﻿-Messick's. A helping hand with your land.
-From Mesick's here, out in our bucket pile, this is where we store
all of our stock inventory as skid steer buckets.
You can look around down here and it feels like, my goodness, you can
buy a bucket in every shape and size
with a surprising amount of features anymore actually.
We're going to walk through the buckets
down here and reference this guide from Virnig.
This is the ultimate guide to skid steer buckets.
We'll put a link to it here down below
if you want to check it out yourself.
I'm going to walk around here and
show you some of the attributes of what makes a good bucket.
When we talk on our channel, we often talk about buying
something for the proper application that you have.
When you're looking at your buckets,
buckets are made and engineered for very specific applications.
Virnig will break up their bucket
product line into five different categories.
Dirt buckets which are generally low profile buckets where you
have a skid steer that you can step out over the top of the bucket.
Utility buckets that are usually a little bit higher in the back and are
going to be a little bit higher capacity.
Snow and light material buckets often having a see-through back and being
a little bit lighter built and made for those high volumes of materials
but not necessarily something you want to put into dirt.
Multipurpose buckets which are going to be things like foreign
ones and that kind of stuff that are, say, open on the bottom.
Specialty buckets which-- That one I don't know what they're referring to.
Like this, in here each has several different
applications that's best suited for.
Some pros and cons on those different types of buckets, we're
going to start here with the low profile
and show you some of the attributes of those.
All these buckets are quite obviously made out of steel.
When you look at steel, there are a lot of different grades
of metals that are out there at wildly varying pricing.
A really light soft steel is a lot less expensive
than a harder steel with more tensile strength.
By Virnig's explanation, here is
a grade 50 steel, what they're generally using
in most of these buckets has a 50,000 PSI steel.
A grade 30 is going to come through at 36,000 PSI being 30% less capable.
When you're looking at this, you simply can't use the thickness
of the metal as your mental gauge for the build quality of that bucket.
There's a lot more to it than that and the material that's actually
used in pouring and constructing that metal.
Probably a lot of guys out here that know a lot more
about steel composition, those of you that are welding and stuff,
I'm sure, have a much better understanding of this than I do.
Leave some comments at the bottom of what you think
about that kind of stuff and the materials that you
look for and how you might be able to identify them.
The one thing that will be fairly constant across there though is weight.
A higher grade steel is generally
going to weigh more than what a lower grade one does.
Simply by looking at the weight of the buckets themselves is
going to tell you a little bit about the construction of them.
Our better quality buckets, generally,
are going to have some optional things
on them that the less expensive ones did not.
You're going to notice these red plates over here on the end.
These are side cutters.
Those are going to be there in order
to help the edge of that bucket cut into hard material.
It also helps stiffen and protect these corners.
If you catch those against things, they can be bent easy.
It also usually is the first place that your bucket is going
to wear out as those corners usually do a lot of the cutting and stuff.
That edge piece there helps protect it.
They add generally about $100 to
the cost of a bucket to have those wear pieces there.
On the front edge of your bucket, you're
going to have either a flat cutting edge or teeth.
That's going to depend on the application
that you have for that bucket.
If you're trying to do grading and have a smooth finished product,
you're going to want that edge on the front.
If you're trying to break into hard materials, come into
piles of dirt, teeth are going
to help loosen those things and get that bucket filled.
Those can be switched, a couple of bolts you can go from one of the other.
Generally, a new bucket, you're going to pick one or the other.
You don't see guys changing those out very often.
More often than not, you're going to own a bucket that has one of each.
That cutting edge on the front is a costly piece.
To give a little bit of caution on this here,
when we talk about application on these
buckets, we're looking at skid loader buckets here.
A lot of guys watching our videos
come from the compact tractor side, you're using a lot of smaller equipment.
Cutting edges are pretty expensive.
On a bucket this size, that big piece of steel can
cost you $300, even 200 bucks on the smaller loader bucket.
There are applications where I start to say that edge is not worth
the money because the edge itself can be 50-60%
of the cost of the entire bucket when you start talking small tractors.
Not necessarily something that I would always encourage.
The odds the guys with small machines
are going to wear those buckets out are fairly
few and far between, but they are a costly piece in some cases.
The other benefit to that edge too is not just for where it does
stiffen the front lip of the bucket.
This is one place where now you small
bucket guys might want to consider this.
You're never probably going to wear your bucket out
and you're never going to wear through a cutting edge.
That extra big piece of metal on the bottom
does help stiffen a lighter duty bucket.
That cutting edge can be dual purpose in that way.
They're for wear on these heavy buckets and heavy use applications.
On a lighter bucket, it can be there to help keeping
you from getting a little smiley face across the bottom
edge of your bucket as you work it and, say, pry things with it.
A lot of times when we're spec-ing a bucket for somebody buying a piece
of equipment, a lot of guys that come in and they want a big bucket.
They're going to do a lot of work, and they want a big oversized
bucket in order to help get that work done fast.
With the skid steer coupler, you can do that.
