I now want a mini excavator.

I saw 3 parked in a local empty lot with sale signs on them, they look like throw-away equipment.

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I now want a mini excavator.

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Best one I know of, hoss:

And frick China

Henderson Auctions in Livingston.

I bought one on an auction earlier this year.

Very similar to the one in the video. Kubota engine, and I bought a bunch of implements with it.

I knew absolutely nothing about excavators. I mainly bought it to learn on and at some point I will get a bigger and better one. Mine is 1.5ton.

I gave 8k for it and all the implements. (Hedge trimmer, auger, 3 different buckets, stump drill, riper blade, etc.

for learning on, I think its fine. If I can't sell it, no biggie, I'm not out much. But to buy a bobcat, cat, kubota, or other, I researched a lot. They are crazy expensive. New Bobcat E17 starts at $38k. A used one that's 7yrs old and 1500+ hours are 12k-15k.

I nearly bought one and a mini skid loader (like a dingo) about a year ago. They are really simple machines and parts for the most part are straight off the shelf (would need a way to measure size and thread count but that ain't no mountain for a climber). At that time you could buy an excavator and skid steer loader (2 separate machines) for less than $10K ($4800 or so ap piece) and could buy them at auction for around $3500 a piece and could import one on your own for around $3000 a piece. I operated one of the excavators and it was a helluve a machine....definitely fine for developing a small piece of land or doing the occasional job around a farm....probably not for a living. I decided against it because the travel time is SLOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW. You can walk faster if you're crippled. The loaders are faster than the excavators but neither is capable of moving fast enough for me...it would drive me insane. I was going to buy them to basically feed logs to my sawmill and I can get a log from the log pile to the mill with a cant hook faster....significantly faster....than either one of them would carry a log that 100 or so feet. As far as digging the excavator I tested dug very well....for what it was...compared to my 24 HP backhoe it would be comparable, maybe even better, but it is slow moving. All sorts of hacks to make them dig smoother and keep the oil cool but no one that I have found has found a way to make them move faster than a sloth can walk....

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How fast will yours drive? Can you outwalk it?

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Oh, I think a slug could move faster.

That's a big drawback but I deal with it.

This was a few weeks ago. I was trimming the lake side of my dam with the hedge trimmer:

I'm sitting on the top of the dam. It's pretty steep and I prefer to not try and clean it with my brush cutter because of that.

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What kind of fence ?

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Diamond mesh

Requirement of lot purchase. Separate property.

Diamond mesh, not chain link.

It's this. You drive posts in the ground, then have a 16' board at the top. Popular here for horse farms.