Gonna get a mini

[mattfr12]

They are cool until they break down, ASV is junk believe me!

Bobcat is where the reliability is, just like Stihl saws.

Well it runs a cat undercarriage, cat track machines have a pretty bad track record. ASV Is owned by cat they build good tire machines but every dealer we ever talked to said to stay away from the tracks on cats. Endless you like working on the under carriage a lot, the design Works its just a lot more costly to maintain than a bobcat.

Just like when morbark wouldn't do an extended warranty on a d-86 grinder. Salesmen on the phone basically told me they won't due it because of the faulty design. They are basically trying to get out from under them at this point. Look at the tree trader they are selling 50k machines for less than 25-28 grand with like 200 hours. somethings wrong what's the resale value gonna be for you if you buy it?

 

[2treeornot2tree]

Mclaren are awesome tracks I doubt logering are any better.

I would like to get a set of these.

 

[sgreanbeans]

X2 with Matt, My uncle runs the Altorfer Cat shop here, they hate ASV's and hate the Cat track skidloaders, they are semi new to the game and are still tryin to work out the bugs. They have only been making skid loaders for about 10 years. Lots of warranty work.Even more broken gears. Because of him, I could get a huge discount on a new machine, I passed and bought a used Case. To me, Case and Bobcat are the best. I like Bobcat better, but my friend runs a farming implement store and sells Case, got a hell of a good deal on mine. Boxer makes a good mini, but the Vermeer controls are real nice.

 

[mattfr12]

I would like to get a set of these.

Place up here sells them, they put them on their new Hollands in a rental fleet. Seem to hold up really well but the price tag is gonna be huge.

 

[2treeornot2tree]

Place up here sells them, they put them on their new Hollands in a rental fleet. Seem to hold up really well but the price tag is gonna be huge.

I found a lightly used pair for $4000, but didnt have the dough at the time so someone else snaged them.

 

[treeclimber101]

I always liked asv's plow snow like a beast for sure !

 

[murphy4trees]

Well it runs a cat undercarriage, cat track machines have a pretty bad track record. ASV Is owned by cat they build good tire machines but every dealer we ever talked to said to stay away from the tracks on cats. Endless you like working on the under carriage a lot, the design Works its just a lot more costly to maintain than a bobcat.

Just like when morbark wouldn't do an extended warranty on a d-86 grinder. Salesmen on the phone basically told me they won't due it because of the faulty design. They are basically trying to get out from under them at this point. Look at the tree trader they are selling 50k machines for less than 25-28 grand with like 200 hours. somethings wrong what's the resale value gonna be for you if you buy it?

Actually cat and ASV have parted ways.. at one time cat owned 25% of the stock in ASV.. and the undercarriage in question is an ASV design which was used on Cat 257s (I think)... These undercarriages are known to be hard to repair and extremely expensive.. We have 1600 hours on our machine and just replaced the tracks.. The mechanic had just replaced the tracks another asv undercarriage on a cat with regualr tracks.. The undercarriage was beat.. cost many thousands of dollars just for the undercarriage part... know another company that paid somewhere between $7-12K for re-doing another similar undercarriage.. Mechanic said my undercarriage was pristine... nothing at all wrong... charges me $225 labor to replace the tracks... The turf tracks will slip before putting much stress on the undercarriage.. and we never use the machine for snow or in mud, becasue it has no traction!.. that's all I can think of to make a difference..

Terex now bought ASV/Posi-trac... so now the machines are beige.. I've had a few minor mechanical issues with the ASV and its a hard start in cold weather, but overall pretty happy here..

 

[Tundra Man Mike]

Boxers suck. Warranty is crap, machine is disposable. I did Boxer warranty for 2.5 years. They are clueless.

Stand on get a Vermeer or at least a Bobcat.

ASV tracks on 287(b) skid steers are very expensive. Sold many. Lots of 2000 hour complete undercarriages.

 

[sgreanbeans]

Boxers suck. Warranty is crap, machine is disposable. I did Boxer warranty for 2.5 years. They are clueless.

