 230 dig along the topside and pull/slide it up level then pull it out from there. Scared the heck out of me. I learned to work twords the water and backdrag away from it from then on lol
Unless I dig it or I see it before the water goes in, I am like you, I backdrag from the bottom to the top. You never know what is under there!
Had a busy week. Did a lot of work around the pool house job we are doing. We laid the RCP, underdrain and a lot of conduit. We also subgraded the parking lot and started rocking it. Moved in the 160 to clear a temporary fire lane and future house driveway on the other side of the building as well.
Looks like your workload is strong LC, same here. There are so many projects coming across the table and I can't look at it all and definitively can't perform them all.. I have a RL-H4C too and it's a damn good laser.
I am glad to hear you are as busy as we are. Like you said more work than you can handle for sure. We have gotten lucky with a couple jobs getting held up so we could work on other stuff. We have 3 Topcons and have had great luck with them. We tried a lasermark a long time ago and it was not good at all so we have used Topcon ever since.
The popularity and quality of that laser has driven the price up. I bought one in 2013 for a little less than $600 delivered. Now they are pushing $750-800. Worth every penny IMO. On the work forefront, it's like a triage center. We had several projects that trudged along during the rainy winter months, then the weather broke and everyone is ready to finish. I triage my jobs by relationship with the GC or owner and their quickness in paying.:cool2 The slow payers get pushed to the back of the line as it should be.
I like the triage analogy! It is true, same thing we do. We are pretty fortunate, most of our customers are repeats and we have weeded out the bad ones but we do have one that doesn't pay good. We add money onto any bid we do for them
Worked on a few different jobs this week as always. Had to mulch about 4 acres and got a start on that. Got everyone out of our way on the pool house job so we rocked the parking lot and got it ready for paving. 75% of the parking lot gets shellsand and not asphalt. I give them a year and we will be back to scrape up whatever shellsand has not washed down the storm sewer and grading for asphalt. Got a new toy to play with on Friday. Renting a crusher to crush our concrete stockpile.
Looks real good there LC. How's the SVL90 been working out for you? Hours on it?
Thanks! It's been doing great. Only thing we did was replace a bottom roller, the sand is hard on the seals. We have almost 700 hours in it.
How much concrete do you have to crush? I looked into renting a crusher and it was $25K a month bare rental. I didn't have enough concrete to crush and compared to our delivered stone prices it just didn't pencil out. What's shell sand? Obviously it's sea shells but is it processed or a naturally occurring product?
CM, I am hoping we have about 5000 but if I want to be realistic, 3000 tons but at what it cost to buy and truck it, 850 tons would pay for the crusher for a month for us. We don't have the close supply like you As for shellsand, it is natural. It is very course angular sand that is full of shells. It is usually either above or below or sandwhiched between gumbo(gray slimy clay that never gets hard). It is $19 or $20 per yard at the pit. When we put it down, I will get a bunch of pics for you.
Thanks for the explanation of the shell sand. I find it interesting to see the different materials used in different areas of the country. Knowing somewhat of your area, I figured the cost to crush plus rental would be a profit maker if you had enough stockpiled. A 25 ton load of #57's runs $500 or so depending on location. At those prices it's cheaper to dump the concrete in a clean fill. I've got three clean fill spots, one on the north end of the city and two on the south end, so disposal is free other than the cost to push it off.
Hey CM, you are right crushing is feasible if you have enough material stockpiled. Renting is really the only option if you get a small outfit they charge you so much per ton to do it and the big boys won't move in unless you have 10,000 tons. In the pics you can see the new crushed concrete as I am working it with the skidsteer. I am also putting some pics of the shellsand on here. As you can see the gumbo balls mixed in. Some good size shells also. Makes it hard to put down 2 inches thick.
That's very interesting, thanks for taking the time to snap some pics. So there's pretty good sized shells in the shell sand and I can see where that would be a PIA to spread thinly. Are those large shells basically fossilized and solid or do they break up easily? Is there enough gumbo in the mix to cause a problem or does it act as a binder? How's the concrete crushing going?
CM, the shells are just like you would find on the beach. To make good shellsand you need a little gumbo but guys that get greedy at the pit get to much and can ruin it. If there is just enough, it makes the sand compact and will stay compacted. Crushing is going OK. We only ran for a little while, the mechanic came down and showed us how to close it up to make finer material so we should get some production this week. I will say this, an impactor sure makes a lot more noise and dust than a jaw does.
Interesting on the shell sand. We have a local sand that gets sold for everything from arena sand to select fill. It's silty and always has a few clay ball surprises in each load. They're not much fun to work with, but at least we don't have to deal with shells.
JNB, that sounds kinda like sand clay. They used it for road base around here in the 70s. The shells are a pain and will cut a tire in a minute. I will get more pics once I get it down and raked out.
Been clearing sites for new builds out in Hewitt. That's me driving the tree cutter . Not nearly as impressive.
Been there done that Not all clearing jobs are feller bunchers and trackloaders.
Got a couple things accomplished this week. We finished the pool house and fire lane for the building. We also almost finished the gun range trails. We were 2 loads of granite base short and the train did not come in until Sat. Hopefully we will be able to get the last 2 loads on Mon. We came up with a solution to spreading the base 8 feet wide and 3 inches thick. I think it worked out real good.
Here are a few pics of the poor man's Jersey spreader
Ha! Now there's your one pass extreme box blade. What's the model number on your Towmaster?
What is the make on that spreader? We have been doing a lot of road rocking lately and none of the truck drivers can spread to save their lives. I was thinking we could mount something like that on our skip loader. We usually do 12' wide roads.
Looks like a snow pusher box.
JNB it is a t14d. I think they build the best small tags around.
It is an Advantage attachments snow box. We modified the skid mounts so we could adjust the height. It is built great and worked out perfectly. If we do more with it I think we will extend it out the front slope a little bit so it will hold a little more rock without spilling ooutside.
Cool adaptive use of an attachment. Being a snow pusher how stout is it built? I really like the idea, my gears are turning. Are you feeding it with your wheel loader or dumping small piles out of the truck?
As for how it is built, it is pretty heavy! I was pleasantly surprised by how well it is built. I really do not think I could bend it with a skid steer no matter what I did to it. We used the army truck to feed. We were at lest 3000 feet from the stockpile at certain points so we just backed the truck up and I would tell the driver what to do with the walky talky. The price was great and they shipped it for free as well.
Must have got a few questions when ordering a snow pusher to South Carolina ha ha. That worked great tho. As always superb work by you guys
Thanks Eric! The guy did say" can I ask why you need a snow box in SC in April" and we explained it and he thought it was a neat idea.
I've seen a small asphalt paver used for a job like that but this seems simpler. :thumbsup
When I was a kid I remember the drag box they would attach to the back of a single axle truck to pave with.
Got back to doing a little logging and clearing. Cut 4 acres of wood for a clearing job. 90% is pine pulp, the rest is hardwood brush. Got everything up to the deck, started loading out and the mill cut us off for the week. Started stumping on Friday and was making pretty good progress.
Why did the mill cut you off, too much timber on their yard? Now your timber is laying on the ground drying out.
