slefain
PowerDork
3/9/21 10:39 a.m.
Years ago I rented a Bobcat S70 to do some work around the house. It was absolutely the perfect size to get real work done, but not too big to maneuver around yard obstacles. I dug a nice roll ditch with it for example:
![](https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/prod.mm.com/uploads/2021/03/09/1615307911_68507_559566177429328_1267368617_n_mmthumb.jpg)
Now 8 years later I need to rent another S70 for new projects...except my local Bobcat dealer no longer rents them. Bollocks. And hardly anyone else rents small ride-on skid steers either. They all rent these things:
![](https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/prod.mm.com/uploads/2021/03/09/1615308006_sk750-2_mmthumb.jpg)
You stand on the back and somehow both hold on and work the controls. This seems like a crappy way to spend a weekend trying to not fall off the back. Is it as bad as it looks, or am I assuming too much? Anyone have real world experience?
In reply to slefain :
I don't have any experience using them but I have experience pointing and laughing at them. They are......not impressive.
I'd look around for another rental yard and get the size bobcat you want
Hydraulics will always win over manual digging, no matter how much Antihero laughter at them.
STM317
UberDork
3/9/21 11:59 a.m.
Pretty sure that somebody here has one. Was it bearmtnmartin that used it in his RV build thread?
I rented a walk behind Ditch Witch. It wasn't even close to the tracked Bobcat I had rented previously, but the walk behind did get the 10 yards of rock spread out in the parking area.
I'll give the Ditch Witch this - it was much less per day and 1,000s of times better than a shovel.
In reply to Appleseed :
Its quicker and easier to just dig.
I watched a landscape company once use one. It could only move small things even when it wasn't on it's side
The MT85/MT100 is a better machine than the S70 in all ways IMO. Since I rent them to people, the MT is one helluva machine. built better than the other brands and durable. Put it this way, every single one thatwe are getting from bc this year is sold. We aren't getting some of them until June.
I'm convinced everyone should buy an old Bobcat for uses around the yard, snow removal, and just general entertainment.
In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :
As common as they are, I find this extremely hard to believe. I've never used one, but I've dug enough trenches to know that humans are not better than hydraulics.
Alright, problem solved. A local place will rent me this:
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/x8iS7oo7-Y8/maxresdefault.jpg)
An ASV RT25. Wider than a S70, but still smaller enough to squeeze around stuff in the yard. Price is pretty good, $400 for Friday evening drop off, Monday morning pickup. I'll get 16 hours on the clock.
I'm getting a list together so I can get a bunch of stuff done at once. I gave my neighbor a heads up too in case he has some stuff that need to be done. Going to redo some of the yard contours for better drainage, spread some wood chips (well, a whole dump truck load), nuke some underbrush, and rip out an old brick pathway. Last time I put 12 hours on the machine in a weekend, I will probably do the same this time.
Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to slefain :
I don't have any experience using them but I have experience pointing and laughing at them. They are......not impressive.
I'd look around for another rental yard and get the size bobcat you want
Good luck with that. Working FOR BC, I can tell you there is a seroius shortage of inventory. We have about 25% of what we need in our rental fleets. We have sold all of our allotments and BC has cancelled further orders because they can't make it.
No offense meant to Antihero, but he is laughing at something he either has not used correctly, or is watching folks that don't know how to use one.
Ditch witch came out with the SK600 (that's what bearmountian has) and makes the Toro Dingo look like a toy! The Bobcat brand does not match the 'Witch, either. My friend that does landscaping/irrigation had a 600, a bobcat, and a mini ex.; the bobcat was used the least. Now has a SK 1550, and the bobcat has not moved in a year.
I've watched him do some amazing things with them.
In reply to 03Panther :
the tracked units also make less of a mess of yards as well. Here, the MT85 (the older 52 and 55 walk behinds not so much) are the preferred professional stand on unit around here.
Glad you found a machine that will do what ya need. Sounds like that's not easy to do today.
The box store's around here only rent the toy machines, but I've rented them for smaller stuff; I borrow my buds equipment, or rent from an equipment house when I need something serious.
As to falling off a walk behind, the possibility does exist, but highly unlikely unless your operating it wrong. You don't feel like your hanging on for dear life!
In reply to bobzilla :
The bobcat stand on's seem to be as robust as the 'Witch, but the controls are no where near a user friendly. But I've never run the newer ones, so that may have improved.
