Let's not have all this 'fertiliser' pedalled as gospel.
Hi, RKO.
Quote: "Have you ever tried an excavator?"
Heee, heee, heee. You really have no idea who or what you are talking to here, do you? Well, let me put it to you this way. I'm just a worn-out, tired, lazy, old, has-been dozer and loader operator who just occasionally gets on an excavator and out-loads the guys who are running them all the time - or just occasionally gets on a grader and does some final trim or some other work with it almost as well as those who are doing it all the time - or just occasionally gets on a scraper and keeps up with the regular scraper operators. I have also allowed myself to be coerced into operating draglines, face shovels, backhoes, bobcats, dump trucks, mobile cranes, sideboom pipelayers and a few other things as well. Can you tell me what an Arrow hammer is? What is a Koehring 466? Or a Hy-mac 580? Or a JD 5010 or 760?
You stand there with your bare face hanging out and try to tell me that you can sink a dam faster with an excavator than I can with a dozer.
Quote: "I will clean and SEAL a dam with an excavator so much fast than a Dozer there is comparison." Unquote.
(I think you mean that there is NO comparison so I will work from that perpective.)
With that in mind, consider this proposition. You have to sink a dam 140 feet long by 110 feet wide and 16 feet deep. Total water level capacity, 7,444 cu. yds. You have to over-excavate the topsoil layer by about 6 feet, to a depth of 3 feet,to allow for claying up to seal the dam. You then have to replace that over-excavation with clay from the second layer to seal the dam. You are required to finish up with 3:1 batters so that weak livestock can still negotiate those batters to be able to get a drink and the dam must finish with an oblong/rectangular shape and have square corners.
How many times would you have to handle each bucketful to get it to its final destination? How many cubic yards of material would you have actually moved with all that double handling before you had actually completed your 7,444 cu. yd dam? How much time would you have to spend track-rolling ALL the batters to get any sort of compaction at all, never mind the compaction that a dozer will get as it pushes each bladeful of material out and up the bank?
I have also sunk a 165 cu. yd dam with a Cat D8H. 50 feet square on top, 13 feet square on the bottom and 6 feet deep. In 2 hours neat, including cleaning up any and all windrows and making an overflow.
Quote: "I speak from hundreds of jobs and years of experience so it is not just an estimation." Unquote.
I'm only a mug amateur and still learning. My apprenticeship is still in its early stages at just over 42 1/2 years full time and about 9 years before that part-time, so I still have a bit to learn. And, I've only sunk dams with dozers, track loaders and scrapers. From my observations, I could sink a dam with an excavator a whole lot better than most of those that I have seen done with an excavator in the past. I've even had to build one that dam that HAD to leak. Go figure.
Quote: "Everyone I know does it the same way I do, so it is not just me." Unquote.
Maybe everybody YOU know does do it the same way. I'm not in a position to comment on that. What I AM in a position to comment on is that NOT everybody in the whole of the rest of the world does it that way. Dozers are still the machine of choice for most of the medium-sized dam/pond excavation that I see. For larger dams, scrapers come into their own due to the longer haul distances but dozers are still in there, either pushing the scrapers, cleaning up after them, or both.
Quote: "You can keep using your dozer or loader to clean dams, but no one will hire you to do a job???" Unquote.
Nowhere in my post did I ever claim that a dozer or a loader was as good as an excavator for CLEANING dams or ponds. I only said that a dozer will leave an excavator for dead in sinking dams and ponds. I stick by my original statement. I would also point out that we DO get a LOT of work for the dozers and loaders, despite there being a large population of excavators in the area.
Quote: "Dozers were obsoleted out when excavators were modernized." Unquote.
So why are stripping shovels and draglines dying breeds in large mines and why are dozers being used to bulk push overburden so much in those same mines? Sure, you see LARGE excavators and hydraulic face shovels loading dump trucks, 'cos dozers can't load trucks without a chinaman or similar equipment. That does not negate the fact that a LOT of large dozers are currently being used to bulk push overburden where it is economical to do so.
Quote: "Now can you tell me why I might think that?" Unquote.
Quote: "Not sure what your last sentences was supposed to mean?" Unquote.
O.K., I'll tell you what it is supposed to mean. It is supposed to mean that I have a LOT of experience that tells me that you are talking a lot of garbage about excavators and what they will do when compared to dozers or track loaders. Let's go back to the Tree Clearing Day thread, where I posted the photos of clearing some trees with a Cat 943 track loader. You claimed that you could deal with those trees quicker than the 943 track loader that I used to clear them with. Boy, I'd like to see that. That 943 will travel from tree site to fireheap faster than your excavator and back again even faster still. I had no problem knocking down any but the last one of those trees and the last one didn't take me much longer than 5 minutes to knock down and less than 5 minutes to get to the heap. The whole SEVEN trees were down and on the heap in about 30 minutes and the heap was about 120 feet away from where the nearest of the trees stood. That includes all the branches and most of the smaller twigs and sprigs cleaned up and on the heap too.
I am open-minded enough to admit that there are jobs where excavators really do shine. However, they are NOT the be-all-and-end-all of contracting that you and others would have us believe. OR, IF they are that be-all-and-end-all, why are so many manufacturers still making so many other types of machines as well as excavators?
Are you by some chance a one-eyed football supporter too?