The 'Today's Job' thread

[JD450A]

Grabs are all dependent on operator ability and the job at hand... Same as any attachment.

Yesterday I grubbed a hedge out, dug 60m of road formation out, leveled the subgrade, and stoned out the capping layer with a 3' toothed bulk bucket.

I regularly use a fixed grapple, a hydraulic fixed grab, thumb, and selector grab. And we have also used both tilty gripper and a Japanese flat pawed hydraulic grab in the past.

All have pros and cons..... Likewise all are luxuries not necessities.

That tilting hitch with claw is useful for the right job. Think poling, or a one man band like myself that needs to move large diameter pipe.


Like anything, operator ability is key.... And few have any.

 

[doobin]

Grabs are all dependent on operator ability and the job at hand... Same as any attachment.

Yesterday I grubbed a hedge out, dug 60m of road formation out, leveled the subgrade, and stoned out the capping layer with a 3' toothed bulk bucket.

I regularly use a fixed grapple, a hydraulic fixed grab, thumb, and selector grab. And we have also used both tilty gripper and a Japanese flat pawed hydraulic grab in the past.

All have pros and cons..... Likewise all are luxuries not necessities.

That tilting hitch with claw is useful for the right job. Think poling, or a one man band like myself that needs to move large diameter pipe.


Like anything, operator ability is key.... And few have any.

A grab is a bare neccesity in my line of work. I'm sure @Monkeybusiness will agree.

 

[Monkeybusiness]

A grab is a bare neccesity in my line of work. I'm sure @Monkeybusiness will agree.

My machines probably do 90% grab or shear work. But I don’t do groundworks (other than a few bits and pieces for myself/friends/family).

 

[Smiffy]

I’d much rather have a hydraulic quick hitch with tilt and a proper grab to go underneath it. For the price of that I bet you could get a hitch/grab combo with OilQuick.

I don't think it would replace a dedicated grab atall. But it would save chasing kerbs or Harris fencing feet around with a bucket or getting out to litter pick recycled crush.
More a tool for general groundworks than more specialist stuff

 

[AHPP]

I’d say it looks considerably better than not having one. What cost does the gripper add?

 

[CPS]

I don't think it would be a waste of time atall. Yes the pick and place ability would be lessened but still massively reduce the amount of time spent trying to flick things into the bucket.
Thumbs and mechanical grabs have no articulation but are massively more useful than nothing

Its not the ability to place slightly to the side or anything like that im talking about. Its all to do with usability.
Its hard to explain if you have never used a tilty and gripper, but 9 times out of 10 you will have the gripper pointed i towards the machine. This gives a better range of movement.
Also with a bucket on, that gripper is going to be restricted.
As @JD450A says, maybe placing poles etc, but kerbs etc, no...... it wont work.
As @Furniss is now an total tilty and gripper convert i reckon he will understand and agree with me.
I reckon the gripper would only be useful in maybe 30% of the applications you would want to use it for.

I should also ad, im not running down another mans product, just throwing in my 2 cents worth

 

[CPS]

Doing some soiling up and a planter along the back on a job we were at earlier in the year........then "While your here could you put a sleeper edge in at the front and a few slates up the path" !
Nobody has had to lift anything yet, this kind of jobbing is night and day different to before, thankfully.
View attachment 52124

Daft isnt it, I keep posting on it because cant believe how useful it is...this new setup has totally transformed our jobs, its made things so much easier and quicker.

They do get some stick down the business end of the arm though....hope it proves upto it, the engcon stickers aren't going to last long thats for sure.

You really can't convey just how useful a tilty and gripper are until you have actually used one, especially in my case where I sell the things, people think you are giving them the "Big Sell"...….. But just as in Kevin's case people really do make use of them in just about every task they do!
Yes, a lot of the tasks can be done with a standard machine, but it is the small little time savings that all add up over the course of a job, just this week i watched a guy with a 24ton machine load a 6 ton dumper, from an angle that would have been awkward with out a tilty, no spillage, just job done!
Some of my customers claim 25-30% time savings, plus the labour and material savings, it really does ad up on your own work/contracts.

