This is the biggest investment I've made in my business in my life, other than houses, but it's already paying off. I molded over for a long time, and it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money to us, it's a lot of money each and every month, the tax savings on it alone, and then how much money we will save throughout the course of the build. It really makes a lot of sense, and I don't have any regrets. Welcome to midweek modern craftsmen. I have a fun one for you guys and girls this
week with a little bit different than I normally do. It's gonna be my thoughts on the excavator that I purchased, which is a Kubota uh, Kx, 040 dash four. They just came out with the new model, the 040 dash five. But I needed it, and I got a good deal on it, and it's been fun, and I've enjoyed it, and it was the most expensive purchase I've made in my life, in my business, and I don't really have any regrets about it, so I wanted to
hop on here and talk a little bit about it. I was out clearing a bunch of brush and stuff today, working on my property, just cleaning some stuff up, getting ready for the actual work. The girls are at the lake because it's spring break, and Rachel brought her parents up there. I'm gonna head up and meet them probably tomorrow. So I spent outside as a beautiful day outside, and I spent the day over there just cleaning stuff
up and laying stuff out to get ready for work. And I turned over 100 hours on the excavator since I got it a couple of months ago. And I just wanted to give some of my thoughts on that. What I've been using it for, in my opinion, what it's been great at. I'm not an expert, and honestly, this is the 100 hours I have on an excavator. I don't have any
prior experience. So if you're somebody who is inexperienced, and you find yourself in the same position as I am, maybe it'll give you a little bit of insight there as to what it's been helpful for, why I purchased it and didn't rent it, some of the tax incentives, what the buying experience was like. So why did I buy this machine? As many of you know by now, we're in the middle of getting the ball rolling to build our own personal home, and as with most stuff in my business, I
enjoy being hands on. I enjoy trying new trades. I maybe from a romantic perspective, I want to build this house, and I want to have my hands in as much as possible, and I want my kids to see that, and I want them to be a part of this as well. So this was just another aspect of that. So some of the things that this gives me the ability to handle on on that project, bulk, grading, material removal, stripping, topsoil, rough grade,
finished grade. I may have to rent a skid steer once I'm moving a ton of material, but stripping topsoil, digging where it's a crawl space, so digging the foundation, septic utilities from the street, removing a ton of trees, clearing a bunch of brush, just general maintenance with the property after we're already in, and also the ability to use it on jobs moving
forward, where I've always subcontracted that out. I'm not I, I don't do a ton of work where we need it, but it's always been something that I've had to get somebody else to do. So it's just being able to offer more services, but mostly for this project, being able to handle a lot in house. So why, why did I choose the unit that I did? So it is a KX 040 dash
four, like I said, they just came out with a new one. So my dealer is cherry Valley tractor, the owner who took over the business from his dad, his sisters there running the business as well. I went to high school with my brother. Worked there for a minute, so I've had a relationship with the dealer for a while. I also own a B 2650 which is a little compact tractor, not like the tiny little ones. One up from that. I use that on our property here. I use that over on the property
that we're developing. Super capable. Never had any issues with it. Knock on the wood. My first purchase from them was my z7 2660 inch zero turn mower. Or again, no issues that have replaced the battery on it, and just general maintenance. Um, it's always been effortless dealing with them. Brian, even this last time that I purchased this excavator, I'm pretty sure I had all the paperwork signed and the unit purchased the insurance in place, and he dropped it off like before I
went in and met with him. Everything he had it all good to go and ready to go for me, so that we basically walked in, shook hands, got a couple of other little things that he needed from me, and made the purchase seamless I don't like purchasing cars. I don't like making big purchases through my business. It's usually stressful. I don't want to be price shopping shit, and I know that I'm getting a good price
with him, that I'm going to be taking care of that. If I have any needs in the future, I have any questions, you know, they have a big staff. It's a big company, a big operation that I'm going to be taken care of. I've always had great luck with all of my Kubota equipment. I've always I bought all of my Kubota equipment. Nothing's been handed to me, and I feel like you get what you pay for with their equipment. So the reason that I got this size, it's the biggest, the biggest mini that I can
legally tow behind my truck without a CDL. So once you go up to a 57 it winds up being more than you can tow. And I'd need to get a CDL, I'd have to get different insurance, I'd have to have everything D O T registered and all that. And honestly, like, what I'm using it now for is the biggest job that I will use it for. I don't know in any time in the near future, I'm not looking to be a new home builder. I'm not looking to do a ton of development work, if anything, additions, small
porches, decks, minor site work, maintaining properties. I wanted something that was big enough and could handle the job that I'm doing now. But I also want to be able to transport it myself. I don't have to. I want it to be able to get into smaller backyards. I don't want it to damage, you know, I don't want a 20,000 pound machine or 15,000 pound machine where I can't run it across somebody's sidewalk. So this unit is big enough and capable enough to do everything that I need from it.
