An Everyman’s Guide To Skid Steers
Skid steer is a term that many laymen are completely unfamiliar with. That being said, you’ve almost certainly seen plenty of skid steers and skid steer attachments used in your lifetime. To help educate you about these hyper-useful tools, here’s a handy everyman’s guide to skid steers:
What In The World Is A Skid Steer?
A tiny construction vehicle known as a skid-steer loader, or skid steer for short, is used for a range of jobs. That being said, skid steers can be much larger as well (as we’ll discuss further later on). Skid steers normally come with a bucket as the only attachment, but you can customize them with a variety of other attachments to help with a variety of landscaping and construction chores. A skid steer can make the project you’re working hard to finish easier to complete, even when it doesn’t require a lot of heavy construction machinery. That being said, they are useful on more heavy-duty construction sites and other similar environments as well. Even farmers use products like landscape rakes for John Deere skid steers to complete important tasks.
Common Skid Steer Attachments
1. Landscape Rakes
Agricultural workers, and mowing companies, use landscape rake attachments regularly to move debris, get soil ready, and much more. These are some of the most commonly used skid steer attachments around and can help workers get large jobs done quickly in most cases.
2. Grapple Buckets
If you’ve seen a movie scene where construction is happening, you’ve likely seen a grapple bucket skid steer attachment featured. These are the claw-like attachments that appear prominently in your mind when you think of hardcore construction work environments.
3. Pallet Forks
If you’ve worked in a warehouse setting, you’ve likely seen pallet forks being used. These jobs are frequently done by fully-dedicated forklift vehicles, but skid steer equipment is used in combination with pallet forks to get the job done in many cases as well.
4. Rock Breakers
Construction workers need to get through incredibly tough foundations of rock, dirt, and other material before setting down concrete foundations (for buildings, driveways, parking lots, and more). To do this, they use rock breaker skid steer attachments to quickly and efficiently break through the earth.
Skid Steer Sizes
1. Small Skid Steers
Landscaping jobs and tasks that take place in small warehouses typically use small skid steers to get the job done. Interior demolition is a particularly good candidate for small skid steer usage, as these machines can get to hard-to-reach places more successfully than their larger counterparts.
2. Medium Skid Steers
Transportation-centric jobs, such as warehouse work, are typically the environment where medium-sized skid steers are being used. They are still fairly light but are hefty enough to transport large amounts of material or debris using bucket, fork, pallet, and rake attachments. There is a lot more variety in the market when it comes to medium-sized skid steers when compared to their large and small counterparts.
3. Large Skid Steers
Large-scale construction sites and demolition jobs are the key demographic for large-sized skid steers. The extra power and load capacity are key to getting these jobs done quickly. If a construction worker is trying to break through rock or is moving extra-heavy materials to a job site, they are likely using a large-sized skid steer to get the job done.
Common Skid Steer Uses
1. Agricultural Work
The agricultural industry is by far one of the most prominent users of skid steer attachments in the business world. There are infinite tasks on farms, ranches, and other agricultural settings that benefit from the many types of skid steer attachments that exist. Landscape rakes, rock breakers, and grapple buckets are especially popular among agricultural workers, however.
2. Loading Tasks
Workers in warehouses, and other places where loading and unloading equipment is common, often use machines with loading-centric skid steers in place of forklifts. Because this equipment is often much cheaper to invest in than your typical forklift, this practice is becoming much more widespread. Loading tasks would take much more time and man effort if it was not for the miracle of many skid steer grapple attachments.
3. Construction Work
Construction workers are constantly using skid steers on job sites to get complex, and often heavy-duty tasks completed. Real estate development projects heavily rely on skid steer-supported work. Rock breakers, drill bit augers, and pallet forks are particularly popular on construction job sites. If you’ve benefited from using a parking lot, drive-thru, or warehouse recently, you’ve benefited from the work construction workers do every day by using skid steer attachments.
Skid Steers Make Jobs Simple
With the power of skid steers, even seemingly impossible work site tasks can be achieved. Whether you’re a farmer running an individual farm or a construction site manager, you can get a ton of use out of skid steers and the many, many attachments they can be boosted by.
