SkipLoader

This is a picture of pretty much the same skip loader as the lady was driving around at the dump today.


I used to rent one something like this only  with a backhoe attachment when I was a landscaping Contractor in La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe over 30 years ago now when I was in my late 20s. They are really fun to drive and if you have the knack for it you can really change the slope of the land if you need to including digging swimming pools with the loader or backhoe or long trenches or whatever you need. I also rented what is called a Ditch Witch to dig long trenches for sprinkler systems then as well. Or you could pick up a boulder if it wasn't too big in the front bucket. Or you could take a strong chain and chain up a boulder if it was too large for the bucket and move it to where you wanted to. The hardest thing to get used to was the noise of the hydraulics squeeling all the time and bouncing around while you were moving over dirt and slopes. But, it is really amazing what you can accomplish in a short time when you rent something like this. I found it was good sometimes to wear ear plugs if you were aware where people and animals and children were. But, a lot of the time you need to not wear ear plugs so you can here people screaming for you to stop. It is also good to have a man near you on the ground to tell you when people or children or animals are around as an assitant for help and safety. Also, he or she can tell you about hazards you might not see or be aware of at first. So, if you can protect your hearing and lungs and eyes while driving one of these so they all work for you better later in life. When you are in your 20s you think you are immortal. But now I wear hearing aids from all the loud things in my life like hunting rifles(without ear protectors), Chain saws building an A-Frame in the woods (I couldn't always find my ear protectors) Bolt Guns (inside cement walled building doing electrical work in Los Angeles County) etc. So now even though all these loud noises were between my ages 12 and 34 they still affect me now at 64. And remember if you live to be 30 likely you will also see 90. It is just the way things tend to go.

Once I rented something that looked like a farm tractor that was too big to pull on a trailer behind my 1976 Toyota Longbed. I also had a "Six Pack" brand cabover camper for the truck to go camping or to live in when I went to a job far away from where I then lived in San Diego like Mt. Shasta. Anyway, the farm tractor had an attachment behind it that I needed to drill with a large auger 300 holes for a Orange orchard to plant trees that I was doing under contract. But I found that the soil had too much clay in it for the type of auger on the rear of that tractor. So, I had to drive it back to the rental yard and replace it with a Bobcat which was small enough for me to trailer behind my Toyota Longbed Truck then. This was incredibly loud from the hydraulics so I put tissue in my ears so I wouldn't go deaf from driving the Bobcat loader. But the Bobcat Auger Drill attachment was on the front of the Bobcat so I could use the whole weight of the Bobcat to drill through the ground down about 4 feet deep. So, even though I lost about 1/2 day changing vehicles I still was able to finish by the end of the next day drilling 300 holes in the ground about 2 feet wide by about 4 feet deep to fulfill my agreement with the orchard owner.