Yeah, there's there's bigger machines would be able to do some of the things faster, but I also I want a tool and a piece of equipment that can handle the bigger jobs, maybe not quite as efficiently, but also handle some of the smaller jobs and not be too big. So there's times and jobs where a smaller, you know, a 33 would probably be better for me, but I'm not in the site work business. I don't have the funds to be owning multiple excavators. So this, this is their most popular size
excavator. Again, a new model just came out. So this was sitting on the lot. It had the cab on it. It had the hydraulic thumb on it, AC radio, so like Bluetooth, all of that, everything that I would need for it, and more. I think it came possibly with a 24 inch bucket. I got a 12 inch bucket. So those are both digging buckets so they have teeth on them. The 12 inch
I'm using primarily for tree removal, digging out roots. It can be used for trenching, for silt fence, for utility work, and super easy, not heavy, like doesn't the machine doesn't even feel like it's there. You can swing around with that, and the machine is not thrown out of balance. Super easy to work with. I find actually collecting brush, moving logs, that it's much easier with that smaller bucket than the 24 inch,
obviously less weight too, so you can carry more. The 36 inch actually isn't bad, but the 12 inches is what I found the best for general cleanup, brush cleanup, logs, tree work, and then the 24 inch I'm using for any sort of digging that I need to digging down, not just like stripping topsoil foundation work footings much heavier than the 12 inch. So you have to be careful when you're swinging that around with a full bucket, or just like, swing it around the machine. It doesn't
want to stop quite as easy. Easily. And then I recently just had Brian order me a 36 inch smooth grading bucket. So that's for general, you know, bulk, moving material around, whether it's stone, fill, grading, work, removing topsoil, lighter, digging, cleaning out trenches, stuff like that, creeks, that buckets really nice, too, not super heavy once it has fill or material in it. It is. But the 24 inch seems like it's just a beefier bucket because it's made for digging with the teeth and
everything else. I could see a 30 inch bucket being super convenient for digging and not too big for that, for that machine. And I could also see a 42 inch grading bucket being amazing for that if you're if you were moving a ton of material, it could handle a 48 inch bucket. I just think that you would have to move slower with that bucket, because the weights gonna get so heavy with it. If it's out over the machine at all that it might offset the efficiency that you have with
it. But love, I would love a 42 inch bucket and maybe even a 30 inch digging bucket. But down the road, the reason I didn't get a 42 inch and I got a 36 inch, I talked to a couple people online about it, but also, I think down the road, I'll probably invest in a tilt grading bucket, and I would probably get that in a 42 inch. So I didn't want to have a standard grading bucket that was 42 and the tilt grading bucket that was 42 so I made the decision to go with a 36 and so
far, it's been great. Again. I have the hydraulic thumb on that took a while to get used to that I have on my my tractor. I have a grapple. And the way that you use that is completely different
than the way that you use the thumb. And at first I was like, I think of faster using the bucket, moving this, this brush and tree work, but then once you get the hang of it and understand how to use it and how to use it effectively, the excavator between being able to swing around and move stuff, not having to turn around, being able to navigate through other trees, although it moves a lot slower on the ground, like the ground speed of it is a lot slower, and it's not quite as
agile, you can get a lot more work done with it once you understand how to use it. Just as far as moving brush, you can stack it higher. The hydraulics are way better on it, like on this, this excavator, hydraulics using multiple circuits at a time. It's way smoother, way more efficient than my tractor. The tractor, it'll kind of do two at once, but that's more so when you have the bucket on but they don't really love having
two circuits work at once. When you have the grapple on there, it's really tough to have multiple circuits going at a time, even with the separate hydraulic lines or the auxiliary hydraulic line, so far I love it's been great again. There's times where a bigger unit would probably be better, there's times where a smaller unit would be better, but having a one size fits all. This really fits the bill for me. Why buy versus rent? So when I was looking to purchase this, I asked Brian. I