Yes and yes. They are taking saw wood but no pulp. We need some rain to get the woods wet and slow down the loggers
Just putting this on here in case some guys don't look at the classifieds. 337 Pete single axle dump We are selling our 13 Pete. Has 300 Paccar motor 10 speed air ride 14k miles Hardox dump with barn door hitch with air and electric for tag along. Truck is like new and loaded. If interested pm me Chris
I know just enough about the timber industry to be dangerous.:tong That's a nice single axle you've got for sale. Post a couple of pics in the ad.
The most important thing about the timber industry is the golden rule, they have the gold and they rule. You have to do what they say and take what they give. I have two pages with different sorts of logs to take to different mills and different grades if wood. I keep lists in my truck.
Do you have a contact you could email me regarding the Pete 337 dump? Thanks Adam [email protected]
Hey Adam, I just emailed you. Thnaks, Chris
Got the clearing done on this job. It is ready for the grinder to come in now. Moved to the next one to start cutting. I don't think this one is going to as dry as the last. Lots of hardwood, mostly gums with a few big pine scattered about. Skidding the last of the hardwoods to the deck Ready for the grinder Getting ready to start cutting
How did the grinder do in the "Noise Minimization" zone?
Not sure yet but we're going to find out There is actually an eagle nest across the street and that is what the sign is for. I bet the people in the apartments are really going to love us now.
Got rained out on the clearing job early in the week so we started a pipe repair job. You can see the catch basin we are digging up. Had divers come out and install a plug in the pipe. We then wellpointed the hole in the pipe and should have it ready by Monday to see what we have. The clearing job dried up pretty decent so I went back on Sat to keep cutting. Got the log deck cut and ready to be stumped. Not sure how this is going to work i guess rain days only count if the rain comes from the south?
Now that's a first for me. Tell us more about that operation.
It is pretty simple really. The plugs are inflatible rubber bags. The one we used was about 6 feet long when deflated and would fit through a manhole cover, add 15 pounds of air and it will plug a 42 inch pipe. We had divers come in because the pipe was full of dirt as well as the box. They used our 3 inch pump to dredge the dirt out of the pipe and box. The pipe is completely under water so there is no way you were going to get the plug in the pipe without dive gear. The plugs work great and have used them many times. The divers did a great job as always. Very professional group of guys. Once we fix the pipe. We deflate the bag and pull it out.
Finally got the parking lot ready to pave. We did the fine grading of the rock on Sat. Worked out good because we got a bunch of rain on the clearing job and got it wet and slick. The same storm that got the clearing job wet also blew down a planted tree in the parking lot. I guess the landscapers figured they did not need to stake the trees. Took them almost 2 weeks to figure they needed to be irrigated On to more exciting things, our new tractor came in this week. It should be a big help with another truck hauling logs and mulch now. Still gotta put all the ginger bread on it.
That is another sharp rig LC. I bet it will be even better when you get it the way you want it.
Thanks man. I like the look with the drop visor and the two tone paint. My brothers has gotten a bunch of stuff for it already. Just gotta have time to install it.
We got the parking lot paved this week. We also did a lot of work on the clearing job. We ground up a lot of the un-merchantable timber as well as started hauling logs out. A view from the skidder 27.9 tons of mixed hardwood saw logs.
Always impressed by ya'lls operation LC. Looks like it's dry up there too.
Thanks CM. I appreciate that! Yeah it has been pretty dry. We get a few rains here and there but nothing to steady or widespread.
After a nice dry spell things got wet this week. Had 4 days in a row with rain on the clearing job. The owners rep is an idiot and said there was no reason not to work. Instead of 6 inches of topsoil now he had 1 to 2 feet of muck. We can't get any logs out so we are piling them up.
The owners rep just cost the owner a lot more money. At least your logs will be heavy for the mill.
Yes he did. Finally dried up a little today than after we left, a severe thunderstorm moved through again. He said he knows about clearing, I hope he knows about muck! The hardwoods aren't bad but I need to get the pine out before they turn blue. With the heat they don't last long but the rain does help them.
The clearing job is still a mess. It has rained 5 out of 7 days there. Can't get much done except making making mud. Can't get the truck to the logs so are taking the logs to the truck. These pine logs are going to be shipped overseas. Cleared a small lot as well and hauled of the strippings and started hauling in fill dirt.
Ya'll have been getting the rain up north, we're dry as a popcorn fart down here. We have rain on the forecast for almost everyday next week but unless it's 1-2" a day, I'm not even worrying about it. What's special about the pine logs that they are going overseas? Or is it just demand for SYP.
We have been getting a good bit of rain. The clearing job is the only one that is getting to be a pain. Every time it dries up a little, we get another pop up storm that dumps an inch. The material is poor and with water added, not good. Looked like you guys were going to get some rain last night by the look of the radar. As for the pine logs, the only thing special is the price per ton It works out good for us because the local pine mill will only take up to 28 inches and there are some that are 36" on that job.. The export logs only have to have a 12 inch tip and be 19 foot 4 long.
Did something a little different this week. I had to push off a sir charge and use the excess fill to build what will be the backyards and tie it into the driving range. We rented a 700 Deere to do the pushing and grading.
Surcharge for the building pads? How's the 700 to run? Heard good things about them.
Yes the building pads were surcharged. The funny thing is they are only going to be small cottages. The 700 is real nice. Has a good ride and plenty of power. It is the perfect size big enough to move some dirt and agile enough to be a good trim dozer.
LC do you know what your East walking floor is for yardage, sideboard height, and tare weight? Cedars are haunting my dreams again. Plotting and planning instead of sleeping.
Hey hvy, The trailer is a 48 footer, it is 100 inches tall and holds 120 yards. When we haul mulch it makes a dent in the pile
We have been getting rain here and have been back and forth to the clearing job. Trying to get that finished up. 28 tons of red oak export logs heading for China Took down the giant pine on the job. It was about 110 feet tall not including the stump. Spent Saturday cutting in for some 18 inch stand up curb. Our curb is going to tie into brick curb. Here is a pic of the footer. The GC took the brick curb out of our contract because they said they could get it done cheaper. Now I know why.
What's that a 1.5" footing under the new brick curb?
I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt and let's call it two inches . I guess they figure the inch or two mortar will make it all good.
Oh c'mon...it ain't that thick. Always look forward to your updates LC!
Hey JNB, thanks. Haven't seen any updates from you in a while, need to keep us in pics
I assume your grade is level? If so it looks like that footer has about 3" of side slope to it
We have 1.5 tenths of rise to the back of the curb but yes, they are not right on grade either. We have 6 inches of rock and 2 inches of asphalt going in.
Hey Landclearer, how has your Volvo 300D been for you? I am considering buying one locally and would like your thoughts on yours. Thanks for continuing to update your thread with pics, I always enjoy looking at them!
Thanks, glad you enjoy the pics. I love to see whatever everyone else does so I figure I should share as well. I love our 300. It is great on fuel, smooth and fast and strong. It is well balanced and travels good. We have had some trouble with the regen system. I am not sure if it is just ours or it is a common problem. If you could get the service records on the machine you are looking at, I would check to see if they have had any trouble with the regen.
We finally got the go ahead to demolish the house that burned in Oct.(pics earlier in thread). Didn't really need to start yet because we are busy but you never get just the right amount of work. Moved the 160 in and started by picking through the debris to get a load of copper out. Sent this load out to get it off the truck and have almost as much piled up again.
your lucky that the copper was still there
I know, I always get nervous about that. I have a pile there now and I put big hunks of roof on top of it and set the bucket on that.
