ᐅ Should You Buy a Mini Excavator or Not? With Pictures and Specifications…

A mini excavator costs about €75 per day. Converted to working days, the purchase price roughly equals 100 working days.

This raises the question of what kind of gardens these are or how often per year one would want to redesign them to make the purchase of a machine costing €5,000 to €10,000 worthwhile. Certainly not for 3 x 1000m² (approximately 10,800 sq ft).

Best regards,
Dirk Grafe

Dirk Grafe schrieb:
A mini excavator costs about 75€ per day. Calculated based on the purchase price spread over working days, that's roughly 100 working days.

The question is, what kind of gardens are these, and how often do you plan to redesign them each year for the investment in a 5,000 to 10,000€ machine to pay off? Certainly not for three times 1,000m² (3,000m² total).

Best regards,
Dirk Grafe

But you can't calculate it like that, since it can be resold after 2 years.
If you buy smartly, you can break even or even make a profit from this, which I have experienced multiple times, both with excavators and cranes.

Dirk Grafe schrieb:
A mini excavator costs about €75 per day. Calculated over working days, the purchase price would roughly equal about 100 working days.

This raises the question of what kind of gardens these are or how often they will be redesigned per year before the purchase of a machine costing €5,000 to €10,000 becomes worthwhile. For 3 x 1000m² (about 3 x 10,764 sq ft), certainly not.

Best regards,
Dirk Grafe

Well, we also plan to resell the excavator in two years. When operating hours are calculated along with rental costs, and if the excavator can be resold with little loss, it is often significantly cheaper overall.
A 2-3 ton excavator does not cost €75 per day here. In addition, you are forgetting the costs for transport to and from the site, dump truck, securing, and so on.

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that anyone here will be able to provide a well-informed assessment of the cost.

The operating hours seem too high for me; I would prefer a smaller model with fewer hours. With over 6,000 hours, you might need a new engine or hydraulic pump, as well as other parts... Worn joints? Leaking cylinders? The track is also quite worn, and so on. If you can do all the maintenance yourself and have affordable access to spare parts, that’s fine. Otherwise, you should always have around 4,000 (about 4,400) USD set aside for a machine like this.

To compare, I recently looked at a 3.5-ton (3.9 ton) machine with 3,500 hours and three buckets for 14,000 (about 15,400) USD, and I would only pay 8,000 (about 8,800) USD for this one.

However, this doesn’t help much because prices vary depending on condition, region, and other factors.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any space for that at all.