Stand on get a Vermeer or at least a Bobcat.

ASV tracks on 287(b) skid steers are very expensive. Sold many. Lots of 2000 hour complete undercarriages.

Wow that bad! I never owned one, but they demo'ed one to me, had it for a few days and really liked it, but the controls where not well thought out, kinda hard to operate bucket and drive at the same time. That what I liked about Vermeers, the controls, but they didn't have the power the boxer did and I ended up buying a full size Case anyhow.

Mike you a dealer?

 

[mattfr12]

just my opinion i have a T300 and S205 currently the 205 is for sale. I don't notice much difference in the damage done or not done between the two. as you know one is tire and one is tracks, on a solid yard they seem to leave about the same impression. on a wet yard the tracks really seem to mess it up in my experience so do the tires but the tracks when you turn on a soggy spot tear out like a 4 foot path. the pro's and con's of tracks for carrying wood don't seem worth it to me. If i was in the buying position again i would be buying a S300 or A300. Endless your digging with it i don't see much advantage to the tracks.

Now i know murphy has those fancy green tracks that seem to walk on water but once you figure out the added expensive of operation it is drastic. 12-15k price increase on a track machine when buying one. then a few thousand to replace them, better hope the undercarriage doesn't need work.

i bought chinese tires for years for like 600$ a set and they last super long for me even tho they are garbage rubber. we don't drive on asphalt to much with them so i can pull close to 500 hours out of a set. on asphalt they would #### the bed at around 200 hours.

we just use the t300 for yard organization and it gets used daily for that. Its gonna get swapped in the future for a tele handler.

 

[mattfr12]

Boxers suck. Warranty is crap, machine is disposable. I did Boxer warranty for 2.5 years. They are clueless.

Stand on get a Vermeer or at least a Bobcat.

ASV tracks on 287(b) skid steers are very expensive. Sold many. Lots of 2000 hour complete undercarriages.

Im not a vermeer fan but there mini's are front runners. Lift capacity and components are all good stuff compared to the others.

 

[murphy4trees]

just my opinion i have a T300 and S205 currently the 205 is for sale. I don't notice much difference in the damage done or not done between the two. as you know one is tire and one is tracks, on a solid yard they seem to leave about the same impression. on a wet yard the tracks really seem to mess it up in my experience so do the tires but the tracks when you turn on a soggy spot tear out like a 4 foot path. the pro's and con's of tracks for carrying wood don't seem worth it to me. If i was in the buying position again i would be buying a S300 or A300. Endless your digging with it i don't see much advantage to the tracks.

Now i know murphy has those fancy green tracks that seem to walk on water but once you figure out the added expensive of operation it is drastic. 12-15k price increase on a track machine when buying one. then a few thousand to replace them, better hope the undercarriage doesn't need work.

i bought chinese tires for years for like 600$ a set and they last super long for me even tho they are garbage rubber. we don't drive on asphalt to much with them so i can pull close to 500 hours out of a set. on asphalt they would #### the bed at around 200 hours.

we just use the t300 for yard organization and it gets used daily for that. Its gonna get swapped in the future for a tele handler.

I paid $18K fomr my asv with 175 hours on it, delivered from NC.. back in the worst of times when the banks were just taking whatever they could for the re-po'd 'quipmnt.. That was sweet, got in cheap... found some factory second tracks fairly cheap too.. got two sets so I have a spare.. and the undercarriage is still 100% (thank GOD!)... I wonder if doing snow work beats up those bearings, like the seals go and its all over but the shouting once the bearings get wet.. That machine is a game changer.. Just Friday I dropped an ash tree that could have never been done without the loader's help.. did some prunign first.. stakced the brush in the street to protect the curb, then dropped a 20" standing dead oak in the street .. splash!!!.. used all the limbs and wood to protect the curb for the ash drop.. ASH had a huge wide canopy, maybe 70-80' spread.. that's a lot of curb to protact and the neighbor's had a little 1' retainign wall along their front corner, which was also protected.. Ash goes splash, late Friday afternoon.. Stuff chipper with loader for a while, then clear yard and leave all the wood and some smaller stuff in the street for the firewood lovers.. grind stumps, haul grindings into the woods with loader.. Rake up the yard, haul rakings into the woods with loader.. Street, curba nd retaining wall are perfect and the lawn has only a few minor dings... 'mazing if you ain't see nutin like it!