No doubt. Might be that copper is under $2 a lb here, might've not been worth the meth heads time. Reminds me of a large demo I did in the 'hood back in '13 when scrap was $.14 a pound. We had to lock the safety chain on the rear door of the 40's and put a mangled mess of bar joists on top to keep the crack heads from stealing it.
Fortunately there are not much in the way of meth heads around this job but I do know what you mean. It must have been bad to have to chain the rear door shut We don't use containers so we try to get a load of scrap and haul without letting it sit if we are in a bad part of town. We got a 1.50 for that since it is burnt. They call it refinery at our scrap yard. Not bad for 3 hours of work.
I didn't realize that was a load of copper! I know you said you were pulling the copper out but I didn't realize that the load was all copper. What was it copper roof panels/flashing? Yeah you did good for 3 hours of work.:drinkup
Yes that was one of our triaxles with nothing but copper roof panels. I have another pile getting close to the same size and I am still digging through the debris. Every once in a while you get lucky and come out on top
Worked on the demo job this week. Got a few pics. It is very tight site and a pain. Trash is heavy on this one also compared to a regular demo. I think I have most of the copper out now. This is the second load. This one is really packed on there and there is more than the last load. It will be interesting to see what we get on Monday morning.
Love the last pic. That's downright pretty!
I think so too
Just curious what ya'll are paying per ton for C&D and how far do you have to truck it to the landfill? Another C&D pit re-opened here and it's a low bidding war with the landfills to get haulers across the scales. Some haulers with volume are getting sub $14 a ton at the gate.
We take our stuff to a transfer station that is about an 90 to 100 mile round trip. That is the closest place for us and it is inside a building on a clean concrete slab so no worries about turning over or flat tires. The down side is we pay $55 per ton? I wish we were paying $14 a ton.
A few pics from this week. On Mon and Tues we dyed mulch so no pics of that. Worked on the demo job and got a total of 6000 pounds of copper and 5 tons of steel. Did get a little Ironplanet bargain(pics for CM, fellow Ironplanet bargain hunter). Got this for $3300. not bad, runs great and is in good shape. On Sat I cleared this lot and spread some fill next to a previous job to move the water further away from the finished house when it rains.
Congrats on the find. Work looks clean as usual. :usa
Nice find. One thing about buying Sunbelt equipment is the equipment is ready to run when they send it to auction. One of their mechanics told me that when I was picking up some pressure washers. If there is something that needs to be repaired or replaced they do it before it goes on the block. My trench roller had two brand new eye balls at $500 a piece installed when I bought it. 6K lbs of copper, nice.:naughty
A trench roller is next in the list. The Sunbelt guy told me that they have to have anything they sell ready to rent before it goes up for sale so i agree the sunbelt stuff is a good way to go. As for the copper my mathin skills were off, we did three trips 2500, 4200, and 1400 pounds. Never though there would have been that much.
There is a nice trench roller (239 hrs) coming up next week on IP in Nebraska. I bid minimum on it but it was already bid up over $3K and I wasn't interested if I couldn't steal it. Wow that's a lot of copper off one house, that was a nice little check right there.
3k for the trench roller still sounds like a good deal but when you factor in trucking to us it is getting up there. Yeah the copper was a nice little bonus on that job. Never thought it would be that much.
If I needed one I would go a bit more aggressive. It'll be interesting to see what it sells for.
Its the same way for us, the transfer station is the closest spot to go with demo debris, its nice to have a good spot to dump at and not have to worry about nails or getting stuck! We pay almost $70 a ton. Its crazy to think of only having to pay $14 a ton CM
The $14 a ton is not what I'm paying, that's reserved for some haulers who have the volume. My average cost per ton over the 6 ton cap on a 30 is $20-26 depending on the landfill. Even if I hauled it myself I wouldn't get that good of a rate due to low volume. Current average rate on a 30 is around $500 with a 6 ton cap. Average demo box will be 9 tons, so I'm in around $560 per 30 yard can. A couple of extra tons on the box doesn't really affect the job cost unless it's a large demo. All in all if I were paying $70 a ton and that was the going rate for my area it wouldn't make a difference to me, just another line item cost on the bid. The market is what the market is.
The way things are going I see $70 a ton in our near future. 5 years ago we were paying $33 per ton. 30 years ago the county landfill charged $6.50 per ton and now we can't even haul into the county dump.
I am not sure how cans work around here. I think they charge a flat rate to pick up plus the tonnage. When bidding residential jobs we run into guys that dump in a hole somewhere or haul it somewhere and burn it so when we pay $55 ton and do it right it makes it tough. We always list on our bid that the debris is being dumped at a Dhec approved dump.
The bubba's with a backhoe that dump illegally are tough to compete against but they eventually get caught. Problem is there is another one to take their place. In my working radius (100 miles) we have 9 C&D landfills that we can haul to.
You nailed it. I know of two guys that do that stuff now. We work for reputable contractors and do stuff the right way but if you get an individual that gets a price that will save him 10k, you might as well forget that job.
I got a pick of the last job for our 320. We sold it so we could get something bigger. Finished loading the trash on this lot and stripped it as well as tree protection and silt fence. Finished the demo job this week as well. This was a low pressure job so we worked on it when we had time. We had the skidsteer there with the skeleton bucket for cleanup. Had some good sized footers and a nice set of stairs.
Nothing to exciting going on this week. My brother took some pics of the mulch dying but did not get them from him. First couple pics is a fun job. The owners decided they wanted some conduits to be installed for future buildings. Only problem was we had to tunnel under the new sidewalk and dig across the existing asphalt. I wouldn't have been bad if the dirt was not like concrete I really wish Cat would come up with a better way to change oil in a C27
Demo'ing steps is always a crapshoot. I've torn them out where it was just CMU walls on light footings with rubble, gravel and dirt fill to the ones that were solid concrete. Those were pretty good sized footings for a house. What were the conduits for - communications? That's a lot of heavy lifting for an oil change..:cool2
One conduit was for future fire alarm the other was for future irrigation. The wrecker was a 75 ton rotator. Cat figured they would do a "product update " because they have had oil pumps fail and loose some motors. One was at our county landfill.
I hear ya, it doesn't really make any difference like you said, I just find it interesting how much the price for things like that can vary over the country. I've never used a dumpster, filled a couple for different folks, but never ordered one. I've got some taller sides that I put on the tandem so I can haul just over 25 cu. yds with it, usually weigh in at around 6 tons for that yardage on a normal demo. I can put a guy in a truck and haul almost the same yardage as a dumpster and be more flexible time wise with it, the only downside is with the truck I have about 10 minutes a turn loading it that I wouldn't have with a can... 6 one way, half dozen the other...
Too late to edit the post now, but sorry for hijacking your thread Landclearer ops
No worries! I just saw it and was going to reply. I would do the same if I were you. Like you said, you are getting nearly the same yardage as a can and the truck is yours. Makes good sense to me. You didn't hijack my thread so no need to apologize. Nice to see how you do demo.