In reply to 03Panther :
yeah, the older models with the handle you turned and pushed/pulled is weird. The newer ones are literally 2 joysticks. Left stick moves the unit, right stick controls the arms/bucket.
I have owned four of them, and like them so much that when I sold my business I kept one for use around the homestead. They are becoming more and more popular because jobs that call for a small track loader usually involve a lot of getting in and out, and they never did figure out how to do that easily with a cab sandwiched in between the loader arms and the bucket. With the stand on (not walk behind) you just let go of the controls and step off to move a rake or whatever. They are very quick and increasingly powerful. You get used to the controls very quickly. Its kind of like riding a roping horse. I mostly used them to install sand mound septic systems. I could move around 250 ton of sand in a day no problem. The first truck and transfer would arrive and the driver would look around and say "do you have a machine to move this?" and I would point to my marvelous mini. And he would say "you know there are four more trucks coming right?" And I would say "I know. I ordered them." By the second round they were believers.
In reply to lnlogauge :
It's not that humans are great it's that the walk behinds are that bad.
And yes the landscaping company was using it badly. They were moving rocks on an incline and couldn't pick up the rock because it was heavy enough to tip it forward so the guy would gun it and it would unbalance and tip over. It was funny
The walk behinds are many many many levels below even the smallest bobcat. Usually the job that needs to be done with a walk behind is done by hand in the time it takes to go get the machine and bring it to the site because they aren't that mighty of a machine.
If it isn't easy enough to do by hand you get a regular bobcat, or a mini excavator.
I didn't know there was such a thing until this thread. "Hey that's cute looking" "could be handy sometimes" then I went searching for them and yea no berkeleying way. I could buy a Damn nice kubota mini ex for what these things are selling for in the used market.
RevRico said:
I didn't know there was such a thing until this thread. "Hey that's cute looking" "could be handy sometimes" then I went searching for them and yea no berkeleying way. I could buy a Damn nice kubota mini ex for what these things are selling for in the used market.
Very true.
And they rent for as much as a standard bobcat. There's little reason to stop at that particular level of useful.
Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:
The walk behinds are many many many levels below even the smallest bobcat. Usually the job that needs to be done with a walk behind is done by hand in the time it takes to go get the machine and bring it to the site because they aren't that mighty of a machine.
If it isn't easy enough to do by hand you get a regular bobcat, or a mini excavator.
To anyone that has used both, this is entirely untrue. There are models of the walk behinds that are homeowners toys, but there are also models that will out work a smaller skid steer hands down, take up less space while doing it, much better visibility, and much easier on the body changing attachments out often.
RevRico said:
I didn't know there was such a thing until this thread. "Hey that's cute looking" "could be handy sometimes" then I went searching for them and yea no berkeleying way. I could buy a Damn nice kubota mini ex for what these things are selling for in the used market.
They are def. expensive, and the decent ones hold their value so well, finding a decent price used is imposable.
Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:
RevRico said:
I didn't know there was such a thing until this thread. "Hey that's cute looking" "could be handy sometimes" then I went searching for them and yea no berkeleying way. I could buy a Damn nice kubota mini ex for what these things are selling for in the used market.
Very true.
And they rent for as much as a standard bobcat. There's little reason to stop at that particular level of useful.
Dude. Stop. Seriously. I do t know where you make this E36 M3 up but you're wrong. An MT rents out of my rental fleet for 175 a day. The smallest wheeled bobcat runs 230 and the smallest track unit runs 300. The mt is tracked, has a 1000lb lift capacity and is narrow enough to fit through a 44" gate. A lot of contractors use them for residential work that requires small entrances and light ground pressure to not tear up lawns. They are very useful and are one of the most asked for rental item I have.
so please for the love of all things hole-y stop.
My neighbors use mine more than I do. The word is out.
We used to rent them when I worked HD rentals. The overwhelming complaint was that (despite my clear instructions) they sucked at excavation... which we tried to tell people.
We rented them without teeth on the bucket for liability reasons. Great for moving a pile of [insert material] from here to there, but awful at excavation in PA soil. The ones we rented were not enough weight, no teeth, and not enough power. About the only way you could excavate with them was to put the tracks where you wanted to excavate and put the point of the bucket on the ground. The bucket became a brake and the tracks did the digging.
Very useful at many things, but the way we had them equipped and with the clay/rocky soil here they were pretty useless.
YSMV.