ps ... "never could have been done" means in that kind of time/ for that kind of $$$

 

[mattfr12]

I paid $18K fomr my asv with 175 hours on it, delivered from NC.. back in the worst of times when the banks were just taking whatever they could for the re-po'd 'quipmnt.. That was sweet, got in cheap... found some factory second tracks fairly cheap too.. got two sets so I have a spare.. and the undercarriage is still 100% (thank GOD!)... I wonder if doing snow work beats up those bearings, like the seals go and its all over but the shouting once the bearings get wet.. That machine is a game changer.. Just Friday I dropped an ash tree that could have never been done without the loader's help.. did some prunign first.. stakced the brush in the street to protect the curb, then dropped a 20" standing dead oak in the street .. splash!!!.. used all the limbs and wood to protect the curb for the ash drop.. ASH had a huge wide canopy, maybe 70-80' spread.. that's a lot of curb to protact and the neighbor's had a little 1' retainign wall along their front corner, which was also protected.. Ash goes splash, late Friday afternoon.. Stuff chipper with loader for a while, then clear yard and leave all the wood and some smaller stuff in the street for the firewood lovers.. grind stumps, haul grindings into the woods with loader.. Rake up the yard, haul rakings into the woods with loader.. Street, curba nd retaining wall are perfect and the lawn has only a few minor dings... 'mazing if you ain't see nutin like it!

ps ... "never could have been done" means in that kind of time/ for that kind of $$$

O i understand it completely thats why i have skid steers. They have became obsolete to us now with the purchasing of knuckle booms thats why i have my s205 for sale. If you think that skid loader is the #### take a ride and see how we do it. And I'm being serious murphy not trying to be a smart ass. I know your ASV is a very productive machine once you have it you don't know how to do without.

But once you see what we are packing your gonna start saving or be ready to whip out your check book. ill explain

Imagine not having to tow your ASV around and be able to pick up 25k logs with 100 foot of boom at your disposal tucked in behind the cab.

Put the grapple on and we are loading 18 foot logs all day we pull a 18ft dump trailer behind it so we can fill up the bed and trailer giving me a hauling capacity of 42k. out of a 38k single axle truck.

If 100 foot of boom isnt enough retract crane all the way in run the winch out to 300 feet! with crane fully retracted on the smaller of our booms we can pull around 30k off the side, the front or back it will actually scoot the truck because the front and rear outriggers don't extend. combined with the cable being horizontal.

to top it off you can stand wherever you want with the remote control.

now i saw some of your video's you talk about the 75 foot bucket, we have one and love it but imagine having around 105 of horizontal not only vertical but horizontal reach!! not to many trees we cant tower above. because you can actually go farther than that since you only need a capacity off say 500 for you and the bucket you can really pump it out there on some of their bigger models well over 150.

come check it out if you want, its a crane, a log loader, a log truck, and a chip truck. tomorrow we have one scheduled to do air conditioners in the morning for a few hours.

 

[mattfr12]