Thanks, I figure its pretty efficient, for the same yardage I would have to hire a semi and short dump and they still carry the same yardage and weight. If I did a lot of demo I would get a big walking floor like you guys have, 2 loads off a house would be nice
I'd do the same and use what you have. Currently I don't own any dump trucks and it works for my business model at this time. In the past I've had two. Cans work for me as they're a convenience and I price them into the job. It's nice to make a phone call and have a couple of 30's or 40's show up on the job and a phone call to make them go away. There is also a 60CY dump trailer I can get for the bigger demos. BTW - you can hijack LC's thread all you want.:tong
Sometimes you think trucks are a pain but for us we need them. Between hauling dirt, trash and mulch we keep them busy. One thing I do like about cans is it is easy to load them on the ground. Feel free to hijack it keeps things interesting
It was a busy week here. We also had 5 inches of rain on Weds from the tropical storm. We did get to work until lunch time. Still had a pretty productive week. Got started on a 70 acre mulching job. This job will be stretched out over a while. I am mulching areas for the archeological dig on a future development. As you can see you never know what you are going to find. This is about a truckload of field plastic. Finished filling the residential lot and put 1200 feet of silt fence up for the same builder on a new condo job(no pics of the silt fence). Also started fine grading the rock in a small parking lot we are doing.
70 acres of mulching that's a nice sized job. What's field plastic? The black plastic farmers use to cover the rows?
Yes the field plastic is what they cover the rows with. They used to burn it now I guess they are environmentally friendly and dump it in the edge of the woods It is 70 acres but it is in little pieces all over the 1400 acres so it is kind of a pain but it is hourly so that is ok.
I know what you mean with the mowing. We run a 721e hydro-ax with a rotary deck. I was mowing a old industrial site this week. It was like a very loud treasure hunt. Found many interesting things including a very deep hand dug well.
I am glad to know someone else feels my pain . The place I am at is not as bad your your job but there are areas that have a fair amount of steel. I actually found a boiler, steel pipe and a tone of barb wire in one area. I left that area and we are going to bring in an excavator to pick up the steel before I mow it.
I ended up just grubbing some areas out as well. Not worth getting a flat tire. The only good thing about a rotary head is that they seem more tolerant to debris. The mulching head like yours leaves a much nicer finished product though.
I fully agree, the rotary heads are more tolerant. Everything has its pluses and minuses. Most of the people we mulch for want a small end product without any big shards.
We got the paving contractor lined up for Monday so we finished grading the small parking lot, an on street parking area as well as some other areas we took the asphalt out so they could pave instead of just having several patches. We did start the clearing on the condo job but only got one pic. Will get some of that this week.
Worked on the mulching job this week. Before I started back we replaced the windshield. The Tigercat dealer wanted $2600 for it. It is 1.25 thick lexan Found a piece on Ebay for $1100 with shipping. We did have to cut it to size. Found some fun stuff while mulching also. A boiler a bunch of tires, some steel pipe and a mess of barbed wire fence. It is always an adventure.
Good find on that window!! What kind of blade did you use in the skill saw for cutting the lexan?
We used a 36 tooth finish blade. Came out perfect. Cuts great and were very happy with the results.
Hope your equipment is out of the low country. Stay safe out there buddy!
Thanks man, going to try, looks like it is going to be a little worse than they were predicting yesterday. I will try to post something after the storm goes through.
Stay safe! They don't really know what this thing is going to do.
Thanks CM. Every night when I go to bed it looks good, next morning it looks not as good. They say it should be over by 5:00 pm sat. As long as we don't get bad storm surge we will be ok.
so how did y'all make out down there. I just got a call from from a guy I know said he is going that way with roll offs to clean out some walmart's thats been flooded
How did you fare LC?
Hey Clint, CM we did ok and thank you guys for asking. We had almost 10 inches of rain and from what I have heard about 75 mile an hour winds. We were lucky as the worst of the storm came at low tide so that kept the storm surge down. We have been clearing roads since 9:00 on Sat. It was still windy and raining but the worst had passed. There are a good number of trees down about 40 or so on one road we opened today. Hooefully we will have all the roads open on the island after tomorrow. Bad part, no power and cold showers. I seriously need some power before my office work gets so far behind I will never see the end Thanks again guys!
Glad to hear the damage wasn't as bad as it was predicted!:drinkup
I going to post some pics of what hurricane Matthew did. We worked for almost 3 days opening up roads then the town asked us to run the tree disposal site for them.
Wow. How much infrastructure was damaged other than trees down?
Some pics of our dump site and cleanup.
There were a few places that washed out along the roadway but very little damage to infrastructure. Because of the flooding the pavement on several roads is cracking up do to the saturated rock and subgrade.
Glad to hear you weathered the storm OK. Will you have to push some regular work back due to clean up work?
Amazing that there wasn't as much damage as they were predicting. Glad you guys made out ok. What island were you working on. Isle of palm?
Thanks buddy. Yes we have had to push some stuff back but we are still doing regular work. Moved the grinder Sat morning, ground 2 acres and then moved it back to the dump site that afternoon.
I am glad we had no more damage than we did. We got lucky and did not have a big storm surge. We are working on Kiawah Island, just south of Charleston, Isle of Palms is just north. Edisto which is one more island south got hammered. There are places where there is 4 feet of sand on the roads.
Spent the week grinding storm debris. We also did a few other small things but nothing exciting. The most exciting thing that happened was our new 250, the replacement for our 320D came in this week. 250 and 300 together 250 Pic of the dump site Someone had fun cutting all the way through this live oak stump!
Had a break from mulching and grinding storm debris this week. We had to prep a pool and grade a basement for concrete on a big residential job we cleared a while back. I think I could sell this to Kubota for an add. Tight areas in here, had about 3 inches on either side to get the mini between the columns, I think the block mason got an F on this one!
I see we both had nice, tight high dollar residential jobs in the last couple of weeks. Must've been aggravating working underneath the steel. Now the mason did get an F on that one but who "found" the failing grade.:tong
LOL. Would you believe I just had a feeling it was hollow? Actually we had to take out a course of block that ran across the garage door so the skidsteer could go in and that corner was broken when we took that out.
Well we have been looking for a bigger dozer, we don't need a new machine since we don't need it on a daily basis and renting for a day or two is pain. I was going though Machinery Trader and saw this 6D. Got our Cat dealer to get the inspection report and all looked good. It has a nearly new undercarriage, runs and shifts great. I am looking forward to doing a little pushing with it.
Looking good!! Do you have an Instagram Landclearer?
Thanks Jmac! No Instagram, I have a hard enough time posting pics on here
That's a sweet D6D LC, congrats! Love to find a nice dozer like that to keep our dump pushed off. I didn't know they made it in LGP, learn something new everyday.
It has been a while but it has been busy busy! These are a few older pics from before Christmas. Had to repair a slab and surrounding asphalt at a gas station we frequent. The sand around the tanks settled and the slab stated to sag as well as the asphlat so we had to redo the one end.
A few more. This is a 4 acre clearing job with a house demo on it. There was 62 tons of wood debris, 60 -70 tons of brick and about 100 tons of concrete on this. The brick and concrete are estimates as the loads were not scaled. The last 2 are from a little pipe job. I have pics of the pipe but they are on my phone.
That tank is not trying to float is it
I don't think it tried to float but can't say for sure. The guy that runs the gas station made sure the tank was full before we removed the concrete.
