Bobcat 334 Shines on the Slopes

Craig Nicolson

When Craig Nicolson started his landscaping and garden center businesses three years ago, he purchased a Bobcat® 334 excavator with an enclosed, heated cab. This long-arm version of the 331 excavator is ideal for the mountain terrain around Fernie, B. C.

“We do a lot of landscaping on grades where we can’t often use a skid-steer loader,” he says. “We couldn’t do the work we do without our excavator. In fact, that machine has gotten us a lot of work.”

Among the projects: Digging trenches and tree planting holes and shaping slopes with 13- and 30-in.-wide buckets and handling logs, trees and landscaping boulders with the Bobcat hydraulic clamp.

The 334 gives Nicolson the digging depth he needs for utility trenching, the extra reach to minimize repositioning and the power to handle heavy loads. “Also, it causes less ground disturbance than a skid-steer loader and it’s so easy to operate,” he says. “Despite arthritis, I can run my 334 all day long without any problems.”