I paid $18K fomr my asv with 175 hours on it, delivered from NC.. back in the worst of times when the banks were just taking whatever they could for the re-po'd 'quipmnt.. That was sweet, got in cheap... found some factory second tracks fairly cheap too.. got two sets so I have a spare.. and the undercarriage is still 100% (thank GOD!)... I wonder if doing snow work beats up those bearings, like the seals go and its all over but the shouting once the bearings get wet.. That machine is a game changer.. Just Friday I dropped an ash tree that could have never been done without the loader's help.. did some prunign first.. stakced the brush in the street to protect the curb, then dropped a 20" standing dead oak in the street .. splash!!!.. used all the limbs and wood to protect the curb for the ash drop.. ASH had a huge wide canopy, maybe 70-80' spread.. that's a lot of curb to protact and the neighbor's had a little 1' retainign wall along their front corner, which was also protected.. Ash goes splash, late Friday afternoon.. Stuff chipper with loader for a while, then clear yard and leave all the wood and some smaller stuff in the street for the firewood lovers.. grind stumps, haul grindings into the woods with loader.. Rake up the yard, haul rakings into the woods with loader.. Street, curba nd retaining wall are perfect and the lawn has only a few minor dings... 'mazing if you ain't see nutin like it!

ps ... "never could have been done" means in that kind of time/ for that kind of $$$

We just jumped up to our biggest chipper ever they are bringing a bandit 1990 down for us to use for a while. They claim the woodsman cant touch it and want to prove it to me so well see but we should be able to get rid of a pretty decent size tree in a hurry tugging it around even compared to our 2400.

Originally we wanted the 280xp due to the disk being able to throw the chip much farther. we cut a good bit of gas roads down here so we chip into 45ft containers a lot. your average drum struggles to pack it like a disk. thats one of the main things we have to see. The 1890 didn't get the first 10 feet packed very well with alot of space left up top but the 280 jammed it in there.

The not packing it all the way cuts into profits for us since we haul it to a paper mill out in ohio 700$ is around the average for clean chips 45ft container full.

 

[murphy4trees]

dayum!!!!!

Another tree care revolution happening right before our eyes!

You write enough to make any tree man drool.. but words fall short.. that's the kind of thing you have to see to really appreciate..

I AM always looking for a competitive advantage, and think the K boom would work well in that regard, however it's a bit beyond the need for our present work load and infrastructure etc.. If I ever do decide to go that direction, I'll come out for a day.. appreciate the invite..

Still gotta love the ASV.... same job as the ash, we cleaned up 15 years of old wood and brush piles all over this lady's yard and still have to move 20 yards of wood chips that someone else dumped without her permission.. And no CDL/license/insurance etc.. to run it...

 

[arbor pro]

Bobcat, vermeer and dingo are all good mini skids but buy an sk650 and you'll never regret it. I've owned and run just about every make and model out there and, while I might run a dingo or bobcat for stump cleanup or landscaping, I prefer the sk650 for tree work. They're just so much more productive; yet, compact and easy to use. I run them up to 1000hrs and then sell them. Not because they're trashed at 1000 hours but because they're depreciated out by then. If well-maintained, you should get a few thousand hours out of a mini skid just like a full size skid steer. If not maintained, they'll be junk at 1000 hrs just like a full size skid steer. Just try to find used sk650s and you'll see that they hold their value extremely well. If you can swing the price of a new one ($21k with tax and delivery - everyone forgets about tax and delivery), go for it. If you can't afford new, expect to pay around $12k for a used one with 1000hrs and more $ for less hours.

Compact equipment will never replace large equipment in the tree care industry. However, compact equipment can go most anywhere while large equipment is typically limited by access. That's why I sold all my big equipment three years ago and replaced it with low impact equipment and I've never regretted it. My customers don't care if a job takes a little longer to complete. They do care if I rip up their yard and landscaping. Easy decision for me.

 

[murphy4trees]

Its rare that I have a problem with access.. It does happen from time to time, but not TOO often.. the added productivity of the asv is a no brainer to me.. guess it depends on your market area.. I originally bought the ASV with the idea of using it for stump chips, but now its on the tree crew full time! NO GOING BACK!

 

[murphy4trees]

ps.. I'd like to run a 200-250 hp chipper.. that would make quick work of A LOT and be a great competitive advantage... At this point I'd only get one with a grapple... The 1990 sounds awesome.. does morebark offer a grapple??

 

[mattfr12]

ps.. I'd like to run a 200-250 hp chipper.. that would make quick work of A LOT and be a great competitive advantage... At this point I'd only get one with a grapple... The 1990 sounds awesome.. does morebark offer a grapple??

