If you are thinking about hiring a general contractor, you should read my blog before you pick up the phone or send that email. I am not a general contractor myself, but I have just finished restoring my home. It was a big project that involved working with multiple contractors over an extended period of time. Although I am not a professional, I learnt an awful lot about how to get the most out of a team of contractors and how to keep a project on schedule and under budget. I also learnt a thing or two about the work they were carrying out.
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General contracting firms seldom require the really big earthmoving equipment you find on large civil engineering projects, such as bridge building and skyscraper construction jobs. Nor do they need the supersized earth movers that you will find being used every day in the Australian mining industry. However, general building contractors of all kinds will often be in need of vehicles and semi-automated tools that can shift reasonable quantities of earth, even if they only need to dig a few metres down for a foundation trench. If so, they will usually turn to an earthmoving contractor which performs earthmoving services, especially for the trickier jobs. What are the common earthmoving vehicles in use today?
Mini Diggers
These robust vehicles are incredibly manoeuvrable because they can virtually turn on the spot. They are not much wider than an average forklift truck, so they can get into spots that virtually all other earthmoving vehicles cannot. If you are extending the back of a property and there is only a thin pathway to gain access down the side, then a mini digger will usually be able to do the job for you. Mini diggers have a modest weight, so their bucket size is consequently small so that it cannot easily topple over from being overloaded.
Track Dumpers
These earthmoving vehicles are much smaller than normal dumper trucks and usually manned by a single operator without a cab. In the main, they can be used to transport earth from one spot to another, so they tend to be used alongside mini diggers for excavation work. They are equally at home using their tracks to gain access to an area to backfill it from their tippable skips.
Skid Steers
A skid steer, or a skid-steer loader, is a rigid frame earthmover which has a powered pair of lifting arms at the front. Onto these, you can attach anything from a bulldozing plate to a large bucket or even trenching attachments. Because they are also used for lifting jobs on farms, skid steers have a high reach which makes them useful for raising earth upwards, such as might be needed when constructing a flat patch of land behind a retaining wall.
Backhoe Loaders
Used all over the globe, backhoe loaders are incredibly versatile and come with two attachments, one on the front and one on the back. They resemble tractors, and they can deal with very soft earth without getting stuck as a consequence of their design. Most come with stabiliser legs which are deployed when digging. They have an articulated arm with several hydraulic joints, known as a backhoe. The loader is the bucket attachment at the front.
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