When I quote any job, it's important for me to remember my machine's limitations. To get a job, it has to be small enough that a larger machine either can't fit or the customer wouldn't have enough work to keep it busy for at least 4 hours. Some jobs are easier to do with laborers by hand, but it will usually take longer and cost the same amount. The only jobs that hand work beats the tractor for are extreme grades and tight spots. If I can find the sweet spot between larger equipment and doing it by hand, it's easy to get the job. I really hype up the low damage to yards feature of this tractor and I have worked on top of plywood sheets before. My machine can also cross waste leech fields that other wheeled equipment can't touch. I have got a few jobs just spreading gravel over sensitive areas.
The most important thing to make a small tractor earn its keep is to work smart. I try to handle dirt only once. I will buy attachments for some jobs to make it easier. I have a laser grading system so i can hog out as much material as fast as possible without going under the grade i'm shooting for. This is probably the best thing I've bought in terms of speeding productivity.
I have built pallet forks and a ripper for the backhoe. I own a grader blade and have rented a box blade. I'm currently making a toothbar with more teeth than you would regularly find and sized appropriately for my tractor. I think the abundance of teeth and the tooth angles I have chosen will make it slide through the ground much easier than the toothbars I have seen.
I have a 12" bucket for the backhoe and a mechanical thumb. I have grabbed a 6x6 cut down to about 3' between the thumb and bucket to use for backfilling where I can't get the loader perpendicular to the trench or have no room to maneuver. This is where an excavator would really shine, but I make due with my big stick
I got the idea from this video:
BobcatNinja2124's Channel - YouTube
As far as land clearing is concerned, I use a combination of the bucket, backhoe, and pallet forks to work fast. For the pictures I had in the album, the whole area was briars, tree limbs and bushes. I first pushed out or dug with the backhoe a few large bushes and had my helper ride a pallet to cut off the tree branches that were hitting my face. The property owner had already ripped out a few bushes and cut down some saplings with a chainsaw, so I just put on the regular bucket and started ripping out the briars and rolling everything into a big ball. Rolling the ball released most of the dirt i had dug up with the bushes. Once I got the ball compacted, I switched to pallet forks and picked it up to go to the burn pile. As you can see from the pictures it's as big as the tractor! After a few more big balls of trash I used the backhoe / thumb combo to move some bushes and logs that I couldn't get the forks to pick up because they were a weird shape. Quick attach on the FEL is the only way to make money in that game. I then back dragged with the loader to smooth out the dirt that was left. It took about an hour and a half to clear out an area bordering the creek that was 20' by 75'. I spent most of this time trying to untangle and skid out the big 2.5' log that's longer than the tractor.
I am saving my pennies and scrap metal to build a grapple. I did about a day's worth of manual labor which in these parts would be $80 for $75. If I weren't already on the job site it wouldn't have been worth it to hire me, but he was happy that it was all cleared so quickly and he didn't have to supervise.
For removing roots with the backhoe, I found that a sawzall with a pruning blade in conjunction with the ripper provides the fastest results. I carry the sawzall with me all the time for when I find unexpected roots grading or trenching.
