New Revenue Ideas for Your Compact Excavator

Published on November 7, 2014

Your compact excavator offers versatility far beyond digging jobs. With the right attachments, you could bid on jobs you may not have previously considered. Here are four jobs you could perform with a compact excavator:

  1. Hardscaping/Landscaping — When recreating an outdoor environment, building an elaborate hardscape or constructing retaining walls, compact excavators with the Three-tined grapple  paired with a clamp attachment provide the grasp and precision you need to load/unload and sort material, or move vegetation. Or combine the Pro Clamp System™ with a three-tine grapple for a perfect solution to handle landscape boulders, timbers or other dimensional lumber in the construction of waterfalls and ponds.
  2. Park and Recreation Construction — The same machines and attachments you use to perform construction tasks for residential or commercial properties are also needed in parks and recreational facilities. Buckets and grapples assist with site prep; cleaning and clearing land; and building campsites, shelter houses and marinas. Clamps move broken concrete, brush, logs, tree stumps, boulders and other odd-shaped objects — even old playground equipment. A compact excavator’s large footprint provides strong grading capabilities. Grading blades assist with rough or finish grading, backfilling and leveling in boat ramp and beach construction and reclamation, while grading buckets and tilt accessories can complement your efforts with their ability to cut swales and shape contours.
  3. Trail Development — Constructing and maintaining asphalt walking/biking trail systems and golf cart paths is tough to do with most machines, but is easier with a compact excavator equipped with a trenching bucket and grading blade. With a ripper attachment, these machines can penetrate and scarify frost or hard-packed ground. Excavators are ideal for clearing, grading and applying fill material to prep pathways — measuring approximately 5 feet wide with minimal disruption. They also provide the precision to chisel and sculpt sloped land, and the versatility to cut, grade and compact fill material.
  4. Retaining Wall Construction and Maintenance — With a growing emphasis on climate change and wet weather patterns, many urban and rural areas are seeing increased stress on dike and levee walls. With a grading bucket and an extendable arm available on some compact excavators, walls can be reshaped by re-forming levy shelves. The soil can then be rolled downhill and sloped with a tilt accessory for improved mowing and spraying. Likewise, these same features allow contractors to groom land prior to constructing large stone retaining walls along freeways and metropolitan interstate roadways.

The Bobcat compact excavator is built to handle as much versatility as you can throw at it with more standard equipment, including the quick-tach system, hoses and couplers, controls and clamp mounts.