I've worked with a skid steer with him hauling and me just excavating. I was genuinely surprised how much we moved in a day between us. Took about 45 mins to make a 16t load up with a 100m each way haul. It makes the excavating more efficient as you can just dig and sling your pile behind you, and not waiting for a dumper was quite nice.
It worked well the other way round too, when levelling topsoil, he was bringing it to me and placing piles exactly where I needed it, I could then concentrate on getting the levels right. If we'd of had a dumper instead, I would have been out front loading and the piles would be much larger and usually end up with too much in one place, increasing double handling.
Using a skid steer in place of dumpers is obviously not as efficient at hauling dirt BUT, have the added bonus of being more useful than a dumper when it comes to other aspects of a job. Forks, rotovators etc mean you get much more use out of a skid steer over the whole job vs a dumper.
It comes down to what you intend to do with the muck you are shifting. If its getting grabbed away, then a dumper is perfect to make a pile and much more efficient at carrying dirt. But that's all it can do. Once you get into having to carry out work with what you are shifting in front of you - be that building up levels, spreading topsoil, loading it into a wagon etc, the loader comes into its own and the advantage of not having to run two machines (digger and dumper) starts to offset the loss of capacity of each bucket cycle.
With dumpers becoming more and more expensive as Euro 5 emissions systems are fitted and now cabs, plus the endless amount of beacons required on top, I can see the loader making a comeback. Rory might just be onto something with his Drott. Having said that, he does have a serious old dumper fetish too