You can fit all kinds of inappropriate buckets to your
equipment because that universal amount will allow you to do it.
We do really need to caution against that.
You can cause performance problems
with your equipment by having oversized buckets on it.
When it comes to sizing these buckets, you're going to have
a couple of recommendations of how you're going to do that.
A bucket is going to have two numbers
that are going to be specified for it.
The struck capacity, basically, the amount of material
that fits inside the bucket itself, and a heaped capacity.
When you fill a bucket and you look at it scooping up a pile of dirt,
you're always going to have a little bit
that extends outside of the bucket when the bucket is rolled back.
What we're going to want you to do is take that
heaped capacity number, then find a chart of the materials that you
might be lifting and carrying, and look at the weight of those materials
per cubic foot and figure out how much
weight of material you're going to get inside of the bucket.
Then add the weight of the bucket
itself and compare that against the lift capacity of your machine.
You're going to notice when you go and you look at the OEM buckets,
generally, they're going to look at the amount of capacity for stone.
Good heavy dense material and size that bucket
appropriately to the tractor.
Most of the time I'm going to discourage guys from going with larger
buckets unless they're exclusively
going to be using their machine for things
like mulch and snow that aren't very dense and aren't very heavy.
When you're into a hardworking bucket,
whether it's a front loader bucket or an excavator bucket, one thing that
you can look for to know whether it's a heavy bucket or not is wear plates.
When you look at the underside of this
Virnig bucket right here on the underside
of the bucket that's always going to be cutting
against the ground as you're cutting
grade or working as you go into a pile of dirt,
those plates are down there on the bottom to allow
that surface to be able to wear against the ground and not
immediately start to wear through and thin the floor of the bucket.
When you see buckets break, it's usually where the floors
start to wear out and you'll get a crack against the backside
of the cutting edge or you'll start to get holes in the back over here.
Those wear plates help to prevent that.
That's something that you usually
will not find on those light material class buckets that are your snow
and mulch type buckets, but your
heavier dirt buckets will have those plates.
You want to take a look because they're on the underside of the bucket,
they're not always the easiest to spot.
Another construction difference that
you'll find between those dirt oriented
buckets versus light materials is how the back of the bucket is built.
A bucket like this that's made for dirt, you're
generally going to find the back
of the bucket has a really nice smooth curve to it.
That keeps dirt and sticky materials from sticking
into the back of the bucket when you dump it.
It's less of an issue on a material
bucket where again snow, mulch, and those kinds of things that are not
going to stick into the back in the same way that dirt does.
Keep in mind, a dirt type bucket with this curved
back is going to work a lot better for you.
This is a feature, if buckets can have
features, that's generally usually only found on better
more premium buckets because it's a lot more welding work in order
to build these corners and stuff with this curved type back to it.
Something you want to keep an eye out if you're
looking for a premium bucket.
There's all different sizes and shapes
that tooth bars and cutting edges will come in.
One of the more interesting ones though are these serrated edge bars.
These are going to come in a lot of different options,
but conceptually they all work the same way that by
having these cuts back here, these things will work more like a knife
when it comes to trying to cut a grade and cut all hard materials.
A little bit more expensive, but if you're trying to do a lot of work
in hard soils like that and you're trying to cut
something smooth, these do actually a really nice job, even more so
than some of the straight edges do.
Just like cutting edge, tooth bars can have a lot of variety in them too.
These are generally fairly standard size hardware when you look across
different manufacturers of these things.
There's going to be industry numbers for the size and part numbers
of these shanks, the different kinds of teeth that are on here.
You're getting better quality stuff generally if you look
for stuff that's going to have, say, "number 23 teeth"
on it and those kinds of numbered things.
You can get some really cheap product
out of China and stuff, where you're going to find like teeth welded
onto buckets or odd part numbered shanks
or ones that don't have replaceable teeth on the front.
Generally, that's the kind of stuff you're going to want to avoid.
You're going to find some quality concerns there
compared to this heavier stuff.
I bet, you never would've guessed that there's so much
application and science behind something as simple as picking a bucket
to go on the front of the piece of equipment.
Props to the guys at Virnig, this is a really nicely done document.
We'll put a link down here at the bottom of it if
you're shopping for a bucket.
It's got a lot of information for it and it also goes through some
of the specialty buckets and says some of the things that you
might want to look for to tell whether those specialty
buckets are going to be good for their application or not.
Really interesting stuff there.
We're a vendor for several different bucket companies that are going
to give you, say, different price
points, different options different build qualities.
If you're seeing here for the background for some of these
videos, there's a lot of stuff if you want to walk around the lot here.
Check some of these things out and maybe
we can make sure we're picking up the right bucket for your application.
If you have a piece of equipment that you got parts or service
needs for, or you're shopping for some
new tractors or attachments, give us a call at Messick's.
We're available at 800-222-3373.
We're online at messicks.com.
Now, we have a conversation- have a conversation-
have a conversation- have a conversation about--
Come on, okay.