What you should know about how attachments can increase machine versatility, save time, and increase productivity.
The evolution of attachment manufacturers has arrived to the point where we now have very high-quality, long-lasting, durable products. In the past if an attachment had a problem, the whole machine had a problem.
—Mike Murphy, Manager, Working Gear, Komatsu AmericaApplication
“We have turned all of our major pieces of equipment, from skid-steers to our big excavators, into what we call utility equipment,” says Bob George, vice president of Operations in the Heavy Division for Mosites Construction Co. in Pittsburg, PA. In business since 1959, Mosites Construction has evolved into three separate divisions: a Building Division, which handles projects such as parking garages and sports centers; a Development Division, concentrating on malls and commercial office complexes; and the Heavy Division, which builds bridges, tunnels, and roads.
“With three divisions, we have to be versatile,” says George. “We move the equipment around, and to do that we often buy on a smaller scale. When we buy a dozer, for example, instead of a D10 we buy two D6s. That way we can use the smaller machines individually at smaller sites, and instead of dedicating one big dozer on bigger jobs, we use the two smaller ones in tandem.”
“It’s a lot easier to move an attachment around than a machine,” says Devin Yankey, superintendent for Wise Guys Inc. in Manassas, VA, which does both residential and commercial construction and maintains a fleet that includes excavators and loaders, rubber-tire backhoes and loaders, 50 skid-steers, 11 mini excavators, and a host of attachments.
“You buy one machine and you can use it for 20 to 30 different jobs,” says Clay Campbell, territory manager for James River Equipment in Manassas, a John Deere dealer. “We tell people to look at adding additional attachments before they add another machine.”
Jim Fost, sales coordinator for Highway Equipment Co. in Zelienople, PA, agrees. “With the correct use of attachments, you don’t have to have as many pieces of equipment on a job—or as many people in the crew. A quick coupler costs roughly $4,000 to $6,000, and you can change a bucket in less than a minute, as opposed to stopping a machine and having two men banging out pins.”
“We’ve seen a 40% increase in coupler sales over the course of the last 12 months,” says Dale DeWeese, national sales manager for Werk-Brau Co. Inc. in Findlay, OH. “As fuel prices continue to rise and the cost of aggregate and raw material continues to increase, contractors will begin to see that they need to maximize the effectiveness of their machines to get a return on their investment. You can’t tie a piece of equipment up with one attachment.”
“I started selling skid-steers about 15 years ago, and I’d tell people we had 50-some different attachments for that machine,” says Cyd Gyug, who heads up compact equipment sales at Brandt Tractor Ltd. in Edmonton, BC, the largest privately held John Deere dealership in the world. “Today I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you there’re over 400 different attachments. It’s like a Swiss Army knife.”
At Komatsu, Mike Murphy offers further insight on the versatility of attachments. “Equipment costs have risen faster than the value of the work contractors do. This has forced them to look for ways to get more utilization out of their base machines.” Murphy also points out that attachments cut down on subcontracting, which reduces expenses and improves productivity.
The secret to making the most of attachments? The right match between product, job, and environment.
Buy Versus Rent
Murphy advises that contractors look three years ahead when considering attachments because it’s easier and less costly to equip a machine with additional hydraulics at the factory than wait until you’re suddenly faced with connecting an attachment.
“You can attach a dollar value to the ability to change buckets,” says Murphy. “It’s to the benefit of a pipeline contractor, for example, that when he gets down to the bottom of a trench where he wants to put in bedding material, he’ll want a smaller trench. The easier it is to change a bucket so he can make the last couple of passes with a smaller bucket, the more he will minimize the amount of bedding material he has to use, which saves him money.
“It’s a competitive world and you don’t want to overspend, but you don’t want to be stuck without what you need. A hydraulic kit and a quick coupler is money well spent. On a 20-ton machine, that’s about 10% of the value. The analogy is if you spend $30,000 on a new car, you may wonder about spending an additional $1,500 to $2,000 on a GPS. The answer is the expense is hard to swallow until you’ve tried it.”
At Case Construction Equipment, NA, Frank Raczon tells contractors if the attachment will pay for itself in less than 12 months they’re probably better off buying. On the other hand, Raczon points out that renting an attachment relieves them of having to deal with long-term storage and insurance, maintenance, and service. Most large contractors we spoke to don’t rent, even to try out an attachment. They negotiate with their dealer to do a test run. But more likely than not they’ve done their homework and aren’t on a fishing expedition.
At Highway Construction Co., Fost thinks the market is still split about 60-40, buy over rent. “If you have the money, buy. It’s like having a jack or a spare tire. You may not need it every day, but when you do need it, it better be there. You never know when you’re going to hit rock.”