 

[AusDave]

Speaking of newish equipment, this was offloaded from a car carrying semitrailer and driven into my yard this week.



2017 Toyota Prius Plugin Hybrid Japanese import. 84000kms on the clock, looks and feels like new. Full service records, (in Japanese), and drives verry nicely. With the cost of fuel I'll be plugging in during the sunny part of the day to keep the battery charged with my solar panels instead of sending excess power to the grid for a pittance. Will do 40-50km on battery alone on a recent test drive and after that the petrol engine will kick in, but its so seamless it's hard to tell.

Got some longer drives coming up to take my partner to various hospitals so it will be good for those trips and seeing customers jobs around the area.
It's a bit flash for me but it wasn't too expensive and Toyota don't sell the Plugins in Australia.

All my other vehicles are over 20 years old so this new one came as a bit of a shock with all the features. Got a Tesla like screen in the middle and another long screen along the dash. It's a premium model so every option seems to have been included even a solar roof which adds 6km of charge after a day in the sun Manual for the car runs to nearly 800 pages... and is in Japanese Fortunately I could download an English manual and I'm slowly working my way through it to figure out how everything works.

(Note to self, must remember to take photos of my earthmoving jobs )

 

[Smiffy]

Its not the ability to place slightly to the side or anything like that im talking about. Its all to do with usability.
Its hard to explain if you have never used a tilty and gripper, but 9 times out of 10 you will have the gripper pointed i towards the machine. This gives a better range of movement.
Also with a bucket on, that gripper is going to be restricted.
As @JD450A says, maybe placing poles etc, but kerbs etc, no...... it wont work.
As @Furniss is now an total tilty and gripper convert i reckon he will understand and agree with me.
I reckon the gripper would only be useful in maybe 30% of the applications you would want to use it for.

I should also ad, im not running down another mans product, just throwing in my 2 cents worth

But that's because your thinking about it coming from the tilty with gripper. Completely erase that from your mind and think about it coming from just a bucket point of view.
I'm on a standard house site today and have had to chase kerbs round with a bucket as they have been abandoned in the way. Same for Harris fencing feet and pallets. Been in and out to put strops on coils of duct a trench rammer and an old cable drum. Had to get out and move Harris fence panels, rolls of warning tape and diesel drums. Plus a whole load of other things I probably can't remember. None of these require any amount of finesse or delicate work. They just wasted time. And before you say it there is no need for a full blown tilty or a dedicated grab. The next closest thing would be a labourer to stand around just in case, but I would rather deal with a lump of metal.

 

[groundworker]

But that's because your thinking about it coming from the tilty with gripper. Completely erase that from your mind and think about it coming from just a bucket point of view.
I'm on a standard house site today and have had to chase kerbs round with a bucket as they have been abandoned in the way. Same for Harris fencing feet and pallets. Been in and out to put strops on coils of duct a trench rammer and an old cable drum. Had to get out and move Harris fence panels, rolls of warning tape and diesel drums. Plus a whole load of other things I probably can't remember. None of these require any amount of finesse or delicate work. They just wasted time. And before you say it there is no need for a full blown tilty or a dedicated grab. The next closest thing would be a labourer to stand around just in case, but I would rather deal with a lump of metal.

Hydraulic thumb has been a massive time saver on my mini digger and sounds like it would do most of what you're describing there.

It's great for what I do (general groundworks/thrashing around/ripping stuff out) but lacks any real dexterity for picking up small/delicate stuff.

The lack of rotation obviously doesn't help but if you're used to not having it on the bucket you can muddle along without it on the thumb.

 

[JerryRtilt]

As a tilty owner who just sold a gripper i think i can see both sides of the argument/discussion,( the gripper was sold purely because it just added a bit to much weight at the wrong end of a machine that's only just towable, and upset the balance, not because it wasn't very useful.)
I don't think a gripper on a tilting hitch would be much more useable than one on a fixed hitch, but can see how that would still be better than no gripper or shouting at a labourer all day but as @CPS says the bucket would need to be removed most of the time.
A gripper on a rotating hitch, such as the Holp Rototop ? would be far more useable i think, although it doesn't look like they do one strangely ?