Ya on there larger 18 and 20. The problem we are running into with our morbark is the way the drum lift and drum are designed. Don't get me wrong we use it daily and I'm not jumping to sell it. But what happens is that the drum opens on an arch not straight up and down. Every once and a while your gonna stick a piece in there that the feed wheels can't bite and the drum sucks it straight through and stalls the machine, it's rare but really annoying trying to get it unstuck sometimes.

Never happens with big wood usually like 6-10 inch silvers maple smooth bark stuff. Saying that I wouldn't hesitate to get another one. We are gonna be using a 1990 for a long demo because at the end I think we will keep it if it does what they say.

Murph in my opinion bandit only makes two chippers you can expect to truley pull in large crotchy trees. 280xp and 1990 and that's because of the chain driven feed system and crushing power is the same system on there 1850 whole tree chipper. it hands down is 4x the power of standard hydraulic attached to the roller style and will actually move 40ft of tree. Others will not without a lot of relief cutting. This was what shut me down on woodsman also other than them being insanely far away, they use a standard single roller feed system. To me there is no point in having it if I can't stick a whole tree in and walk away. 280xp and 1990 you can do that, we have the rear stabilizers on all of our machines to keep them from pulling my one ton backwards.

I think there is 50/50 you would like he 280xp better than a 1990. The reason is in my opinion they are about the same on how big they will chip. Same feed system same hp capabilities, but what really comes into play is shear size. Side by side the 280 is significantly smaller, lighter, and easier to tow they even make a single axle model which I wouldn't recommend.

Again I can line them up side by side and let you be the judge. I was very skeptical buying a disk chipper in this new evolution of drum time. But was really surprised at how much it will pull in un assisted and how much hp you can out under the hood. We have 275hp Deere on there website its not even shown to be possible but they will throw in whatever you want. Auto feed rarely kicks in with 275hp and you might say well I don't care how much it kicks in and you might not now be but in time you will. Once you get a job and your taking out like 50 small trees and it's auto feeding all day while your holding the next tree in that asv waiting for it to go through amounts to hours a day lost.

Vermeer brought down the 1800 2100 and i don't even know what to compare them to in bandit or morbark lines but if you see them side by side and love vermeer your gonna be disappointed.

I would say the 1800 is closer to there 1290 15 inch capacity chipper and i would have to say the 1290 is faster. and there 2100xl was about the same as our 1590 it would auto feed around 20 times a log for us on over a 10ft log which for us is just not acceptable. the 1590 out of speed smoked it, the auto feed was doing less than 10 on the same sized logs 19 inch size. The guy from the dealer had to hold that freaking override button on the side of the machine in also every time a limb would hit it.

in conclusion right now bandit is the only thing i would touch. Morbark has some design issues that need addressed, woodsman is just to far away with poor dealer support for our area, and vermeer i feel your really not getting your money worth as if you put the same money in a bandit or morbark. you get a lot more machine.

 

[mattfr12]

dayum!!!!!

Another tree care revolution happening right before our eyes!

You write enough to make any tree man drool.. but words fall short.. that's the kind of thing you have to see to really appreciate..

I AM always looking for a competitive advantage, and think the K boom would work well in that regard, however it's a bit beyond the need for our present work load and infrastructure etc.. If I ever do decide to go that direction, I'll come out for a day.. appreciate the invite..

Still gotta love the ASV.... same job as the ash, we cleaned up 15 years of old wood and brush piles all over this lady's yard and still have to move 20 yards of wood chips that someone else dumped without her permission.. And no CDL/license/insurance etc.. to run it...

Ill have to get my camera rolling again on any average sized house that has a driveway running up to it we can usually reach across from front to back to get material in the back yard by lowering the ball down. thats the real advantage i have found by putting the winch on my knuckle boom. we did some air conditioners today that ill try and get some pictures up of but the guy that took them had a very i mean very poor camera.