In the compact market, Bruce Anderson, sales manager and CEAttachments specialist at MDMA Equipment, a Gehl dealership in Menomonie, WI, suggests that for some customers renting can help with decision-making. “Even though we might tell them differently, they might think they need an $8,000 landscape rake. Then they rent it and find out that for the kind of work they’re doing, they can get by with a leveler.
“Renting is also sometimes preferable for tax purposes—they can write off 100% of a rental payment. So it relates to the individual company’s profile.”
At Ellen Equipment, a Case dealer in Aurora, CO, Account Manager Steve Corning reports that a lot of his customers buy their attachments with the machine. Banks don’t look favorably on financing individual attachments, says Corning, because their value depreciates too quickly. On the other hand, Kevin Overley, vice president of Aurora-based commercial landscape contractors Landtech Contractors Inc., says most of his company’s attachments were purchased after market. “There’s no set way we make decisions,” says Overley. “If it’s going to make us quicker and more productive, we’ll look into using a particular attachment. A lot of what we buy comes through word of mouth. The idea is to be open to this kind of information as it comes along.
“At the end of the year we’ll have a budget meeting where all our supervisors come in with a wish list. We take that list and decide among us what we think will really help production, plus what we need right now and what can wait. We don’t really put a pencil to it. It’s more that if it will help in our operations and reduce labor costs, we’ll buy it.”
Overley says attachments have helped Landtech be competitive in its bidding. Once a new attachment is on the job, the company tracks savings. “We’ll go out in the field and time it to check on actual production. We check how long it took to do a job using the new attachment versus the way we used to do it, and then we’ll apply this to our bidding rates.”
Bruce Lambert at Taul Equipment LLC in Amelia, OH, suggests that if you’re going to rent, rent from a dealer. You’re less likely to be victimized by mechanical failures and other problems associated with the aging or heavily used equipment you may find in a rental yard.
Customize
Although the array of available attachments is extensive, everyone agrees the key to getting what you want is thinking creatively. Faced with a $40 million hard rock tunneling job, Mosites Construction put together a specialized grinder. “Allied Hammer provided the hydraulics for an alpine foist we bought for one of our large excavators,” says George, “and Highway Equipment Company installed it so the attachment would oscillate 90 degrees in addition to the regular up-and-down, which allowed us to get at the sides of the tunnel. With this we’ve developed what’s known locally as the Mosites Tunneling Method, which is faster than blasting with dynamite or using miners, which are slow and arduous.” George says the customized attachment paid for itself “50 to 100 times over” on the tunnel job, and the company regularly uses it on public works projects such as re-facing concrete on locks and dams for the Army Corps of Engineers.
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PHOTO: ALLIED CONSTRUCTION |
| Rammer in-Series hydraulic impact hammer |
In the compact market, Brandt Tractor developed a specialized grapple bucket with a 6-inch-thick rubber edge for a Canadian paper recycler. “The tractor never goes outside, and the idea is to keep the bucket from busting up the concrete floor where the paper is sorted,” says Gyug. “When the rubber wears out, we replace it.”
Typically job specific, customized attachments can also be inspired by the environment, like the push-pole Brandt Tractor developed for local contractors who use it to backfill in residential construction. “It’s like a motor grader blade about 6 to 8 inches high and about 14 to 20 inches wide with a pole—a four-by-four beam with another beam inside it, with a hook attachment frame on it,” says Gyug. “When a contractor gets ahead of himself and puts a deck on the house before the dirt’s been brought in, he can hook onto this thing and use it to backfill under the deck.
“In Edmonton we sell a lot of pole augers with effectively a boom attached to them so the operator can reach down deeper in the soil. In Edmonton they’re putting in 9-foot holes and the machine can’t pull it out. In Calgary our customers use the same attachment to haul trees. They put their chains on and carry trees in their buckets with the same pole we sell in Edmonton to extend an auger.”
DeWeese describes a rake Werk-Brau designed to be used with a Kubota coupler and a Werk-Brau hydraulic thumb for land clearing. “It costs 30% less than a grapple,” says DeWeese, “and can be on and off in a matter of seconds versus assembling a grapple.”
Couplers
George reports that all the excavators at Mosites Construction, from 7,000 up to 80,000 pounds, are equipped with quick couplers to facilitate multitasking. Commonly used attachments include hydraulic hammers, grinders and frost rippers (Werk-Brau makes these), and various lifting devices. “We also try to make our loaders versatile with forks and buckets and grapples and crane fronts.”