Neat to see how they do things in other places. They back fill underground tanks here with pea stone. Usually by a stone slinger or concrete conveyor truck. The pipe job on a golf course?
Around here they use mason sand to backfill around tanks. I don't think there is a stone slinger within a 100 miles of us. Don't know why, there are jobs we could use them on. Yes that is a golf course we were on.
All I use now to back fill is stone chips or pea gravel. Pretty much stops the settling problems, and doesn't flow away like sand does.
Had 3 lots to clear this week. One was easy, two were a pain with a ton of tree canopy that you can't disturb. I did find something interesting in a palm tree. It is a 50 cal. (that according to people who know) is from WWII. They would fly over and and use the area as a practice range.
How did you stumble across that round?
I saw the hole in the palm tree and did a little digging and heard metal tinking. There's another one on the lot next to the one I did and will take a look at that one when clear it.
That's pretty cool LC. One day I'd love to have my own 50 cal.
I am looking forward to the next lot as there is one on there as well. I would love to have a .50 cal also. I do have a Smith and Wesson 500 magnum
Landclearer time to buy a slinger
A friend of mine has a 50bmg. Quite a novel device. Take a wad of $5 out of your wallet and say bang as you drop each one on the table. The gun is the cheapest part of the deal.
Thought about it but we have enough irons in the fire as it is( haha). Wonder what they bring an hour?
Yes that is an expensive toy to play with for sure. I think it is like $2.00 per round for my 500.
Been super busy at work and not to much time for pics but did get some this Week. We are screening 20-25000 yards of dirt. The stuff is wet and sticky and were having trouble getting it through the trommel so we are using a Powerscreen Warrior, Once we got the right screens in, it started producing pretty good. As you can see there are a few roots in the stuff
Been a while since i posted any pics. Its just been crazy busy. Here are some misc pics. A couple building pads we did this week. Got the screen loaded and ready to head to the next one. Here is 27 tons of export pine logs. A 3 phase power line that was bored through a 30 inch pine stump. The line was de-energized before we started and the line was located.
Just a couple pics from Saturday afternoon. Went out to the pit to dig a little dirt and strip some topsoil. Very enjoyable running the 6, I couldn't hear a phone ring if I wanted to .
That's some fine topsoil LC, I bet once it's ran through the screener it fetches top dollar. The pine logs for export, where are they headed?
Hey CM. Yes we do have good topsoil along the coast. Most of the area was tomato farms at one time or another. Farming is all but gone now, the only thing we grow around here now is apartment complexes and subdivisions. The export logs go to China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia depending on the exporter.
Jealous of those digging conditions at the moment. The chert pit we are digging structural fill out of is very hard and abrasive. Put a new set of teeth on the hoe Wed. of last week, dug 10 hours Thursday, 4 hours Friday and 8 hours today - will need a new set tomorrow. We put a new set on the '53 before we mob'd to this job and it's in need of a new set as well. The loader has only been support for the hoe in the pit cleaning up the haul road and pushing down the slopes. Must be nice digging and grading that sand. Since you are close to the coast, how does the salt water/air affect the equipment? Never would've thought southern yellow pine would be an exportable commodity. You have any idea of what they are using it for? Gotta be expensive wood once it lands there.
There are 2 good things about sand, easy digging and easy dewatering. Our 300 has over 2000 hours on the teeth and it has done some demo and worked in concrete. If you go about a mile inland the sand turns from white/gray beach sand to and orange course sand. The white stuff is not the best grading material but the inland sand grades great as well as compacts with minimal water. If you go about a mile inland the salt in the air is much less also. You get surface rust pretty quick if you are close to the beach but inland it is much better. As for the export logs, as far as I know they cut lumber out of them. There is nothing special about the logs other than they have to have a 10 inch tip and be pretty straight and not to many knots. Lumber must be real expensive over there because they pay us more than the local lumber mill plus they have to load the containers, ship them, unload them and do the milling. I added a few pics of the screening from early in the week then moved to a clearing job with the cutter. Moved the grinder in late Sat and will grind and stump this week.
We had rain for the first three days this week so got started stumping on Thurs. Got a few pics from the skidder dragging whole trees to the grinder and a few more of the stumping. Apparently this is an area with bionic pines. The pic of the stump is only about a 15 inch tree on the butt
Cool pics as always LC. How many hours on the D6?
Thanks JNB. Not sure on the real hours. The meter says 2963 but it has more than that. Still pushes like hell!
Glad to see ya'll are staying busy LC. That pine stump is wild but I guess it has to be that deep in order to stay upright in the sand, interesting how the species adapts to it's environment. A 15" pine down here would have a 2-4' root ball with a tap root that breaks off still in the ground. BTW I was up your way Tuesday. Went to Florence to pick up another trench roller I bought on IP for our new utility crew. I would've rang you up but I had to drop it off Wed. and put it to work.
As long as our pines have plenty of water they will have ball stumps just like yours. It is neat how the same species of tree will grow completely in different conditions. I wish you had time to stop by. We could have gave you the $.10 grand tour. Are you adding another crew?
Yes I've added an underground crew. Had an opportunity come up with a large fire sprinkler company to sub their underground work - the loops and lead ins. BTW - It's a long damn way from Birmingham to Florence, SC.
Landclearer did you get a service truck? If so, it's a good looking unit.
CM, I live about halfway between where he's at and Florence. If I'd have known you were there, I'd have come to Florence and bought you lunch. Oh, and I have driven to Birmingham, it's a very long way.
Mitch I would've taken you up on that.
HVY the white Ram is My brothers new truck. H got rid of the F550 for the Ram. I am working on getting myself a new truck, the single cab pickup ain't cutting it anymore
CM, that is great about the utility crew. Did you get a whole crew from somewhere or did you put one together. Seems like utility crews around here move in packs and like to stay together. It was a long drive but shipping would have killed you. if you do ever want to ship something let me know i have a guy that is Johnny on the spot and prices are great.
A few pics of a demo we are doing. First thing is get the copper Take note of the rebar and plastic. Not sure what to say about that!
LC I got a 3 man crew with a very knowledgable foreman I've known for over 10 years. Freight was ridiculous. I left AL at lunch and spent the night in Augusta, drove to Florence and back to Birmingham the next day. Not too bad.
Working on clearing 3 county roads. Could not have been a worse time to clear these. We have been getting rain about every other day. The first one was not to bad. The second which is where the pics are from is real bad. Black muck and not much of a bottom in some areas. We had to corduroy one area to get the trash out. Hope to finish it to tomorrow. Going to go fishing for the logs we pounded into the mud (haha).
It has been a little while since I posted some pics. We've been real busy and had Irma come through. I figured I would post a few pics of a rip rap job we did after Irma. I think it was a 100 tons of rip rap and about 20 loads of fill to repair the road and pond bank that washed out.
A few pics of a job we just finished. There was a 38 foot tall pile of dirt in the woods and they wanted it cut down to elevation 16. Some people say it was put there in the civil war as a look out. Didn't find anything from the civil war but did fine lots of .50cal shells and bullets from WWII.
Old firing range maybe. I've seen the like where there was an old army training camp from WWII era.
From what they say, fighters would fly over and use the area to practice. I can't say if they are right but that is what several people have said including an archeologist.
