Thumbs in australia

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . I get around a bit but have to say that in my seventy years I have never seen an excavator with a thumb . . . or not up here in Queensland. It seems such a simple concept there must be a downside or there would be heaps of them around.

Maybe I don't get to places where they are used for specialised jobs . . . demo. and such like. I have watched the placing of rocks on retaining walls with conventional buckets and the blokes seemed to do just fine.

It intrigues me the way various machines and attachments are utilised in different countries and regions for doing similar jobs. For instance the wheeled highway drivable excavator seems to be very common in Europe but I have never seen one of those here either.

Any comments from excavator folks about these two issues?

Cheers.

 

[rare ss]

we used to weld on a fixed bracket "log grab" to the dipper of some of our machines which used the bucket to grip logs against the frame, was cheap and easy to fit and did the job

 

[Bala]

Head further north when the next big cyclone comes through, the council will have on hire what seems like every excavator and backhoe for 100miles, for clearing fallen trees, they go from full factory hydraulic log grabs to all sorts of backyard jobs.

 

[robin yates uk]

I have never seen a thumb in the UK either, looks like an excellent addon

 

[JGS Parts]

yeah saw heaps of them in america and on that gold rush tv show seems everyone has them back home in aus cant say i have seen one and hounestly they really should not add much to the cost as there manufacturing cost is very little extra on a bucket. we are actaully going to bring 4 in to QLD for stock in our yard and a few tilt buckets, tilt buckets every man and his dog wants one latly.

 

[Colorado Digger]

In my part of the U.S.A the hydraulic thumb is very popular. There is so much big rock that they really help. For demo and grubbing they are also very valuable. I know the PNW and Canadian guys are using thumbs with a quick coupler. That technique has not caught on here but seems handy as you can swap out buckets and run attachments. It is very common to spend half the day sorting rock on a dig up here so that is the main reaason for the thumb. I have never seen a thumb in Europe and they prefer a quick coupler and about 10 different buckets and attachments for their machines. The rotating manipulater attachment is what they use for demo and such and they seem very handy. Only about 30k though. The other negatives about a thumb are that they add weight and if you do alot of deep utilities they tend to get in the way when you have to go around and under other existing structures.
I believe the thumb is more of a necessity than anything else here in colorado.
regards,cd

 

[d4c24a]

yeah saw heaps of them in america and on that gold rush tv show .

when it would not work when they first got back to the to the mine ,the narrator said without the thrumb it can,t dig ,made me chuckle

 

[excavatorr]

No thumbs in south end qld but seen a few 4 in 1 gp buckets on 20 tonners. Also seen a few wheeled diggers. They are quiet popular here in SE QLD. Especially on highway jobs. There is always at least one or two on each highway project. They are mainly used for spreading topsoil and landscaping in areas where a tracked digger would just make a mess

 

[roadbuilder6]

The hyd thumb adds so much versitility to the machine, one second ure digging the nect lift out a boulder, i would never have an excavator with out one

 

[Big Iron]

the thumb adds so much to an excavator, it does however have one drawback. if you are digging ditch or loading spoils trucks it will cut the capacity of the bucket by some as it gets into the heaped bucket. other than that it makes an excavator whole as you can see from the photos. these are just playing around at the home site, when you get into a real clearing project there is nothing like a progressive link thumb such as this one

 

[Bala]

One of the excavators I was working with after Cyclone Yasi had a log grab and the teeth at the end went inside each other like putting your fingers from one hand inside your other hand, this meant he rarely needed a chainsaw to help, it was almost like a mulcher as well, he could break quite big logs up, he was able to get a lot of cubes of timber into the trucks.

 

[Haddy]

Plenty of thumbs used by other contractors around here ( Central North Island ) but we don't have them . I have never operated a excavator with one and get by just fine . It's just another cost and puts extra weight out there when in our work we would hardly ever use it
Not many wheeled excavator's here . We have looked at the idea but give up on them each time for various reasons

 

[JGS Parts]

In australia the wheeled excavators are super expensive and honestly i cant see why you would want one well i cant see why you would fork out that much extra money unless you had a long term contract that required that machine.

 

[Rudolf73]

Yeah, I noticed the same thing here in Oz. They seem very handy from what I have seen. I asked one of our contractors why he doesn't install a thumb on his machine after watching his operator struggling to load concrete rubble. His response was - "I have to many machines" ? I even offered to design him one... oh well, you can only lead a horse to water, etc. etc.

My future excavator is definitely getting a thumb :thumbsup

 

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . thank's fellers, it's good to see so many quick reponses to a thread. Maybe with the thumb thing it's a case of you don't miss it if you never had it?

If you built a thumb yourself I don't see it would be that expensive. For specialised applications such as mentioned by Bala and placing rock and all I would imagine it should be worth a dollar or two on the hourly rate . . . compared to a machine that didn't have one.

Thanks and more pictures if you can. !!!

Cheers.

 

[Haddy]

I agree with JGS Parts , those wheeled things seem very expensive , when you look at them you would think they should be cheaper than a track machine .

 

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . as far as the wheeled excavators go.

I don't know how "roadable" they are but for a general bush contractor working out of a country town it would save tieing up the float on some small jobs that need more dig than a backhoe . . . the customer would pay for the roading of course.

Just saying.

Cheers.

 

[Haddy]

I have also looked at walking excavator but holy **** , the price of those is out of this world . Hourly rate would be so high you wouldn't get any work for it

 

[roadbuilder6]

Same

 

[JGS Parts]

the wheeled excavators i have sold are only based in india and packistan sold one of 2 in china but i asked why they want them they say because of the infrastructer of there contrys it is easyer for them to move them then a tracked machine on a float also yeah i cant see why they are more expensive then a tracked model.