Hello everyone, I found this site as part of my web searches about excavators. Like many others who have posted in the past, I have a farm I am retiring to with many jobs to do a few decades of little upkeep (i.e. clean out a pond, dig some ditches for water pipe, clear out some trees). It looks like an excavator would be the machine to do this work. I don't know anything about excavators, but quite familiar with farm tractors. I am starting my search for something cheap, reliable, with parts availability, and most like likely old (i.e. pre-computer days) I am sure I will have many questions and will be reaching out to the experts on this site for help. Thanks for the help, and I look forward to interacting with you on the site.
Hello! welcome.
Welcome to HEF, ecnortan !!!
Welcome aboard!! Beautiful country up there!!
Welcome but if you want a excavator that you can get parts for it best not have the logo in your profile picture on it.
Welcome from a fellow New Yorker!
Welcome to the Forums!
Agreed, could probably get parts for the IH engine in an International excavator but not much else.
Thanks everyone for the welcome!
I've only seen one IH excavator in my lifetime sitting at a farm, it looked to be from the early 70s and pretty tired. IH construction equipment, except for the dozers, wasn't popular here in Dutchess County.
Used to see quite a few International dozers around, but not anymore. Of course, the Tenneco/Case buyout was about 40 years ago now, and heyday of IH dozers is 50 or more. I have never seen an Internatational excavator. IH was probably cutting corners with their industrial equipment toward the end as they were losing money. Even with tractors, they were falling behind in technology compared to Deere.
Welcome ecnorton2001 , from a little south of you near Ballston Spa!!
Welcome to the land of Miscreant OLD Yellow Iron!! As far as parts availability and structured repair question answers look to the advertised machines around where you are and who is running what machines pretty regular, would be a good bet as to a buy line.
Welcome, glad you found us
Reliable, available parts.....Not IH. I've always been a fan of OLD IH tractors, In the 1950s & 1960s, specially in the 1970s the IH tractor dealer was 1/2 mile away. These days I have a Cub in pieces I keep promising myself I'll reassemble. Engine has been rebuilt. I have an M, a B275, & a 385. In the shed is another M owned by my son. Excavators are very rare built by IH, but you know that. I've never owned an excavator, I consider them less versatile than a backhoe. I have owned 5 backhoes. Backhoes are in my opinion more versatile & much more mobile. I own land 3 miles from home. I can drive there in a backhoe in minutes, It'd take longer to hook the truck to the trailer.
I'm all confused about NY. My son lives in Rock City Falls, not far from Saratoga.
I get confused about NY towns. My son lives in Rock City Falls, several miles from you.
Excavators have pretty well taken markets from TLBs and Tracked or wheeled loaders here, can sit in a spot for time durations and still move materials, good operators cut grade with them pretty easily, trench cleaner deeper. Move a great deal More materials less repositions. While yes do require more effort to move site to site.
My neighbor:
A customer builds wind turbines. Towers are shipped from China, everything else is in house. He has had bad experiences renting excavators & compact track loaders locally, so he rents from Albany NY 65 miles away. To dig a hole & carry away the dirt, he makes 4 round trips to Albany. Then he pays employees to run these two machines. Occasionally, he pays me to excavate instead. One chore, he wanted a 15' square hole 5' deep suitable to pour concrete directly in. It took me 7.5 hours, including trucking to do it with the backhoe. I'd have finished sooner if not for an hour or more with laser level getting the bottom absolutely flat. Spoils were piled 500 feet away, 41 yards. He grumbled about the $750 I charged. I countered with: "$350. for the excavator, $350. for the CTL. $300. for fuel including four round trips to Albany. Four hours round trip with truck & gooseneck, that's 16 hours just highway work before the digging begins. What does it cost to pay two employees to operate these machines?" He begrudgingly agreed. I plow snow with mine, move rocks, gravel, topsoil & wood. It's my man lift when pruning fruit trees. I confess this latest is computer equipped, so I refrain from using the front bucket as a welding booth. Another factor, EVERYTHING here is sidehill. Mini excavators don't level themselves. I particularly don't like that, sitting sideways swinging cockeyed to level. We did a small excavation early winter. The customer had just bought an 8 ton Kubota, which we used. It was parked at the end of his mile long driveway. It took longer to walk it up to the house than to dig the hole.