 

[Furniss]

You really can't convey just how useful a tilty and gripper are until you have actually used one, especially in my case where I sell the things, people think you are giving them the "Big Sell"...….. But just as in Kevin's case people really do make use of them in just about every task they do!
Yes, a lot of the tasks can be done with a standard machine, but it is the small little time savings that all add up over the course of a job, just this week i watched a guy with a 24ton machine load a 6 ton dumper, from an angle that would have been awkward with out a tilty, no spillage, just job done!
Some of my customers claim 25-30% time savings, plus the labour and material savings, it really does ad up on your own work/contracts.

Ive been thinking about why there is even any chat about necessary, useful or whatever, (me included before i got one) and why is such a total game changer of a product (overused expression but in this case its true) quite difficult to sell, yes they are expensive but having seen how they can change things for the better I would just finance one if you didnt have the cash, it will easily pay for itself and make life a doddle.
My mate over here in france with a tilt hitch messaged me asking what its like, as I had time to think about a response I thought of detailing all the best things you can do (and I might not know half of them yet) but in the end I just said "get the right carrier machine and put one on it, you will thank me".
As @JerryRtilt said its all the little things that add up.

Anyhow that said I will try to detail how its been used today,we've been putting in some oak sleepers.

Bit of yesterday and today went like....Dug trench for gear and pulled little right angled trenches without repositioning or having to get parallel to trench which would of been a chew as hardcore was already down and i couldnt track on path ,picked up sleepers with gripper and laid them alongside ready to go in, unloaded the gear from the truck over the fence into dumper with digger and truck sat on a strange angles from one another , I can move it along truck body side on and dig against back doors which are stronger than sides, left hardly any shovelling to clean truck out,then placed gear/bed perfectly along the trenches to grade with scandi grader side on to me and not trampling all over garden to get square on, then placed sleepers carefully on the bed of gear, ( with someone holding string line away ) got off digger and hammered them down to string line, back on digger and placed haunching perfect in place along sleepers while mrs hammered it down and struck it off.
Got topsoil from higher up in garden and worked it around the angles and along edges with no handwork.
Me and the mrs ...not bad in a day, and we put a couple of borders in round the back too..... wouldn't have done it a day without tilty/gripper.
@Giles is maybe a sceptic and might not have one main machine to put it on which is tricky, but looking at his work and the fact its priced , for him it would be brilliant, ecoil/ top hitch/gripper/grab

 

[JerryRtilt]

You really can't convey just how useful a tilty and gripper are until you have actually used one, especially in my case where I sell the things, people think you are giving them the "Big Sell"...….. But just as in Kevin's case people really do make use of them in just about every task they do!
Yes, a lot of the tasks can be done with a standard machine, but it is the small little time savings that all add up over the course of a job, just this week i watched a guy with a 24ton machine load a 6 ton dumper, from an angle that would have been awkward with out a tilty, no spillage, just job done!
Some of my customers claim 25-30% time savings, plus the labour and material savings, it really does ad up on your own work/contracts.

Definitely a accumulation of the little savings in time and effort, i think that's why its difficult to explain to the non believers sometimes ? because there's no one big obvious gain its hard to see.

 

[6feetdown]

Definitely a accumulation of the little savings in time and effort, i think that's why its difficult to explain to the non believers sometimes ? because there's no one big obvious gain its hard to see.

Just like having a set of forks be lost without them now

 

[JerryRtilt]

Just like having a set of forks be lost without them now

Careful, attachments can become addictive

 

[Furniss]

Careful, attachments can become addictive

Yeah .....attachments .....lots of ideas !

 

[JerryRtilt]

Yeah .....attachments .....lots of ideas !

You'll need a trailer

 

[Furniss]

You'll need a trailer

Thats why i need a 6t dumper

 

[6feetdown]

Careful, attachments can become addictive

A new 1 on the way

 

[TiltyShaun]

Yesterdays non digger efforts