Here are couple pics of a little project I started yesterday. During Irma the tide came over this piece of land and washed out into an existing pond. Now the ponds go up and down with the tide so they want us to block it off. It is hard to tell from the pics but the bigger trees that are in the washout are 70-80 foot trees. I used the saw to cut my way in then got the 300 to stump the trail through the woods. I guess it is about 1500 feet long.
LC you said you used the saw to work you way in and I thought - man that's a lot of chainsaw work, then I saw the feller buncher.
Lol. CM the saw stays in the truck as much as possible. The buncher makes my life easy and I sure do love running it.
Couple more pics of storm repairs. Had to install some rip rap along a causeway after it washed out. Of course it had to rain while doing it. Figured I would throw in a Pete pic. I was clearing a lot on Sat and used the small trailer because the driveway was so long and did not want to carry the trash that far. Note tree protection by others(haha).
Contract read - "Tree Protection by OTHERS". Man that's some black dirt in the last pic.
I don't want the credit for that I had the triaxle hauling the topsoil to the washout job and needed something dry just to get the truck on site to load the debris. The topsoil has been tested and is fine for building on so I figured it would do ok for a temp road to get a truck in.
We are back to this job again. We cleared it a few months ago and it was a real bog. The guys we cleared it for asked if we could muck and fill the roads for them. It is a county job and they want to muck 2 feet below subgrade and then place woven fabric then 2 lifts of sandy fill, geo grid then rock base.
You really do nice work Chris!!
Thanks bud!
LC is that a typical buildup for your soil conditions? Usually we'll do geogrid on top of the muck, rock, fabric, fill and rock base. Depending on how bad the muck is determines the size of the rock used. I've used rip-rap where it was really bad to #57 on top of the grid.
CM, that is a good question. If you get 100 engineers you will get a 100 different answers. I do agree that the geogrid should be on top of the muck then the fill but they want the woven fabric as a seperation on this job. What we mucked down to is sandy clay that is saturated but relatively firm. Got fill coming in tomorrow and we are going to see what happens.
We got one road mucked and filled this week. The place is just saturated. The fill was wet, the ground itself was wet and that's just not good. Put in over 1000 yards on this one. Take a look at the pics and you can see how much effort is put into taking care of trucks in Chas. area. I think the one truck had about 3yds stuck in the bed. None of our trucks were used on this job.
My wife just walked by and saw your "sandy fill" on my laptop and said...Why is that not in my arena? Thanks LC!
Sorry I got you in trouble! I am sure we could ship some to you
If I hire out an 18-20 yard tri-axle, I expect to haul 18-20 loose yards per load. With that much material stuck in the bed, the dump truck company is not giving the customer what they are paying for.
Hey CM, The pits around here will only load 16yds on a triaxle so we were not really losing. When you go there they put 4 buckets on and that's it. It's hard to believe a driver would let it go so long before he digs it out. The stuff in the bottom will be like concrete.
Got a few pics of the washout job. Still got a ways to go on it. A pic of the 6 with the new sweeps, fuel tank guard and rear screen also.
LC if I had a 100K yards of that black dirt down here in AL I could retire, as it would easily bring $10 a CY the pit. The 6 looks like it's still earning it's keep. Nice grade work in the 2nd pic.
The 6 looks pretty slick in new duds.
You would have cried if you saw us put 25k yards in the bottom of a pond just because the owner wanted to get rid of it. It was a shame. Screened topsoil goes for $14 at the pit here. Yes the old girl does real good. One of my favorite machines to run. Thnaks JNB. We got a winch for her , gotta get it fixed and installed a few odds and ends then we are going to get it painted.
I thought I would post some pics. It’s been a while and we have been so busy. Here are a few pics of a demo job we did. We actually cleared the lot and dug the footers for this house in the mid 90s. I guess we saw this one from start to finish.
Why did they demo it?
The house had been for sale for a while and they almost had a deal, it fell thru and the realtor said they should demo it and sell the lot. It’s only about 200 feet from the beach so the lot is worth a ton of money.
Here are a few pics of a parking lot job we are doing now. The parking areas are brick pavers and the drive lanes will br asphalt. Threw a pick of my truck in there as well.
Congrats on the new truck LC! I like flatbeds set up like that. We get paid to tear down perfectly good buildings as well. Recently torn down a perfectly good building that was bank to put in an auto parts store. The way I look at it is we are in the "Land Recycling" business.
Thanks CM. Yeah I really like the flatbed also. Still don’t have all my stuff on it. I still want to get a compressor for it and I have to mount my vice. We need to add “Land Recylcing” to our business cards. That is a good one!
Getting the parking lot ready for paving. Supposed to pave on thurs. The bad part is having to work around everyone on the entire job that does not care about our work. We also had to grade the back of the building and make sand dunes out of topsoil.
Finally got it paved. Glad to away from this job. It took 309 tons of asphalt and 16000 sq feet of pavers.
I took some two inch hitch tubing, welded them up a L shape, welded a plate on that and bolted my 6" vise on. Its a little heavy at 57 lbs but it sure works good when stuck into the receiver hitch. Gets the vise back to where it is handy for use and is not in the way on the bed when not needed.
That’s a really good idea. I have the vice sitting in the box, just have not had time to mount it yet.
I have set a couple vices up to go into a stake pocket too. Seemed to be a little tougher that the hitch tubing. Both work well.
I think I might have to mount right to the bed. I pull trailer all the time so taking the hitch out would be a pain and I have used my last stake pocket to make my little tailgate. Not sure what I’m going to do.
Here is a new job we started. We are building 10 tennis courts and we are in the clearing phase . We are almost at a stand still there is phone and cable tv running over the property line and in our clearing area. The owner cannot even get the cable company to call him back.
Buildings never stood a chance!!
Lol. They didn’t!
Bump. Everything all right down there L/C?
Hi Shimmy, thanks for asking, all is good. Just so busy down here. I really do need to post some stuff. We have some interesting jobs coming up in 2019.
Here are some pictures of a clearing job we are doing. 30 acres of pine. I wish it had another 10 years on it but it is what it is. Since we started all it has done is rain.
pics of the logging part. Got the wood stacked up and ready to load. A load of pulp A load of 8s
It’s been a long time since I posted. Seems there is never enough hours in a day. Anyway here are some pics of a flood control project we worked on. We helped out a contractor we do a ton of work for. Their Deere 350 wouldn’t lift the pads and wall sections so we brought our 350 in. We installed 60 inch pipe on these. We also did a two section one as well.
Nice work LC! Good to see you back around! Those pre-cast headwalls are slick as snot of a doorknob. Who made them Oldcastle?
Hi CM, Glad to be back. Tindall did the precast walls. Absolutely perfect. They did a great job on them.
Not familiar with Tindall but it looks like they make a fantastic product.
These came out of their plant in Spartanburg SC. From what I understand they have a patent on the rear wings. They act as tie backs.
Good to see you back, LC.
Def nice looking head-walls, any other dissipators planned or just rip-rap?
Thanks Shimmy. JLarson, just the rip rap. They actually got flap gates installed on them. Once we got the pads walls and pipe in our part was done so I don’t gave any pics of the gates.
A little clearing job I did about a month or two ago. It was for an auto parts store.
Starting a job for four cottages at theOcean Course in March of 20. Laying some pipe before the building went in because it would have been about 11 feet deep after the building pads were in. Also our trucks hauling in fill for the pads.
