They are laying a gas line not to far from the house. Down here in texas we have nice hard clay ground so it is faster for them to cut through it then dig it out with excavators Jason
I ran one about 10 years ago....NOISY.... 6 months of solid rock can't remember if it was 955 or 1055....we had to dig a 5' wide trench... so I would trench until noon... a dozer was following backfilling as I dug.... leaving a windrow on one edge..then turn around and trench back the other direction.. with dozer backfilling as we went... They brought a backhoe in later to dig the fill back out... and lay pipe We had several days that I only dug 50' to 100' a day....that little stretch took about 2 weeks to finish...those were the days that you just ground away for a week then turn around.....but for the most part it was 500' to 1000' a day... All this for a 16" water line.... their reason, so they could dig beside it in the future to repair water line breaks if needed..
The Vermeers are nice! I use to work for a company who had a T-800. It had a detroit diesel screamer in it. You needed ear muffs to keep from loosing your hearing. However, that thing buzzed right thru some of the hardest rock/ground you could imagine! We had a conveyor belt for loading trucks as you dug. Worked sweet!