was like, at Cherry Valley. I was like, What? What are most guys doing as far as taxes and write offs? And he, he sent me, and I don't have it off the top of my head, but what tax incentives there are for this? And basically, you can write off the entire cost of this excavator year one. So when I looked at the numbers, at the end of the day, I'm probably saving 18 and a half $1,000 by purchasing this this year, and I
won't have the tax write offs for the next three years. Then I'm financing it, but 0% financing four years, and year one is basically paying for itself. So I'm gonna have three years that I'll pay for this. I'm going to be able to save a lot of money performing a lot of the work on my own house myself, and the money isn't just being thrown away. And yeah, you'd have a write off through a rental as well, but you're not
developing any equity in that rental. So for this year one, the excavator is paying for itself year two, three and four, I'm actually investing in the equipment, and I'm investing in my property, and I'm investing in a piece of equipment that in four years from now, if I want to sell it, I'll be able to recoup a lot of that. Another thing with the rentals is you can't really work. At your own pace. So this is my own property. I go over there. I don't work full days there. I'm
balancing it with work and life and everything else. If I have a rental, I'm just going to be stressed that I did be there. I need to get it done. I can't put this many hours on it. It's going to cost me more money, and at the end of the day, it's just not worth the headache and it's not worth the stress to me and having it and not getting things done with it, or, you know, missing certain aspects of my life, or being stressed out because I have this piece of equipment for a certain amount
of time, so there's no deadlines. I get to work at my own pace. These are a percent financing, 18 and a half $1,000 in tax savings, investing in myself and equity of the equipment and equity of the my house and my property, with the amount of money I'll save on site, work, clearing utility work, trenching, digging the septic, grading, stripping topsoil, it will more than pay for itself. So to me, that makes sense. And again, at the end of the day, I spend this money four
years down the road, it's paid for. I can sell it if I want to. And again, 0% financing is huge, especially in today's day and age where interest rates are insane for for everything. My honest thoughts about the equipment, about the experience, about working with cherry Valley, about Kubota in general, the machine is a beast. I have a mower, a Kubota mower. I have, you know, it's commercial. I have a tractor, and it's not one
of the homeowner tractors. It's like a smaller, mid sized commercial tractor, and like they're not built the same as this excavator. This is a heavy duty piece of construction equipment. It's big, although most people would consider this to be a small tractor or a small excavator. To me, 10,000 pounds is a lot. It's heavy. It will tear up soil. It will tear up lawn. You can't work on the finished lawn. You need mats down it. It's a heavy duty piece of equipment. And yes, they make
bigger ones, and yes, they make smaller ones. But it's, it's definitely an investment and a piece of equipment and not light duty. I love the fact that it is transport ready. Anything bigger transporting it would complicate things. I have put this in my dump trailer. My dump trailer legally can hold this from a weight perspective. If I were to be using this more for work, I would get a lower trailer. I would get a tilt trailer, or an equipment trailer to transport it just a little easier. I feel
like it'd be more secure. You're not dealing with the higher deck of the trailer. It would just fit a little bit better. So if I, if I end up using this and transporting this more for work. I would get a different trailer for it, but right now, getting it from my property to where we live, I can put it in the dump trailer, and I can tow it home legally with no no issues. So that was huge for me. Again, anything bigger, I wouldn't have been able to do that. Anything smaller again, it, it would, I
