A few projects I have done recently

Back with our other crew on the strip shopping center. This new building will house a Dunkin, 5 Guys, local artsy shop and a couple of TBT retail bays.

Giving some well deserved love to our 321DLCR. 2011 model we bought in 2014 that now has just shy of 7900 hours on the clock. Cranks everyday and goes to work. Probably one of the best hoes we've ever owned.


8" SCH 40 PVC roof leader for the building going under the plumbers 6" PVC sanitary and grease lines. Plumbers got in ahead of us so we had to work around them. No problem.

Another gumby. There were 2 on this job.



8" PVC fittings are expensive and hard to get at the moment. A 22.5 MJ fitting with transition gaskets works just fine - actually MJ fittings are cheaper and easier to work with than glued PVC.



The Old Guard lined up at the end of a busy week. The dozer and roller are 17 years old, the hoe is 10 years old. Well made machines taken care of will continue to perform and make you money. Equipment is an investment so take care of it.

That equipment looks awesome for the age and hours

The L9000 tandem still earning it's keep. It paid for itself on the first job and is great site truck. Pitifully slow on the HWY with it's L10 and 4sp Alison trans but great moving dirt on site. Our little 17 year old D5GXL still earning it's keep as well.

Filling in an area of the parking lot on a shopping center we are working on.



18" RCP going to the last inlet in the parking lot. Due to all the issues everyone is having in the supply chain we couldn't wait for custom cast structures so we went with round knock out boxes. It's the first time we've used them and they are a little difficult to deal with when it comes to making the angles work.

One would think a round structure with 3 knock out sides would be a piece of cake but actually it's a little harder not having the 4 side of a square box. We had to cut out the center between the two knock outs to make the angles work. We'll fill the gap between the pipe and structure in with concrete block and water plug.



Our best crew started this line at 2 PM in Friday starting with cutting a hole in the structure. 5:30 PM and ready to go home. The pic doesn't show all the pipe - they laid 12 joints of 18" RCP for a total of 96' in 3.5 HRS. Skilled labor ain't cheap and cheap labor ain't skilled.

I am an unabashed Cat guy because their equipment just works.

17 year old D5GXL I've been running on our little shopping center job. Parking up Friday afternoon while the crew wraps up laying storm pipe in the pics above. The D5 has just shy of 6K hours on and it's first cylinder is coming due to be re-sealed.

It's been a great little dozer.



Along with the mature equipment such as the D5G we've added a youngster as seen upthread. Our D3 was floated to a new project for a nationwide coffee company out of Seattle. Our 279D is bringing in the backup.



The new coffee shop is going in the parking lot of a large Ford dealer in our area. We'll be constructing a new entrance, demo'ing the parking lot and light poles and hauling out around 120 loads to a quarry across the Interstate. Smaller job for this crew but it pays the bills.



Our 325FL is being fitting up with the Cat field trial auto hydro connect quick coupler and this will be the first job it's used on. We've got a few light pole bases, site sign and vehicle stand foundation to hammer so we'll see how it works out.

A little R&R on a beautiful Alabama Saturday afternoon with unseasonably cool temps in the 70's.

Wife's stepfather is a pilot and belongs to an association that cares for a very well restored DC-3. They fly around the southeast and show off the airplane at various air shows. This time it was in our neck of the woods.

Beautiful day for an air show.



A fully restored B-17 from Texas.



Lucy had a great time as well. Not too many times a canine is allowed on the runway.

CM1995 said:

The new coffee shop is going in the parking lot of a large Ford dealer in our area. We'll be constructing a new entrance, demo'ing the parking lot and light poles and hauling out around 120 loads to a quarry across the Interstate. Smaller job for this crew but it pays the bills.

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This seems to be their current expansion plan. They've built 3 in underused parking lot around town in the last year.

hvy 1ton said:

This seems to be their current expansion plan. They've built 3 in underused parking lot around town in the last year.

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HVY this is the 5th one I've priced and the first one we've got. Most of these stores in my area are developer owned shells leased out not corporate owned. This is a corporate store and surprisingly the first one we've done. The GC is a small local outfit that is preferred by the company for their impeccable build out finish skills. Usually the developer stores go with the cheapest bid for the shell but my GC always gets the build out due to their quality of work. I hope this is a trend in corporate owned stores.

One of our crews started up the coffee shop in the Ford dealers parking lot this week.

325FL fitted up with the field trial quick coupler.



Hired Penhall to for the saw cutting as it was more than our little walk behind saw could handle efficiently. So far nothing has been said about having a RAM on a Ford dealers lot .



Since this project is in a parking lot in front of a Ford dealer I figured a gratuitous pic of my truck was fitting . With the current prices on trucks both new and used I'm thinking about putting it on consignment with the dealer and driving the '14 gas burner at the yard.

