Any One Getting Burned Out Yet?

[PAYTON]

IVE BEEN GOING NONE STOP SINCE MARCH AND IM READY FOR A BREAK. VACATION IN AUG. HOPE I CAN MAKE IT. 6DAYSA WEEK 12 HOURS A DAY ITS GETTING REAL OLD REAL FAST. PLUS IM ON NIGHTS I THINK THATS WHATS REALLY MESSING ME UP. OH WELL JUST FELT THE NEED TO GRIPE.. HOPE ALL OF YOU ARE HAVING A GOOD YEAR.. STAYING BUSY..

PAYTON

[Steve Frazier]

Yeah, I'm getting burned out and burned up! I'm running my tail off and about half my jobs this season have turned to crap for one reason or another, most weather related. It's been hard to make any headway and customers are screaming "Where are you???" I've been tempted to have a big yard sale!

[N.B.CONCRETE]

Too much unstable weather! We are pouring 2 resi foundations per week . We should be doing 3. It was a real late start this season also. My feet seem like they are always muddy and wet.
If it weren't for my wife and bank manager,i would be relaxing a bit more.

Oh well,its not to bad iguess,most accounts are paying.:drinkup

[PAYTON]

havent had to worry bout the weather to much were doing a 2.5million square foot stripping job in a large quarry thats makes cement mix. (lehigh) so weve not been affected by the rain..

no rain- move dirt
rain- move rock
tornado happen 2 weeks ago.. i sit in the track ho on the high wall where ive been digging and watch the clouds.

[badranman]

Hope to have my first day off in three weeks tomorrow. Need to catch up on the banking and maintenance ...... maybe it won't be a day off.:Banghead

[Bob Horrell]

For the last 2 weeks straight except for Sunday (fathers day) I have been leaving at 4:30AM and getting home between 9:00 to 11:00PM - digging about a mile of trench for a school system. We are connecting all of the buildings on the campuses with trenches for new electrical. Some trenches are 5' wide by 5' deep and they don't want any big equipment because of all the underground utilities they can't be sure to identify.
Spending some time on my backhoe but most time spent on a rented Bobcat 331 mini excavator with a 3' bucket. It is a sweet machine and I am getting pretty handy at crossing trenches and working across trenches. Almost fell into one when the side collapsed while trying to cross it. It was 4' wide and 4' deep and it took me about 10 minutes of trying everything I could think of before I finally got out. It was compounded by the fact that I was between two buildings without much room.
I am taking a day off this job to try out a Bobcat T300. I have been thinking of selling my S250 and getting a T300 so the local Bobcat dealer is giving me one to try for a day. The job is on a pretty steep hillside and will be a perfect test for the track machine. I have already tried ASV RC85 and a RC60. I didn't like the RC85 but liked the RC60. The 85 felt real cumbersom and I thought I could out work it on the 60 which was much more nimble. In the next week or so I will get a CAT 287B to test. I am waiting for a good job to open up that will be a good test for it.
Testing the track loaders is the only thing keeping me from feeling total burn out at this point.

[badranman]

Please give us an update on the T300 after you've used it. I'm thinking about maybe getting one. I drove a T220 in the dealer parking lot and over some ruts and man what a difference from my 763. Good luck.

[Bob Horrell]

Well, I used the T300 for about 4 hours today building a road of sorts on a steep hill. The customer has a house on the top of a hill and wanted to be able to drive his quads down the hill to ride on open property adjacent to his. The hill was steep enough that it was not accessible with the quads. I had him water the hill off and on for 2 days because the dirt there gets like powder when worked without moisture.
I couldn't believe how steep a slope this thing can work on. I have been on steep slopes with my S250 with the grouser tracks on but this was much steeper than that set up would have been able to work on. When backing up the slope I was slammed into the safety bar so hard it was difficult working the controls. The guy had some large rocks at the bottom of the hill that he wanted brought up for landscaping his yard. I had about 5,000 lbs of rocks in the bucket and walked right up the hill (used full throttle). When going down the hill with a full bucket of dirt it was so steep that if the bucket wasn't dragging on the ground I had to work the steering to keep the machine straight as it wanted to slide around. My bucket is a heavy duty 4 in 1 John Deere bucket that I modified to fit the Bobcat. It holds about 4/5 of a yard of dirt and weighs about 1300lbs empty. There was an adjacent slope that was even steeper (so steep you couldn't walk up it). I filled the bucket about 2/3 full of dirt and tried to go up the hill and it went right up to the neighbors fence. It felt like I was laying down in the seat it was so steep.
I am hooked. I am going to try the Cat machine and if it isn't any better I will definately get the T300.
Tomorrow, before I take it back to the dealer, I am going to do a few hour finish grading job and see how it does with that. It is so stable I am thinking it should do pretty well. Usually I use my skiploader for finish grading because I find it is faster and you don't always have to clean up your mess like you do with a skidsteer. This thing hardly makes any mess when turning so I will see if it will work as well as the skidloader.
Can't wait to try the Cat. I didn't want to use the Cat on this job since I am not as familiar with the controls and I didn't want to mess up on the steep hill.

[Steve Frazier]

Sounds like that machine's a great unit! You might want to check with a Bobcat mechanic to see if there's any point the engine would be starved for oil at those steep angles! I've been considering a second machine and want to demo a tracked unit too.

[2004F550]

Fine grading is unbelieveable w/ a tracked machine. It is much easier and faster then w/ a traditional skidsteer IMO.

[badranman]

Is it possible to post any pictures of the jobsite you're on? I'd like to see that going up a hill with the bucket full......I'd probably s%@t my pants in that thing until I got used to the idea it wasn't going to flip!

[Bob Horrell]

The T300 is a lot better finish grading machine than my S250 but I wouldn't necessarily say it was better than a skiploader with full rear hydraulics. Now I do approximately 90% of my finish grading work with my skiploader and the other 10% with the S250. With the T300 I would probably use it for 30 to 40% of finish work, a definite improvement and one I was looking for.
I had asked the mechanic about problems with oil starvation etc. on steep hills and he couldn't say specifically how steep a hill you could work on without a problem. His only comment was that he didn't think there would be a problem since numerous regular bobcats get into tipping problems (some actually tipping over) and then after righting the machine, they go right back to work.
I have a friend with about 2,000 hrs. on a T200 who is generally known as a crazy man on the machine. He got the machine stuck in a near vertical position at the bottom of a ravine several months ago. The engine stalled out and was hard to restart. He thinks that it is down on power since that incident. Bobcat checked it out and said all was well, but this guy is a great seat of the pants operator and if he feels the power is down there is a good chance it is.
Sorry, no pictures of the hill job. I don't have a digital camera and haven't been much on taking pictures. I am always forgetting a camera even when I really want to take pictures. A great shot would have been of my above mentioned friend who came to the job site to try the T300 and promtly spun it around on a part of the hill that I didn't think it was physically possible to spin on without tipping over. This really thrilled the neighbors. I am afraid I was a dissappointment after that as I was only going up and down the hill. Watching it turn around on the hill did a lot to boost my confidence in what the machine was capable of.