Far too often we get a phone call or e-mail inquiry about hiring our compact equipment and operator to complete a job. Most often prospective customers want to know how much it’s going to cost and when are we available to do the job. Not often enough do we get any further questions about the equipment or attachments we have available to complete the job.
In our opinion, it is critical customers ask further questions before they hire a piece of equipment and its’ attachments. All compact equipment such as excavators, skid steers, track dumpers etc. have certain type of capability such as dig depth, reach, lifting capacity and so on. Further these pieces of equipment have multitude of options in terms of bucket size, bucket type, bucket width and purpose.
For example, a typical compact excavator comes with a 24 inch digging bucket and a 36 inch cleanout bucket. This is what most contractors and rental yards will send their equipment out to the job site with.
A very common job for a compact excavator is trenching lines for utilities. As an example, the building code minimum requirement for a utility trench is 18 inches in depth. To be safe, let’s assume our trench is going to be 20 inches deep and you have 100 linear feet of trench to dig. On “the” day, your excavator contractor shows up with a 24” digging bucket. Once the excavation is complete, you’re left with a pile of approximately 12 cubic yards of material that has come out of the trench. Once you run your line, now you have the same amount of material to put back into your trench as backfill.
However, you took the time to interview a second contractor and found out he owns a 12” trenching bucket for his mini excavator. Taking the extra few minutes to do the additional and proper interview has just saved you some money. How? Using a 12inch trenching bucket you are now only removing half the soil because of the 50% reduction in bucket width. Further, once you run your line, now you only have 6 cubic yards of fill to go back in the trench, instead of 12. Consequently, the job will be completed faster using the narrower bucket.
Another common area where excavator bucket width can make a huge difference in terms of job cost is septic fields. Let’s say your engineer specified a trench width of 24 inches. Your average depth is 30 inches and you have 4 runs at 50 feet in length. That’s approximately 37 cubic yards of material that needs to come out of the 4 runs. A 24 inch wide bucket is the ideal option. If all you have is an 18 inch dig bucket it will take almost twice as long to dig a 24 inch wide trench even though the bucket size difference is only 6 inches.
There are times where we have used 4 different excavator buckets on a single job. Having the ability to use different size equipment with various buckets or attachments allows for a job to be completed efficiently. Although there can be a small charge for use of additional buckets or attachments, the savings achieved through being efficient far outweigh the small additional cost your contractor should discuss with you ahead of time.
So before you hire a compact equipment contractor, their equipment and attachments, spend some time on the interview process, asking the right questions. Choose a contractor that is best equipped to complete the job safely and efficiently.