This is the most common question we get on the phone, and the answer is almost always decided by one thing: are you digging down or moving material across the surface? Once you know that, the rest is detail.
The simple rule
A mini excavator digs. Its arm reaches out and down, so it excels at trenches, footings, drainage, ponds, stumps and any hole with vertical sides. A skid steer or compact track loader pushes, lifts and carries. It excels at grading, spreading gravel, moving soil piles, clearing brush, loading a dump trailer and running attachments like augers, forks and pushers. If your project has both, most people rent the excavator first for the digging, then the loader to finish the grading.
The machines we rent
Our Kubota SVL75-3 is a compact track loader, which is a skid steer on rubber tracks instead of wheels. Tracks matter here because most of Georgina, Brock and Kawartha Lakes is clay, sand or wet ground for half the year, and a wheeled skid steer will rut a lawn or get stuck where a tracked machine floats. At about 74 horsepower it is one of the more powerful compact loaders on the market and will move a lot of gravel in a day.
Our excavators are the Kubota U17, about 1.7 tonnes and narrow enough to fit through a standard gate, and the Kubota U35, about 3.7 tonnes with roughly ten feet of dig depth, which handles septic beds, foundations and larger stumps.
Pick by job
Trench for a water line, hydro, drainage or fence posts: excavator. Footings for a deck, addition or garage: excavator. Removing stumps: U35 excavator. Digging a pond or dry well: excavator. Levelling a yard, spreading topsoil or gravel, building a driveway base: track loader. Demolition of a shed, deck or pool deck and hauling debris: track loader. Clearing brush and small trees: track loader with a grapple, or the U35 for stumps. Moving pallets of stone or sod: track loader with forks. Snow: track loader.
Pick by access
If you have to get through a three foot gate, along the side of a house or under a low deck, the U17 is the only one of the three that fits. If the machine has to travel across an established lawn, the U17 is light enough to leave almost no marks, the SVL75-3 will mark it in wet conditions, and the U35 will need plywood or dry ground.
Pick by budget
The U17 is $250 a day, the U35 and SVL75-3 are $350 a day. For a weekend project the difference is $200. Renting the wrong machine and having to rent the right one afterward costs more than that, so if you are unsure, call and describe the job. We match machines to projects every day and we would rather send the right one once.
Call or text 905-251-2521 and tell us what you are building.