You would think....that the Gehl/Mustang mini with the tilt house would be more popular. Unlike the old Case/Drott, these swing both axis.
IH made excavators, I guess production numbers were low. I've never seen one in person. Here, the earliest ones were 100% John Deere. Crawlers are another matter. In the day, IH sold nearly as many dozers & track loaders as Caterpillar. One family business had dozens of them. They still have two TD7E, they use only for grading new lawns. One had 27000 on the meter last I looked a few years back. They subscribe to the leave it running approach. It might get started at 7:00 AM. If the day doesn't go as planned, it might run overnight before somebody shuts it down. A staggering number of hours accumulate without moving at all. They also have a fleet of 175 crawler loaders. None see much use these days, but they might put on in the pit to load trucks to exercise it. The TD15E?, & the TD25C? are sold. Dresser took over the dozer production with only minor changes at first. My TD7G is VERY similar to the TD7Es, biggest difference is the Cummins engine.
I am up in Fort Ann, I few exits up the Northway from Balston Spa/Saratoga. Probably leaning toward a CAT or Deere machine due to parts support.
Very true about the mobility of a backhoe. I need something with more reach and since the my land is all attached with where my house is I want need to trailer the excavator. Once I find a machine, I'll move it to my place and it will stay as long as I am there. Hence the reason I need something with parts availability (the excavator version of the the Farmall M)
I follow the publications & on line stuff. I see the bigger excavators listed at 20000 hours. I wonder if that is utterly worn out? Mini excavators seem more often low hour machines. I suppose the minis are bought new by white collar types wanting a toy. In ten years they haven't used them much. I had a backhoe, John Deere 410C at 27 years old my son's friend bought it. 2200 hours, it looked pretty good. Nine years earlier a trust fund hippie, maybe 45 years old bought an old farm in VT & moved there. As he explained it, he thought it made sense to buy a backhoe. After 9 years he hadn't thought of a reason to dig a hole. I hauled it home for the buyer, a builder. He planned to do his own digging. Two years later, he decided digging was not his idea of fun. He sold it to me. Some of these smaller machines excavator, or backhoe, are owned by people who don't use them every day. They sometimes have a lot of life left in them. Big excavators tend to have a lot of hours on them. I had it in mind you were way out in the bowels of NY, near Saratoga.
Greetings from Lake Luzerne. Welcome. Massey 35hp tractor and jcb hoe have served me well with a fair amount of tinkerin.
I am starting to look around, at excavators. I am thinking bigger, as I have some jobs requiring more reach and I won't need to haul it around from job to job. I agree the bigger stuff has lots of hours 10K+ or quite a few and large price tags. Smaller ones do seem to be for sale with few hrs, sometimes just 100's. So either someone bought a toy or they found out the excavator was too small. Being raised on a farm, I envision lots of things a big excavator with lift and reach can do (besides dig big deep holes) I am a little nervous on how you fix the things if they break, as the parts will be big, heavy, and expensive.
Thanks. Used to live near where west mountain road and luzerne road came together years ago. Seems like there is always some tinkering. At least with the older stuff, you can possibly fix it yourself.
Digging machines are classified by dig depth. Reach is important, but dig depth, not so much. Deepest hole I've dug is 7', what is the value of a machine able to dig 16' deep? It'd be terrifying you'd fall in! Reach is another matter. A few times, I've used a Kubota miniature tractor fitted with a backhoe when the hole was small. 7' from swing tower pivot to bucket pin, the machine was painfully slow. Dig out a yard, then reposition the tractor to move the spoils, otherwise it falls back in the hole.
I imagine big machines get expensive if you have them long enough to break. Not only parts but now you need another machine or a crane of some kind to lift heavy parts, and you need way bigger tools. If not you pay someone good money who has those big tools. Just be prepared if you go big!
Thanks. Dig depth comes with reach, but reach what I need. I have some dead trees and muck in a pond that I need to clear out, and many trees in hedgerows.
That thought is in the back of my mind!! I can probably move around parts up to a ton or so with my tractor and bucket.
yea, thats good. Ol' Red helps me out with Ol' Yeller all the time.