At Kokosing Construction Co. in Fredericktown, OH, Maintenance Planner Brad Melcher says his company’s also set up its excavators to handle more than one attachment. “That way if conditions change, we don’t have to move in another machine.”
At MDMA Equipment Inc. Anderson reminds contractors they can buy an adapter for compact tractor loaders (from CEAttachments, for one) that will adapt the loader to fit other machine attachments. “Of the last four compact tractors we sold, four of them had the skid loader adapter plate. One customer has both machines so he can use the skid loader bucket or posthole auger on either machine.”
Computers
Mosites Construction has a customized computer system that tracks equipment for billing and logistics plus maintenance and service. Wise Guys does the same, tracking machine and attachment locations and maintenance and billing. Both systems are customized, and both companies emphasize that computerized tracking and scheduling is key to managing attachments effectively.
Dealers
The trick is to find someone who is willing to work with you, has good relationships with attachment manufacturers, and has an open mind. “I try to learn as much as I can about our John Deere products,” says Campbell, “so when a customer needs to match an attachment to a machine, I can figure out the right machine and the right attachment for his job site. I’m not just a salesman. I’m a problem-solver.”
A good dealer compensates for what you don’t know, says Gyug. “You really have to quiz your customers. The biggest mistake is they want something that is overkill—too big or not really suitable. You also have to know the geography of where they’re operating—that is, the ground and soil conditions. And hydraulics—people forget to ask about hydraulic flow and pressure. With some attachments there are high-flow and low-flow models. Production is less with the low-flow versions, but they’re out there.”
But don’t expect a dealer to do what you should be doing. “You’ve got to know your company,” says George. “You’re got to be clear about what you’re doing now and how you’re going to grow. We put our ideas out to our dealer, who works with us to get a solution for what we need.”
Favorites
Bob George: “Compacting pieces for ditches, trenches, and on slopes where you can’t work people. It makes the work a lot safer, more productive, and profitable, which are the three things we’re looking for. Grapples are important in demolition work, including excavator buckets with thumbs. If I want to dig with the machine and do other things with it, I’ll use the one with the thumb on it. But if I’m just out there to pick up boulders and rocks and debris, the big grapple is just astronomical as far as production goes.” To handle pipes, Mosites Construction puts hook attachments on its crawler cranes.
Yankey at Wise Guys: “Our biggest help is the clearing bucket, and if we didn’t have these hydraulic hammers, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. We’d either be renting or subbing it out, waiting, and then worrying about whether the contractor is going to do the job right or not. Typically we use the hydraulic hammers on a John Deere 200LC excavator. For a house or foundation we take two or three different-size buckets with us, a 3-foot-wide bucket for the foundation, a 2-foot-wide for drain field trenches. Some of our track loaders have grapple hooks and root rakes. We have snow blades on skid-steers, rock crushers for excavators.”
Gyug: “On compact machines this time of year [winter] we see buckets and dozer blades [which are used for light grading when the weather clears] and breakers to bust the frost apart [used on concrete and rock during the regular season]. Always augers and pallet forks and more grapple buckets and tine grapples.
“We sell quite a few pickup sweepers because contractors get fined if they bring out mud from their construction site. What we’re selling that we never sold much of before is breakers on small excavators. And I haven’t sold a solid dozer blade for a long time. They’re brutal on tractors as well as operators.”
Campbell: “I don’t think I’ve sold a single skid-steer loader this year that I haven’t sold a set of pallet forks with. I’ve had some builders who said they don’t need a machine, and I’ve talked them into taking a skid-steer out to a home site and now they have skid-steers and probably 10 different kinds of attachments—pallet forks to lift bricks and lumber and sheet rock off the truck, buckets to spread stone and clean up around the job site, and rakes to pick up debris and fine grade the yard and get it ready for seed.”
Lambert: “With compact equipment, hydraulic tools can be used off the auxiliary hydraulics on a skid loader—a hydraulic pump, for example, that you can bring in on a truck, set next to the loader, and get the job done without having to move in a specialized piece of equipment like a big gas- or propane-powered pump.”
Kevin Overley: “We have a fleet of nearly 20 skid-steers, and our operators like the small attachments they can switch around easily. There are four that usually go with them on a job, a bucket, a tiller [Easy Grader], a tree spade, and pallet forks. They can switch the attachments quickly to do a little bit of grading, some digging, some tilling, whatever they have to do. We also use drag graders, both with tractors and skid-steers. And we’ve purchased some Polaris 700 ATVs [Polaris Industries], which we also use with drag chains for grading very small areas. In the winter we use the ATVs for snow removal; during the landscaping season we use the plow attachment for light grading.”