A few more pics of the same job. Had to backfill in side of the foundations. Look at the size of the this piers for a little house.
Here are few pics of the power conduits and communication conduits we put in at the cottages
Retaining wall on the cottages. No the top is not supposed to be level
Nice work LC. Here in AL we can't run the secondary power conduits from the transformer pad to the building, only licensed electricians can run it. However we can run the primary conduits for miles since the primary is on APCO's side of the grid. Gov't right? That's an interesting retaining wall. Is that 5/4 PT decking board?
How is that going to stand up? are there tiebacks going in?
CM you would think things in this country would be more standardized. I guess it just depends on where you go as to who can do what. As for the retaining wall that is 2x6 maybe 2x8 sloppy V tongue and groove. We still needed to add more back strapping in the one pic. That is what the architect spec’ed and it does hold up good. There are no tie backs at all. You bury the same amount below ground as you want above and compact around the bottom. We usually lay it back about one inch with a four foot level so when you backfill it is perfectly vertical.
We have to install water quality units on most jobs now. This one was a real pain. Wellpoints and rock to get t dried out enough.
Bought this little guy the other day. It’s a 99 with 980 hours. That’s the original paint. Machine is like new.
Nice 455! What's the history on it and what do ya'll plan to use it for?
We bought it out of Virginia from a little farm dealer. It’s all original, paint and undercarriage and so on. We’re going to use it on some of our residential work, filling pools and foundations and stuff like that.
Nice machine! Martin equip is our local dealer
Doing a clearing job. A few pics of the log deck when we were getting it cleared.
The trees on the job are trash we are bucking a log off the butt then chipping the rest. Some huge stumps on it as well.
Well we decided to trade blue for yellow. CBI 680CT
First grinding with the new machine at the yard then moving to its first clearing job.
I always enjoy your pics, do you guys have a slow time of year, or are you steady all year?
LC It's good to see you back. Thank you for taking the time to post pictures of what you have been doing. Keep them coming.
Newly, we stay rolling all year. We don’t even get a slow down. Sometimes I do wish we had a slow time to catch up on some things that need doing. Thanks Kenworth. I appreciate that. Will post a bunch of pics of a decent size demo we are doing.
This is the building. It is one acre under roof. It was a conference center with several ball rooms. Would have been a lot easier if we could have taken down some of the trees and the slab was not elevated the way it is.
The demo is going good. Lots of scrap coming out. You can see we are pulling out some wire and 3 inch copper water line.
Just picked this up. We had our welder make a bracket so we could connect our coupler bracket to the he grapple. Will get some pics of it mounted on the 250 this week.
Nice work on the scrap and copper. Last big demo we did I told my guys they could have the copper and I'll take the scrap metal in 30's. The building had a lot of copper like the one ya'll are doing. Turds made out with $6,800 in copper and all I got was $3,600.
Lol I guess nice guys finish last. Just kidding. We save everything that’s metal. A lot of people say it’s not worth it but I think it is.
. My guys had nice Christmas as they cashed out on the 23rd of Dec. I was happy for them. No doubt on the metal. The building was around 8K SF and we salvaged a little over $10K in scrap - that's worth the time to me.
Few pics of crushing concrete. Storm was rolling in a dumped a ton of rain that afternoon.
Processing for the crusher.
Looking awesome as always. How are ya'll liking your Thunder Creek trailer? Is it all fuel or PM tanks as well? Tell us more about the magnet. Are you using a hydraulic generator on the hoe? Next economic cycle I want to go both feet in and buy a crusher.
Plus one on the magnet question. How much power and what voltage does it require? What generates the power for it?
HI CM. We love the Thunder Creek. It is 990 on fuel and 100 Def. We bought it pretty much for the grinding operation. We can run the grinder an excavator and trackloader for 2-3 days depending on the job. CM and Hosspuller the magnet works off the alternator. Don’t quote me on this but I think it will pick up 800 pounds of turnings and 10000 pound sheet. It’s super simple to wire up and has been trouble free since we’ve been using it. It is made by Moley Magnetics. The factory guy told me that CSX and NS RR are using them and if they are tough enough for them they are tough enough for us
Putting some our crushed concrete to use. Two of the parking lots are new. One was a rebuild. Took up the asphalt added rock and regraded. Couple pics of the start of the paving.
LC how does the crushed concrete go down and compact compared to virgin stone? Does it take more or less water to compact compact? Our 825B or 1.5" crusher run takes a butt load of water to achieve compaction.
I like the crushed concrete. When you spread it there is very little compaction so if you do a good job of spreading it you’ll not have much work when fine grading. It depends on how much moisture is in it when you spread it but it doesn’t take massive amounts of water to get it right. We never use a nuke gauge we always proof roll because of the variables in the material. It’s about impossible to get a proctor on it and have it consistent.
Agreed on a proof roll - a loaded tandem/tri-axle never lies however a nuke gauge will with the wrong information.
You got that right. It’s real bad when they send a kid out that had about 2 hours of training lol.
I try to scrap as much as possible when tearing down houses. I did a demo for the church and told them I would give them the scrap. They didn't think much of it till it paid for a third of the cost of the demo, job.
I agree with you one hundred percent dirty. There is a lot of money to be made from scrap. We hauled 2 loads of rebar from the crusher and got $2500. That was at 5.5 cents a pound.
Moved in and did a quick screening job for one of our clearing customers. It was about 3000 yards and we did it in 3 days.
There was a little bit of everything in this pile. Sany excavator not ours!
LOL - I just spit a cold malted beverage on my screen! I was about to give you **** and ask if ya'll have swapped to Sany. Man that's some beautiful black gold right there! Question - Is there any value in the I guess you would call it "2nd" product that appears to be the smaller rocks?
Lol. Sorry about that CM. I didn’t want anyone to think we switched. As for the small overs I guess you could use it for fill in green spaces and cap it off with clean dirt. It’s mostly little dirt clods, 57 stone and small roots. We could run it again and get a little more dirt out of it but then you get small sticks in the finished product.
Got our new 220 after almost 6 months. Using it to clear two lots that are side by side. Couldn’t be more happy with the machine and the thumb. It has plenty of curve and carries logs and stumps great.
Also doing a pool demo this week. I hate doing them. No room and little equipment. Any concrete guys able to tell me why the concrete is blue I would appreciate it. It’s from the mid 90s and we run into it pretty often.
LC not sure about the blue concrete but we run into green concrete on older structures (80-100 yrs old) here due to the blast furnace slag they used as aggregate back then. Might have something to do with the salt or the high water table? The new 200 is sweet! Is the Rockland QC a wedge type or pin grabber?
Hi CM, that is interesting about the slag. I’ve never seen slag in concrete around here. The coupler on the 220 is a Volvo coupler and it is wedge lock. Volvo did a real good job on the coupler and keeps it real close to where a regular pin on bucket would be and keeping the tip radius as it should be. Sometimes I would like to have a pin grabber though so I could turn the bucket around. Volvo builds a good looking bucket but not a progressive link thumb.
Nice looking machine. I always enjoyed running the Volvo equipment.
Finished the demolition on this pool graded it off and on to the the next one.
