$1,200/day solo landscape removal [with mini skid steer and dump trailer]

In this video I take you along as I remove a front yard landscape. The customer wanted all of the grass removed along with a couple large bushes to make way for a low-water rockscape. The mini skid steer I rented did perfectly for the job and came in very handy. It cost me $330 to rent at Aba Daba Rentals in Citrus Heights. The little diesel engine purred and only dranke 3 gallons for about 6 hours running.

Oh good morning good morning it’s about 7:30 now um we are off to the job to remove the grass um it’s about 400 square ft of grass they’re going to be putting in some other Landscaping so I got this job off next door um I saw a lady who had posted that

She wanted her lawn removed and also some uh bushes and to be honest um I figured why not do it I know it’s not junk removal but um I like doing landscape work myself um we had this done at our house I actually didn’t do it because we had the artificial turf

Company Do It um but I watched them and I know what I’m doing I think and uh so we had all the utilities marked out at the house so that we don’t hit any underground electric or gas or water lines or anything so that should be done

Now um I got the confirmation ticket that all of them have been marked and we’re on our way to drop off the dump trailer behind me and then we’re going to go pick up a mini skid steer uh should be a standon type unit and uh

We’re going to go get that from abuaba rents and Citrus Heights um it’s quite a bit cheaper than Home Depot uh so we going to check them out I’ve never rented from them before but they have a good amount of equipment seems so um in good prices so figured i’ would give

Them a try and then we’ll head back with the machine get it all scraped up rip out the bushes haul it all off to the dump and uh call it a day so looking forward to this job I honestly had a hard time sleeping last night um I think

I was just excited I woke up at like 4: and couldn’t get back to sleep cuz I was thinking about all the tools I need to bring and just you know looking forward to the job I guess so anyhow um yeah we uh we’ll see how it goes Righty guys here is the job for the day so not going to mess with the rightand side here we’re just taking out the sod or the grass rather on the Le hand side in this area also in this little strip so we’re also going to be taking out the brush here so

First thing I’m going to do is just get all the little stuff out of the way and we’ll get this border Out [Applause] High All righty guys I’m headed to the dump um got all of the yard scraped and I’m just going to be going back to do the bushes take those two bushes out um next but uh hoping that I didn’t screw myself yet again with the dump bees um because this is a lot of

Dirt and as always it is wet because we’ve had a ton of rain in Sacramento lately luckily it didn’t rain the last couple days but before that it rained straight for like 4 days um so yeah I’m hoping that I did not um underestimate what the dump fees were

Going to be I budgeted between five and $600 for dep fees um which would be between 10 and 12,000 if they’re going to charge me the uh regular MSW waste mixed waste um but if they charge me what I’m hoping they do for the ner and my dirt clean dirt um

It should only be $66 a ton so really hoping for that um I guess we’ll find out when they take a look at the load it’s you know it’s got grass and Rock in it so it’s not super clean dirt but it is just like a lot um there’s not like

Trash mixed in there or anything so we will find out if I estimated this job right or not but uh wait and see also hoping that my dump trailer dumps it because like I said my dump trailer is only a 10,000 rated dump trailer I don’t know if the scissor hoist indoor

Hydraulics or any different from the heavier Duty trailers I’m guessing they don’t put the best stuff on the 10K trailers I know your axles are only rated for you know 5K a piece so um you know we could be a little bit overweight right now I guess we’ll find out when

It’s all said and done but um yeah more to come I will say I think this is the heaviest load I’ve hauled in my F350 now I did a dirt job or two actually and some rock jobs with my Tundra and that thing it it pulled it um but it didn’t like it

And the truck was super squatted it just did not break very well and it felt kind of sketchy uh with this truck it I can definitely feel the weight but it doesn’t feel unsafe at all or uncomfortable by any means and I mean this truck I’m sure can tell a lot more

Than I’m telling right now um if I had to guess my whole setup might weigh 11,000 lb 10 11,000 lb right now which again is a little bit over um hoping it’s not but we’ll find out but this truck feels just fine the high output diesel um it’s got so much torque and

The brakes are good on this I did use the engine brake a little bit it works nicely I mean I know it’s probably not as good as the engine brake but um it’s definitely better than no engine brake which is a part of the reason I

