mini digger advice

[Stephen Blair]

If it's just feeding a chipper with poles then Avant wouldn't be much use, I thought it was for surgery work.

roofmount would be ideal

[s o c]

we use a ex30 hitachi with just a brash grab. it feeds chipper,carries brash logs roots everything,will pull small roots, great for pulling gorse. briars etc. tows chipper etc. loads logs. general lifting around yard. runs 15 ton splitter faster than tractor. its as good as 4 groundies on some jobs. i prefer minidigger to roofmount because i can track and gather a lot of brash to one chipping point also easier to get in and out to trim forks etc .i can see how the avant would be great on lawns though

[tommer9]

Takeuchi (takootchee) like most of the jap stuff (hitachi etc) is a superb make. Bobcat and kubota have good engines (they are the same) but thats about as far as it goes. They fall apart and are underpowered, being built to a price, but they do the job. JCB are a (small) step upwards, and schaeff are superb. But like everything you get what you pay for...in the case of diggers that is usually more hydraulic pumps.

[Gareth Dalzell]

We run a 2 ton Volvo with expanding tracks and two speed tracking. For tree work we fitted a Dig-bits Talon grab - absolutely amazing - should have fitted one years ago.

 

The small Volvo diggers seem to hold their value over here. its our second one and i'd be hard pushed to change makes. Did consider Kubota last time but that was just because we have a load of kubota ride-ons and tractors. The spec for the volvo though was better and the expanding tracks mean it goes down to 3ft to get into places and back out to 4ft for stability.