Pulling the asphalt up and separating the dense grade base for re-use as pipe bedding. The former pylon foundation - AKA the big assed sign base.



Hammering the BASB in the pic above. The field trial quick coupler is working as designed, it's so nice to be able to change from bucket to hammer in a couple of minutes including wiping the asphalt dust off the QC hydraulic connections.




Side note on bidding jobs like this for those interested. I'll estimate the total asphalt and base to be removed from standard spec's and the geo-tech report. In this case the parking lot averaged 6:2:1 in the boring report meaning 6" of stone, 2" of binder and 1" of wear course. For the bid purposes I priced 4" of asphalt for fluctuations in grade and 6" of stone base.

The crew will pull the asphalt for haul off and blade up the stone base for re-use as pipe bedding and backfill, if there is any left over we'll spread it over the future parking lot for mud control during construction. A little time spent can save $$ on a project.

For example that is at least 50 tons of clean DGB which would cost $1200 if delivered to the job.

So far so good on the new QC.

CM1995 said:

So far so good on the new QC.

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Those integrated couplers are slick. Now you just need a Graptor bucket.

On a related note, has anyone figured out where Cat is sourcing their couplers and tiltrotators from? I'd be pleasantly surprised if they are building their own.

hvy 1ton said:

Those integrated couplers are slick. Now you just need a Graptor bucket.

On a related note, has anyone figured out where Cat is sourcing their couplers and tiltrotators from? I'd be pleasantly surprised if they are building their own.

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Going by the color of the built in 3 jaw grabber, the design, and a couple other little things I'm guessing their tilt rotator systems are from Rototilt.

The coffee shop coming along nicely. Crew stripped and hauled off all the asphalt paving, curbing and light pole bases. They scraped up the 825B IE dense grade base for re-use as storm pipe bedding. We have a fair amount of 18", 15" and 8" HDPE pipe to put in the ground.



The cut on the high side of the lot was 5' or so with a fill of 3' at the deepest on the front. The existing soils were deemed plastic clay by the dirt docs - more on that to follow.



So we had to undercut another 1' below subgrade on a cut site... We don't make the decisions just get paid to execute them. The trucking company we use on a regular basis also has a dirt pit with some of the nicest red sandy clay borrow material that is an absolute dream to work with. They deliver to the job on a per load price which makes estimating easier.

1' of imported structural fill on the building pad. All the pink stakes are the offsets where the drive through window bumps outside the main building.



Blading some of that fine material around the drive through lane with the new D3. Great little dozer.

Be glad you haven't had problems with your Cat machines. Reading about the 150 grader makes you weary of purchasing a new Cat machine. When you bid a job, are there usually provisions in the contract if extra work or materials are required? Saving money on gravel for pipe bedding is sure a bonus.

We've also been back at the arena finishing up some odds and ends.

This odd was coming back on T&M to re-grade the front plaza after the sparky's installed UG conduit and light pole bases. Re-grading costs more than first grading.




This is the second half of the plaza that we graded a month or so ago and had within a .10th of a foot. We'll be back once sparky catches up. T&M...




Well finally broke down and bought a mini. We have enough small utility on the books to warrant a purchase. 2018 305ECR with 1100 hrs on the clock. Cat lease return bought through our dealer. Nice machine mechanical wise although it has some rough sheet metal. It was a significant savings over buying new.

Welder Dave said:

Be glad you haven't had problems with your Cat machines. Reading about the 150 grader makes you weary of purchasing a new Cat machine. When you bid a job, are there usually provisions in the contract if extra work or materials are required? Saving money on gravel for pipe bedding is sure a bonus.

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Dave I'm not worried about our Cat machines, IMO they are the best on the market. Every brand has issues and problems it's how the dealer handles them that makes the difference. Our dealer happens to be a damn good one. This thread is full of examples of how our Cat dealer went the extra mile for our little company.

Any project that I bid has a provision for unforeseen conditions which mostly involve unsuitable soils or rock. This Starbucks had a provision in the contract documents to price undercutting the building pad and parking lot 1' and bring in suitable engineered fill. This was an easy line item to calculate, so it was an adder in the bid.

Cat does generally have really good machines but lately have heard of new machines having issues, mostly emissions related. The gravel pit near me has gone back to some Volvo machines and had no issues where as the Cat wheel loaders and rock trucks have had lots of issues needing a tech to come out. They will stick with Cat for dozers and excavators. I think they generally trade equipment when the warranty runs out. Must be nice to have money!

Hey, like that D3!! Is that an LGP unit?? In the one pic the pads look extra wide.

Nice work CM1995!!

MM it's an LGP.

The future plan is to outfit with fully auto GPS and the LGP makes a great fine grade dozer.

I'd love to have that L9000 bed on mine, I have the slanted gate and it is less handy to dig out of.
One time I dug for the plumbers on a Cat shop, and had to tape over the John Deere on the boom and back of the excavator LOL!