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Site Cleanup (Land Clearing) Comparison

19:50
28:54
438.2K views

At 19:50 in

Mini Excavator vs Skid steer

What happens here

The final challenge involves clearing a roughly defined 10x10 foot area of dense palm undergrowth and roots. Each machine is given four minutes to clear its section. The mini excavator uses its bucket and thumb attachment to dig out and remove roots and palm fronds with relative precision, leaving a cleaner, more leveled surface suitable for a usable field. The skid steer uses its bucket to push and scrape, clearing the surface area quickly but leaving many roots buried and the ground uneven.

Goal: Compare the machines' ability to clear dense vegetation and roots, preparing a 'usable field'.

Tools and materials

  • CAT 289D Skid Steer CAT — Clearing dense vegetation by pushing and scraping
  • CAT 305.5E Mini Excavator CAT — Clearing dense vegetation and roots
  • Thumb Attachment — Grabbing and removing roots and debris precisely

What they say

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area but did he get the roots out that's the real question because that was part of turning this into a functional field let's find out there's Travis's route pile route just going to see quadrants pull up so I would say that here's the air general area that we've got done Travis tan in your area Phil will you stand in your area so we that we've got kind of a perspective no organics are in the soil it's just perfect message is perfectness searly hold I need to comb it out a little bit but I mean it's perfect miss you know one of the things that surprised me is you didn't take advantage of your blade that you have on yeah I don't this is Travis's perfectness so we go to hire on-site army look man this is the seat of perfect this is why use a blade this stuff gets buried it looks good from the top and you gotta make sure it's like totally perfect I was surprised I would have I would have came in with the blade and tried to blade some of this off now let's go look at Phil stop Phil we get any worse out twice as much actual area but I don't think you've got as many of the routes actually exposed and removed as what Travis was able to do yeah so in this case I don't see where there's a very clear-cut winner in either situation if there weren't a lot of routes you would obviously dominate if we've got to go deeper and we actually had to remove stomp so I think Travis and the mini excavator would definitely do it but one of the things I guess the takeaway from this is guys you can start with either piece of equipment as long as you realize that there's going to be advantages and disadvantages to each one no question about it in our area everybody's got a skid everybody in their mother has got a skid nobody's got a mini axe but nobody's nobody's dad's perhaps good nobody's dad's got skids you know and I would say on this one this is close because it would take we had four minutes of time this could easily take us both a day where you could do quality work and not have to come back but I'm gonna have to make two three four passes to make this thing look it's true I mean loading a truck with the mini acts as a dream there's no question about it you don't mind doing four times the amount of work in a minute if you can't get them even if the truck was right here he can pick up a yard at a time pick it up put it in and for every one scoop he does you're doing four cuz you've got a quarter no question about it many I think my I think my strategy is to not not have a…

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