Top 5 Reasons to Rent a Mini Excavator

One of the main benefits to renting a mini excavator is the variety of landscaping jobs you can complete to safely and conveniently transform your yard or project site. Plus, with its compact footprint, you can easily maneuver a mini excavator through a backyard gate and around tight spaces, and its light weight makes it easy to load onto a trailer for transport to different project sites.
Below are five of the most common landscaping tasks you can complete with a mini excavator, simply by swapping out the attachments:

Whether you’re digging to install an in-ground hot tub or trenching to repair a sewer line, the most common function of a mini excavator is to use the boom for digging with a wide range of bucket attachments. You may not be able to dig as much earth as deeply as with a full-size excavator, but you’ll be able to maneuver a mini excavator in tight spaces such as backyards, much more efficiently than with hand tools. You can also attach a grading bucket for backfilling or levelling.

A mini excavator’s arm also allows you to scoop, lift, and dump material at higher elevations than a skid steer, and loading can be completed quickly and efficiently with the mini excavator’s ability to swivel its cab 360-degrees. You can also attach a material handling hook, grapple, or bucket with thumb attachment to lift and carefully set heavy objects in place.

Almost every outdoor project begins with land clearing to prepare the site for landscaping improvements and upgrades. In many cases, this requires removing tree stumps, rocks, and overgrown bushes and grass. With a mini excavator, you can attach a ripper to cut into the ground and loosen or pull out deeply-settled rocks and roots, and a brush cutter attachment to mow any dense vegetation. And you can use a bucket with thumb attachment for handling rocks, small stumps, branches, and trees.

Mini excavators can also be used to safely and efficiently break apart driveways and retaining walls, and demolish small structures including sheds and fences. Concrete can easily and quickly break away with a hydraulic hammer attachment that acts as jackhammer, and you can use a bucket with thumb attachment to pull down small walls or roofs in a safe and controlled manner.

If you’re looking to build a new driveway or any new structure on your site, you’ll need a strong, stable foundation to work on. After you clear the soil of debris and grade it to the shape you desire, you’ll want to compact it to increase its strength and prevent any air or water from disturbing the ground. Using a mini excavator, you can attach a compactor to compress and smooth the soil in a faster and more thorough manner than with hand-operated rollers.

Now that you have a better understanding of the versatility and range of landscaping jobs you can complete with a mini excavator, you’ll want to make sure you rent the right size and capacity of equipment and attachments that’ll work best for your yard or project site. With more than 45 locations across BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, The Cat® Rental Store is here to serve you at your nearest local branch, for delivery or pickup. We offer daily, weekly, or monthly rates with our online booking platform Rental Point, and you can reserve equipment 24/7.

Finning is the world's largest Caterpillar dealer, selling, renting and providing parts and service for equipment and engines to customers across diverse industries, including mining, construction, petroleum, forestry and a wide range of power systems applications. We operate in Western Canada, South America, and UK and Ireland.