Ray450
Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2015
- Messages
- 39
- Location
- GreenvilleTexas
- Occupation
- Police Officer and offroad race promoter
New member, but I've actually followed several threads and hope ya'll can help, I know Eddie should have some good advice.
Little background, I own 144 acres near Greenville Texas and hope to grow it to around 200 in the next couple years. I currently have a hay guy that comes in and cuts close to 100 acres of it. I lease to hunters during deer season and I put on about one offroad motorcycle race a year. This year I'm promoting a TCCRA race on June 14th, I'll lay out about 8 miles of track, a one mile Peewee track and I have a private 1 mile M/X track. I've raced M/Cs for about 35 years. I'm hoping to retire in about 5 years, will move to this land and might try my hand at ranching then.
I really want to add some more earth moving ability. There isn't one piece of equipment that is the best for everything. Some of the things I want to do are, build/maintain more M/X sections, build a metal building pad for a shop this year (40'x75') with perimeter/interior beams (several hundred feet of 1' to 1'6" trenches), work on my creek crossings and install a few more culverts, dig a over 1000' water line, septic system, eventually clear out about 100 of the damn thorny locust trees in my biggest field, prepare a pad for a house in a couple years, rock my 900' drive, clear a little more single track trail in the woods, fill in some of the front pond that doesn't hold water anyway to make the approach to my barn/house/metal building wider, eventually clear a couple miles of fence line for new fencing, creek fencing and cross fencing (about 1/2 of the two miles of perimeter fencing is down), and just general ranch/farm/track stuff in the future.
Right now I have a 60 hp M/F 2 wheel drive tractor with a loader (and the 3pt usual stuff, hay spears, 15ft batwing mower, boxblade, adjustable blade and post hole digger). The tractor is very useful. However, a lot of my land is low flood area, and it only comes out in good weather, as it will get stuck in wet grass and is very limited in what it can do with earthmoving. I'd like to only spend between $15k-25k.
Options I'm considering,
1) replacing my tractor with a 70-100 hp 4x4 tractor. (my tractor struggles with the 15' batwing, but since I have a hay guy I rarely need to mow and should probably just get a smaller mower).
2) buy a 4x4 backhoe, preferably with a 4n1 bucket
3) buy a tracked skidsteer in the 70-100 hp range (I know they have attachments for everything, but those attachments are very expensive)
4) buy a dozer in the 70-100 hp range (also have a neighbor with a 4x4 backhoe that wants to trade his backhoe time for dozer time if I get one).
5) continue renting or subcontracting whatever is best suited for the job that my tractor can't do, pretty much what I'll do anyway for things like trenching the water line. I spent $3k last year on 3 days of dozer work to build the M/X track, that needs more and will need to be cleaned up again for this years race.
I go back and forth on all 5 options with all of them being my #1 option at times. All have Pros and cons.
Advice?
Little background, I own 144 acres near Greenville Texas and hope to grow it to around 200 in the next couple years. I currently have a hay guy that comes in and cuts close to 100 acres of it. I lease to hunters during deer season and I put on about one offroad motorcycle race a year. This year I'm promoting a TCCRA race on June 14th, I'll lay out about 8 miles of track, a one mile Peewee track and I have a private 1 mile M/X track. I've raced M/Cs for about 35 years. I'm hoping to retire in about 5 years, will move to this land and might try my hand at ranching then.
I really want to add some more earth moving ability. There isn't one piece of equipment that is the best for everything. Some of the things I want to do are, build/maintain more M/X sections, build a metal building pad for a shop this year (40'x75') with perimeter/interior beams (several hundred feet of 1' to 1'6" trenches), work on my creek crossings and install a few more culverts, dig a over 1000' water line, septic system, eventually clear out about 100 of the damn thorny locust trees in my biggest field, prepare a pad for a house in a couple years, rock my 900' drive, clear a little more single track trail in the woods, fill in some of the front pond that doesn't hold water anyway to make the approach to my barn/house/metal building wider, eventually clear a couple miles of fence line for new fencing, creek fencing and cross fencing (about 1/2 of the two miles of perimeter fencing is down), and just general ranch/farm/track stuff in the future.
Right now I have a 60 hp M/F 2 wheel drive tractor with a loader (and the 3pt usual stuff, hay spears, 15ft batwing mower, boxblade, adjustable blade and post hole digger). The tractor is very useful. However, a lot of my land is low flood area, and it only comes out in good weather, as it will get stuck in wet grass and is very limited in what it can do with earthmoving. I'd like to only spend between $15k-25k.
Options I'm considering,
1) replacing my tractor with a 70-100 hp 4x4 tractor. (my tractor struggles with the 15' batwing, but since I have a hay guy I rarely need to mow and should probably just get a smaller mower).
2) buy a 4x4 backhoe, preferably with a 4n1 bucket
3) buy a tracked skidsteer in the 70-100 hp range (I know they have attachments for everything, but those attachments are very expensive)
4) buy a dozer in the 70-100 hp range (also have a neighbor with a 4x4 backhoe that wants to trade his backhoe time for dozer time if I get one).
5) continue renting or subcontracting whatever is best suited for the job that my tractor can't do, pretty much what I'll do anyway for things like trenching the water line. I spent $3k last year on 3 days of dozer work to build the M/X track, that needs more and will need to be cleaned up again for this years race.
I go back and forth on all 5 options with all of them being my #1 option at times. All have Pros and cons.
Advice?