Upgrade excavator or turn down work?

Reading what has been written so far. It sounds like residential work is your primary source of work. I assume you are working up and down the Bitterroot.
When you look into a bucket, several friend around here use a HELAC bucket attachment. It works well in grading around confined area and small slopes. The work that can be done with it is impressive, they are made in Enumclaw WA.
I have a friend with a John Deere 60G. He has a drum on his and can yo yo up and down hillsides with it tied off to his truck, (similar to a tethered faller buncher) with the tilting bucket, he is in demand for finish grading because of his ability to fit into close quarters and steep slopes
I assume others make the swivel bucket, HELAC is the only one I have ever seen and I was awed by the tricks that can be done with them.

You said it yourself.

Your current machine is undersize for majority of your work.

Buy a bigger 10-14t machine and when its not in use hire it out. You said no one has one for rent but theres most likely others in the same boat.

I had same problem..with a little e35...traded it for a kx080.. the bigger hoe does 95% of the work available compared to about 70% for the little one...the kx 080 is at the upper limit of my tandem tandem trailer..so i would not go bigger.. i love the reach on the bigger hoe

Jumbo said:

Reading what has been written so far. It sounds like residential work is your primary source of work. I assume you are working up and down the Bitterroot.
When you look into a bucket, several friend around here use a HELAC bucket attachment. It works well in grading around confined area and small slopes. The work that can be done with it is impressive, they are made in Enumclaw WA.
I have a friend with a John Deere 60G. He has a drum on his and can yo yo up and down hillsides with it tied off to his truck, (similar to a tethered faller buncher) with the tilting bucket, he is in demand for finish grading because of his ability to fit into close quarters and steep slopes
I assume others make the swivel bucket, HELAC is the only one I have ever seen and I was awed by the tricks that can be done with them.

Click to expand...

I'm in the west end of the Gallatin valley, aways east of there. Same general environment, tho. Rural and residential is by far most of my work; with the construction industry so hot here I stay plumb away from commercial/GCs/town work, there are gobs of fly-by-nighters and switch-hitters around here, was hoping the last recession would clear them out for good but back they come like a crazy ex.

I have seen those buckets, they're trick for sure. I don't really have much that would make owning one worth it, am on the prowl for a skiddy grader and a couple other things just now. I had such p**s p**r luck with locates last year that I'm really considering getting some decent electronics to double check 811 jobs - had 3 close calls and one was a fiber optic line that was marked a dozen feet away. Had I cut that, it would've been auction time, it was a bigger one. I don't mind some shovel work to be careful, but that was a big, big miss for the guy walking the line.

TrentNz - my present machine is actually sufficient for about 80%+ of my work, hence my original post. I do have a line on an older 9 ton machine if it comes available at some point, clean and 2 owners. That would be the hauling weight limit on what my trailer is good for. I worked for some time in a rental yard back in the day, and got a first hand look at how that machinery is treated, don't think I'd want to rent out my own stuff. There's an expression around here, "...beat on like a rented mule." That pretty much says it all...