The last few years we've encountering a major need for a larger scraper, maybe two of them, first were considering tractors and pull pans, but lately I've been thinking a different direction and maybe a cat 621b model, am also considering terex ts14b's but parts might be an issue later on down the road.
First off, never run a cat motor scraper, never been around one, for that matter when I asked, was told nobody locally has run a single engine motor scraper in decades or more now, there are a few, very few cat 627's I think are the number on them, twin engine scrapers and the last I asked the guys who run them I was told, maybe the boss should have bought far better quality machines to start with so they could actually run them instead of fixing them was the jest of that conversation, not even sure they are still in the area anymore.
I do have a smaller terex motor scraper, which works great for what we need and bought it for, but not nearly enough machine to actually move a few thousand yards of dirt in a timely manor with, its just far too small and only one at that.
Can anyone fill me in as to what they are, years built, what's changed on them over the years and if parts are available yet for them, basically the pro's and cons of them. Also before anyone starts in, these are low used machines, so older and cheaper is what I'm wanting to start with and probably stay with, I'm not into that whole several hundred grand investment kind of thing for this venture, more like that whole 20k or less per machine or for a pair kind of price range, so bear that in mind and also the less anything electronic the better, that whole keep it simple and basic is the whole goal here.
There has to be plenty of machines around that still have a lot of life left in them to do what I'm needing to do. Also the whole self loading thing isn't that big of a deal for me, seems all we've been doing is pond cleaning, drainage ditch cleaning and shuffling dirt from point A to B over longer hauls it seems, the last job we did it was a 3/4 mile haul one way, the one before was from one side of a 320 acre farm to the other for a total of 150 scraper loads of dirt is all. Most everything is top loaded using an excavator since we are digging or cleaning something out and it can't be self loaded with any scraper, so that whole push loading to fill to the brim and turn around times are a non issue for the bulk of the work we do involving scrapers or as I'd like to refer to it, "recreational dirt relocating".
First off, never run a cat motor scraper, never been around one, for that matter when I asked, was told nobody locally has run a single engine motor scraper in decades or more now, there are a few, very few cat 627's I think are the number on them, twin engine scrapers and the last I asked the guys who run them I was told, maybe the boss should have bought far better quality machines to start with so they could actually run them instead of fixing them was the jest of that conversation, not even sure they are still in the area anymore.
I do have a smaller terex motor scraper, which works great for what we need and bought it for, but not nearly enough machine to actually move a few thousand yards of dirt in a timely manor with, its just far too small and only one at that.
Can anyone fill me in as to what they are, years built, what's changed on them over the years and if parts are available yet for them, basically the pro's and cons of them. Also before anyone starts in, these are low used machines, so older and cheaper is what I'm wanting to start with and probably stay with, I'm not into that whole several hundred grand investment kind of thing for this venture, more like that whole 20k or less per machine or for a pair kind of price range, so bear that in mind and also the less anything electronic the better, that whole keep it simple and basic is the whole goal here.
There has to be plenty of machines around that still have a lot of life left in them to do what I'm needing to do. Also the whole self loading thing isn't that big of a deal for me, seems all we've been doing is pond cleaning, drainage ditch cleaning and shuffling dirt from point A to B over longer hauls it seems, the last job we did it was a 3/4 mile haul one way, the one before was from one side of a 320 acre farm to the other for a total of 150 scraper loads of dirt is all. Most everything is top loaded using an excavator since we are digging or cleaning something out and it can't be self loaded with any scraper, so that whole push loading to fill to the brim and turn around times are a non issue for the bulk of the work we do involving scrapers or as I'd like to refer to it, "recreational dirt relocating".