Host Machine
Campbell: “We see people buying mostly for skid-steer loaders and mini wheel loaders. This year we’ve seen an increase in mini excavators. We’ve also been selling a lot of hammers and thumbs and augers for mini excavators. Around here that might be because things are getting built up and they can no longer fit their rubber-tire backhoes in spots where they used to. Mini excavators can work around townhouses and in developments where they’re building houses close together. The John Deere mini excavator has got that zero turn so the counterweight never leaves the track.”
Maintenance
Wise Guys keeps eight or nine mechanics on the road. The mechanics check the hydraulic lines, things like bucket teeth. “We keep our attachments for a couple of years,” says Yankey, “and then trade them in on new—particularly the hydraulic rams, which wear out quick. We keep the buckets for a year and replace the teeth. We have a full welding shop that does custom work such as adding fingers and more teeth. We made a special thumb for our clearing bucket that is almost like a finger. You can grab logs with it and reach way out, and the log won’t roll out of the bucket. When James River Equipment sells a piece of equipment to another company, they bring it over here and we put the thumb on.”
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PHOTO: JOHN DEERE |
| The new John Deere Worksite Pro roller levels make grading, leveling, and contouring with detail control a breeze for skid-steer operators. |
Melcher: “At Kokosing we do an annual inspection of all our couplers. We check on wear in the open jaw area. We don’t replace couplers. They may run 5,000 hours, and then we rebuild them. We try to keep everything the same manufacturer. That way you simplify what you stock. And since the equipment has things in common, our mechanics are familiar with it, which makes it easier to work on. We use Werk-Brau couplers, exclusively because of their design and workability. We worked with them to help design a coupler that has a lifting eye in the center. It’s easier to pick off the center line than off the side. You don’t twist anything.
“We don’t schedule maintenance. It’s strictly based on breakdown. If it fails, we take it apart, and if it’s damaged beyond what it’s going to cost us to buy a new one, we buy a new one. Otherwise we fix it and send it back out again. But we fix it right; it’s not a matter of patching it and hoping for the best.”
Overley says Landtech Contractors sends worn-out attachments to an auction house and buys something “newer or different. We see buying attachments as just part of doing business.”
Mistakes
The biggest question from a salesman’s point of view, says Anderson, is with auxiliary hydraulics: “the mismatch between the size of the machine they’re planning to put the attachment on and how much flow they have. The three big questions are what size machine do you have, what’s the brand, and what type of job are you trying to do with it—what you’re trying to get at is hydraulic performance and lift capacity.”
“It’s easy to overlook something when you’re using an attachment you don’t use on a regular basis,” says Lambert. “Stump grinders, for example. There are a variety of them out there, and some require high-flow hydraulics. Others don’t. But you have to know which is which.
“We had a customer who wanted a wider trench than the attachment was capable of. And he wanted it to trench faster than what we knew it was capable of doing. We tell our customers when they have unrealistic expectations, but sometimes they just have to experience that for themselves.”
Lambert cautions that if contactors don’t rent regularly, they might not know that the performance can be affected by the quality of the hydraulic fluid in the last piece of equipment the attachment was used with.
Safety
Fost: “With a hydraulic coupler you must cycle it; you must keep dirt and mud out of it. You must match the correct attachment to the machine. You have to grease on a daily basis.”
The number-one safety tip from Werk-Brau is read the manual, front to back—and more than once. “One of the easiest safety mistakes,” says DeWeese, “is partially engaging a bucket, especially if it’s a hydraulic coupler that’s activated from the cab. We offer a fully integrated positive lock safety feature across all of our couplers, which means a manual locking system. The coupler has to be 100% engaged before the lock pin can be put in.”
DeWeese also worries that with multi-pin grabbers becoming more and more common on machines, operators will fall into the habit of trying to pick up an attachment the coupler wasn’t designed to accommodate. “We’ve looked at multi-pin grabbers for several years, and we’ve determined that there are too many opportunities for errors.”
“We’ve taken all of our couplers, no matter whose coupler it is,” says Melcher, “and taken out any non-positive locks and put a safety pin in. Gravity holds some of them in place, but that’s not 100% positive. Adding a safety pin that’s a positive lock we don’t have to worry about anything happening.”
OSHA has been paying attention to accidents involving quick couplers, citing 15 fatalities since it began tracking in 1998. “Every failure they’ve been able to pinpoint over the last five years has always been due to operator negligence,” says Fost. “These are shortcut measures, and when you take a shortcut, your tendency is to hurry all the way around. Rather than cycle the entire machine, the operator just picks it up one time. Often if the person is working alone, they don’t put the locking pin in. These kinds of accidents happen out of carelessness.”