This the next one. The pool is going to stay tearing down the old pool house, removing some walls and elevated slabs. I guess the 750sqft pool house wasn’t big enough. Took 26 tons of debris out one loader bucket at a time not including any concrete. No room at all and an 800 foot driveway. $364 worth of aluminum.
graded it off like you were never there.
Thanks Skyking! That’s what we aim for.
LC I ran across a piece of the green blast furnace slag concrete on a parking lot project downtown. This chunk is at least 100 years old. The grey chunks are blast furnace slag and pieces of glass, don't know why the cement and sand are green.
I have one to do like that, I am under the gun to remove a big gunite hot tub from the owner's back yard. His very finished back yard, right next to the pool. Lots of plywood, dunnage, some shipping blankets to protect the pool deck, two excavators, a hammer, dump truck, and little old me.
Hey CM. Sure looks like the same color as the stuff we have. I am no expert but I think it might be a chemical reaction from the cement and something else. Our green/blue stuff has limestone rock in it. Does yours turn white or light gray once it exposed to the air? It almost seems like it has not fully cured, again no expert. How hard is it compared to regular concrete?
Hi Skyking. Sounds like the same operation we had except we had a loader to haul the stuff out. Are you using a hammer? If so what size machine?
Here are a few more of the second one we are doing. Lots of equipment in a small area. Also a few pics of the pool that stays and the house.
I have a rental hammer to put on our 35. I will toss the material out of the finished yard to the slope into the dry pond, then track it out of there with the 120 to where I can load it in the dump truck. I'll post up some pictures as it develops.
I mobilized excavators yesterday and loaded dunnage and plywood and picked up the hammer today. I spent half a day getting into place, working by myself. It would have been handy to have someone setting straps and chains, and helping with the plywood and dunnage. I backfilled the wall, pulled a fence panel, set the steel plate with the big machine and set some working dunnage out ahead of me to step down with. It is an 18" high wall. I spun 90 on the steel plate and then set plywood and headed off across the lawn. here I have set the hammer in behind me and I'm grabbing the steel sheet off the lawn before it does any harm. I picked the hammer around ahead of me then set it down and bucketed my way up on that curb on the left and a 4x8 on shipping blankets on the pool edge. That curb has a 1/2" colorized gunite skin coat that is fragmenting off, so I don't have to protect it. The hot tub is across the end of the pool there and I have to demo my way into it to make the corner. here is the other access to that end of the pool. NOPE! I think I found the leak!
This is as close as I can get the 120. It's a little awkward.
I finished hammering this morning and grubbed out the big stuff. We are camping this weekend so I quit early today. I levered out the corner and beat on it , then grabbed this string of goodness out in one piece. Mad respect for #4 rebar. The homeowner is out of town by until tomorrow, and there was a hot tub there when he left. I figured this is 34 tons. Go ahead and make your guess, I'll report back with the load tickets.
Oh wow. That looks like a fun one Skyking! Yes there definitely is no access on that one. A really nice yard though.
Oh wow. That looks like a fun one Skyking! Yes there definitely is no access on that one. A really nice yard though. The good thing about the tough jobs are they pay well. Nothing easy on that job. Turned out good though. The owner will be surprised when he gets home. I figure 26 tons in that pike let me know if I’m close.
His friend suggested a CB in that area and some drain pipe, and we happened to have a used type 30 with a 3" sand collar mudded into it, sitting in the yard. I have been wanting to burn that one for a while. I drilled some 3" pipe and hand high graded some of the little bits for drain rock. If worst comes to pass he can set a pump in it and send it back over the wall. I think the pile was 30 plus, but I only hauled off 26 tons of the biggest stuff and tracked the rest into the pond bottom where mother nature will claim it. I replanted the little shrubs I took up to dry pack that wall and raked it all up, and got out just before the rains today. Before:
Turned out real nice. I am glad to see that we’re not the only ones doing jobs like that. Owner should be happy!
Getting started on a another demo job. It’s steel frame on an elevated slab. I wish it was a slab in grade. Would be much easier.
nice clean sort going there. Yes that would suck to fall off that.
Making pretty good progress on the demo. Been doing a few other things for the same owner in between. 4:00 Friday, need to get that scrap in the truck.
Is that a new 963!!
Why yes it is. Lol. Been ordered for over a year.
Curious on why ya'll ordered rippers?
Hey CM, well all of our 963s have been a little lite in the rear so we were going to do counterweights but I figured the ripper would make a counterweight, a bumper and a ripper as well.
LOL that's the same reason I wouldn't mind having rippers on our 953C, not necessarily for ripping but for a counterweight, bumper and an easier tow point. I see it has a black bucket so does it have a QC as well?
I used to work around a 953 or 963 that had rippers, it belonged to another guy who did a lot of work for one of my customers. That ripper was handy as a shirt pocket, we used it for everything under the sun but ripping the ground.
Interesting that it is very rare to see a track loader in our region. I think one of the landfills has one as I have seen it in to Cat for repairs, but other than that I can't think of any. Maybe softer ground conditions is the reason?
Ours is the only one around here also. Don’t know why more people don’t use them for clearing.
CM yes it is has a coupler. It is the fusion coupler Cat introduced a while back. We refitted our rake with the new couple brackets.
Even has a cooled seat!
Damn that's nice LC! Congrats! So is the cooled seat like the Ford Superduty seats that just have a fan in the seat that just circulates the cabin air or is there an A/C duct? Like that ya'll chose the directional steer instead of joystick. If I ever get another new loader I've kicked around the idea of joystick steer but I think I'd choose the standard.
CM, I believe it has an AC duct running to it. I will investigate further. As for the joystick, I thought about it but after 25 plus years running trackloader I figured it best to stick with what I know. The head of Cat trackloaders said that all the old guys run the v pattern with the pedals. The new guys like the skid steer style. I guess I’m an old guy. Oh well!
A little parking lot we did for the the same owner as the demolition job. It was high priority. 6 inches of crushed concrete, 2 inches of plantation mix and parking bumpers.
Landclearer, What do you make of the Genesis sorting grapple? Is it something you wish you'd had all along? Or just nice to have type thing? Any uses besides sorting wood/metal demolition?
Hey Savman, It is awesome! I’ve been running it on our 250 doing demo, sorting, loading scrap and debris, and I’ve been taking the concrete slab off of the steel deck. I love it. I think you can get a better load in the trucks with and you don’t have be in the perfect spot like a thumb. You can be sitting at a 45 degree angle, no problem. Yes I wish I had it all along. I’ll get some pics of what I’m doing with it today.
Here are a few pics of how the sorting grapple does on different things. I am using it to take the concrete off of the steel deck. The stuff under the steel deck is styrofoam and not concrete lol.
That's slicker than snot on a doorknob LC! Next hoe we buy will have a third hydraulic line to run a grapple or a pulverizer. That grapple looks like an awesome tool.
I second what CM said; the grapple looks awesome. Every time I load cans I'm always thinking about a rotating grapple.
Thanks CM and Savman. It is slick. Once you get used to being able to rotate you want to rotate everything (lol) CM if you have thumb lines all you need is a rotate circuit. That grapple does not need a case drain.
Man I bet. Yeah LC I was referring to another hydro circuit. Currently our 325 has a hammer/thumb line and our 321 is bare. I want to trade up the F for a next Gen 325 so we can run GPS on the hoe as well.