Brushcat Rotary Cutter Helps Clear the Way for a Growing Business

Brian Ashley uses a Bobcat S250 skid-steer loader and Brushcat rotary cutter attachment to clear land.

A Brushcat® rotary cutter has proven to be a good investment for Brian Ashley. Five years ago he purchased the 60-in. model to clear 12 acres of pine seedlings on his farm near Donalds, S.C.

“After I started using the Brushcat unit, I saw how beneficial it might be for other people,” he says. He took it to an area in town where undergrowth was taking over large lots behind nine homes. “I ended up clearing all nine lots,” he says. “That helped my business to get going without any advertising, and without knowing much about running such a business.”

Since then Ashley replaced his Bobcat® 873 loader with an S250 highflow
machine from Jones-Calhoun Bobcat. He uses it with several other Bobcat attachments (auger, utility and combination buckets, pallet forks and soil conditioner) to do light grading and clearing, lawn and irrigation installation and fence construction.

S250

The Brushcat rotary cutter remains a key attachment for Ashley’s business. It’s built to make easy work of tough brush-clearing jobs with its rugged quarter-inch-thick steel deck, a hydraulic drive that eliminates the need for shear pins or drive clutches and quick access to drive components and maintenance areas. The unit is designed to float over ground contours. This feature keeps it in contact with the surface for top clearing performance.

“For safety, the blades stop rotating as soon as you lift the cutter off the ground and, by switching hydraulic lines, I can reverse direction of the
duble-edged blades to increase life of the blades, ” Ashley says. In addition to clearing thick grass and brush, he uses the Brushcat attachment to cut down small trees up to about 2 to 3 in. in diameter.

“I used it on a 45-acre site that had been neglected for 13 years and was overgrown with briars, honeysuckle, and small plum, pine and oak trees,” he says. “The customer was happy because I cleared it all without tearing up the ground like a dozer would. In fact, when I’m done clearing a site, it’s smooth enough that you can cut the grass with a lawn mower or drive over the area in a pickup truck without puncturing tires.”

Ashley uses the front-mounted attachment to clear areas where a pull type cutter can’t go. “One job involved clearing brush from sloping ground around a large pond. I was able to drive straight up to the edge of the pond and cut the brush,” he says. “It would have been impossible to do that job with a pull-behind unit.”