Mini Skid Steer Options

[DerikL]

It seems that the postings on here regarding mini skid steers have to do mostly with the bobcat or the toro dingo. Does anyone have feedback on the other brands such as vermeer, thomas, kanga etc.


Derik

[Itsgottobegreen]

Toro dingo is one of the best out there. Alot of companies have them. Also my college has one for the landscape contractors program. Its 3 years old with 30 hours on it.

[Gilla Gorilla]

It is very rare for me on the days that I am not mowing to not have my Dingo on my trailer. I love that thing and the work that it can do. Sure I do over work it at times when I should have a bigger piece of equipment but I still gets the job done and the customers seem to love seeing me use it for some reason.

[DerikL]

We also have a dingo. It has been great, 1600 hours with only regular maintance. We are thinking of repowering the one we have and adding a second one. I didn't know if the other brands had anything more to offer.

[Gilla Gorilla]

The one drawback of the other brands except the Bobcats are the controls in my opinion. It is really nice to be able to drive and steer with one hand and control the bucket easily with the other hand. I am of course comparing the tracked models, I never did demo a wheeled Dingo.

[Dirty Water]

The ditchwitch SK500 is a great little machine with hundreds of attachments.

[YardPro]

we spent a lot of time on the ditch witch sk 500 (some on the 300 also), and the boxer

the SK500 is a really nice machine. the boxer is not bad as well. there were many things about it i felt would be problematic in the future...too many gizmo's to fail....
i like simplicity in equipment.

the kanga is the lower end unit. you can buy them all day long online for cheap... try and find a used dingo, SK of boxer.............
people don't sell them becuase they are so useful....

i would not give ANYTHING for mine...(well i'd trade it for a new one)

[DerikL]

I was looking around and found the ramrod taskmaster. Does anyone have any experience with these. They seem to have a larger lift capacity and lift height.

[Gilla Gorilla]

I think that the only reason that the Ramrod has a larger lift capacity is becuase of the ride on platform that is standard. I could be wrong but that was my thinking when I was looking at the different machines.

[Itsgottobegreen]

I was looking around and found the ramrod taskmaster. Does anyone have any experience with these. They seem to have a larger lift capacity and lift height.
The ramrods are the worse mini skids out there. Everyone I have talked to that owned one, had so many problems with them. Wished they never bought it in the first place. Most of them traded them back in for dingos and kangas.

[gary wise]

The Ramrods are terrible. Don't even tink about buying one of them. I made the mistake of buying 2 of them. All kinds of breakdowns and the company is a joke.

[DerikL]

For those of you that own mini skid steers: Do you use it mainly for your own projects? Do you sub out to other contractors for work such as post holes, trenches, grading etc.?

[Earthworker]

I demoed many machines. Narrowed down to toro and SK500. Felt better about the service dept on the SK. Now have about 500+ hrs. This machine was purchased mainly to install sprinklers but I am amazed at how many thing we use it on. Not a fast dirt mover and not good for larger jobs but does have a place. We don't sub out any work with it except an occasional small trenching job.