Did get a diesel I wanted to have the extra stopping power and gas Motors just don’t have that so um overall you know I know I’ve had my little quirks with this truck so far just little electronic gives me and gadgets kind of acting weird but for what I did buy it for

Which is hauling loads and hauling trailers which is you know what I’m doing um I I’m always very happy towing with this truck U much happier than I was with my Tundra so there is that all right we’re just pulling up to the dump now time to hit the scales and

See what it’s all about all right just uh use the restroom here so un tarped this is what we got um you know it’s filled basically to the metal SI a little bit over there but you know if you really leveled it out so I’m going to guess that’s about 5 and

Half six yards of dirt we’ll sign we’ll see and that’s where we go pay or go way in rather and then pay Well that’s never good fire truck’s going in with the sirens on Know is that dirt from Roseville thank You He All right this is kind of Soupy honestly not a big fan of this it’s like slop in here so said make it left by the sign for concrete which is there that way supposed to Go guess so looks like it’s up here so we get to go through that nice Pile Le there’s some road base down Here looks like we’ll be able to do it up Here yeah here’s the dump guys all it’s glory honestly it’s a pretty good dump here people are always Nice Oh He He all right guys just got the final damage um it’s actually quite a bit less weight than I thought so really happy 4.81 tons which is still 9,620 lb uh we were a bit overloaded so um shouldn’t try shouldn’t be doing that um but you know I wanted to get all of

It scraped up and luckily they charged me the inert soil rate which is what I was counting on cuz I kept it all separate and clean that’s why I’m doing the brush separate so that’s $66 a ton which means our dump fees came to $

29702 um like I said I was hoping for under 500 so that makes me very happy um and we’re going to head to probably In-N-Out Burger get ourselves a burger really quick cuz I haven’t eaten lunch it’s 2:00 and then we’re going to head back and get the rest of that brush out

Of there and we’ll hopefully come back um before 5 when the dump poses otherwise we’ll come tomorrow Sunday and um get that out of there but I’m very happy with that I was kind of dreading uh the the the weight um wasn’t sure how they were going to charge me

Because um you know I’ve had people ask like oh well if it’s not clean dirt then um we’re going to charge you the mix to waste rate which is like 40% more expensive um so that that was kind of what I was like really trying to avoid I was

Actually 4.81 tons is quite a bit of weight um but like I said the truck can handle it fine but realistically my dump trailer um it dumped it okay but it was going pretty slow and and we were over the the gross vehicle weight rating um between the trailer and the load um

Would put that at about 12,500 lb cuz that trailer weighs almost 3,000 lb so um anyways it did dump it fine that’s what I was concerned with and the uh dump fees were not too bad so um after the equipment rental we’ll actually make out all right on this job um I’m super

Grateful the the customer is really really nice um nice family that I would be so I’d love to do some more work for them and it sounds like they may have another job for me coming up um to do the other part of the grass and maybe

Some stuff in the backyard so if that works out great plus I passed out a business card to a neighbor who asked um if I could do like delivery of of rock and dirt and stuff so said sure um so we’ll see what what comes to this job

But so far it’s actually going really well so happy to report that what dirt did not get me this time got me twice but it won’t give me the third time all righty so we’ve pretty much got the lawn taken out here and been using the Berto 825 TKO it’s been pretty

Good um we dumped our trailer got a little pizza and uh so I’m feeling a little more energized now and we’re going to finish the job with taking out the brush over here in the corner I’ve already cut a little bit of it up um started using my sawall for the saws

All but I think I’m going to use my chainsaw it’s a little more Woody than I thought so take this out it’s big one here this one here and then we’ll get uh all this stuff and this little guy shouldn’t be too bad A Getting There think I’m going to use the machine with the bucket and try and scoop this in here because it’s pretty heavy it’s hard to uh actually get in There Main stuff is gone got to compact this trailer a bit little bit overloaded here but there’s a lot of air in there so it should compact all Right It’s all compacted got the main stuff just have to get these stumps out the day Pretty cool with they’re building here that’s their new uh recycling facility and then over there got the loaders just loading up uh wood material it ships it all into um I think what they sell is wood ships eventually after they do all their processing so all done for now here

We’ll go pay and get out of here