would just lose a lot of efficiency. And there's tasks that I'm losing efficiency now, but I just it doesn't make sense for me to go bigger, especially when I look at my workload and the type of work that I'm doing, and wanting to be able to use this on smaller projects, a smaller piece of equipment would probably be more ideal for them. But again, I'm looking for a one size fits all. I love the cab certain things like being able
to see out of it, I just I don't have enough experience. Like there's times where I want to stick my head out the window to see if I have clearance to make sure I'm not hitting something. I don't have enough experience in in different versions of these to tell you, like, if it's better than one or it's better than the other, I don't have any issues with it. It's comfortable. I could always use more room. I'm 632, 105 pounds. Things always feel small for me. For the most part, I don't have
an issue if I'm using the foot controls all day long. Sometimes my feet need feel like they need to be stretched out. The only time I have an issue with like my legs is if I try and jump turn a certain way, my knees will hit the controls as I'm trying to jump turn, but for everything else, like I don't have issues with the hand controls hitting my legs, even being as tall as I am, the radio is great. Bluetooth is great. Having heat NAC is amazing. Being able to
open all the windows. And the door when it's nice out is nice. The hydraulics are great. So it's not an electric hydraulic systems, hydraulic over hydraulic. Again, I don't have enough experience, but like very intuitive. You can feel when you're pushing it. You can feel if it's overloaded, compared to my tractor, they are much more efficient. Using multiple circuits at a time, you still lose like, if you're driving and you go to use the arm or the thumb, it will slow the
hydraulics down. Like, the hydraulic system isn't robust enough to be able to do all of these functions and not slow down another function. But when you're moving around, like, as long as you're not driving, you're moving around. It uses multiple functions at a time pretty well. As long as you're you're running it on full speed. The learning curve with it, like when I first got in, I was like, oh boy, I made a huge mistake. I'm not gonna be able to figure this out. Felt like a fish out
of water. Within a few hours, I was getting better. I'm at the point now where, like, I feel really good. I'm not thinking about things, but I could probably be smoother. And it's been fun and it's been challenging to learn. I feel like I've picked it up pretty well, and I'm definitely becoming way more efficient with it, even as far as just moving and knowing when you should turn and when you should spin and grab something and not having to constantly pivot. So that's been
a lot of fun. Again. This is the biggest investment I've made in my business, in my life, other than houses, like even with my wife, as far as cars and everything else goes the most expensive purchase that we've made, but it's already paying off. It was like the first purchase in order to really, other than purchasing this property, to get going on it, and I mold it over for a long time, and it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money to us. It's a lot of money each and every
month. But we'll be able, like I said, that the tax savings on it alone, and then how much money we will save throughout the course of the build. It really makes a lot of sense, and I don't have any regrets. It's been enjoyable and a very valuable piece of equipment. And again, building equity in ourselves, building equity in our property, rather than paying that out to somebody else and being else and being able to work at our own pace. So that's my thoughts on this. I've had
great luck with all of my Kubota equipment. Again, I purchased all of my Kubota equipment. I do have a relationship with Brian at Cherry Valley. I purchased, I purchased all of this from him. He's always treated me well. He's like, throw some posts out for me. Give me some love. I'll treat you as good as I can. But I'm not being handed free excavators that would be sick though. Maybe you can hand me a free skid steer, or at least
drop one off for like, a year or two, just as a demo. No, but he's been great to deal with it. You know, most people go in there probably, probably not dealing with the owner of the business, but I get to and I know that he's busy. And even even lining up the sale of this excavator. He was going away on vacation, he set me up with the salesman to make sure that everything went through. My salesman's mom got sick. Brian was on vacation making sure that the sale went through so that I
could get it and I could start work. And it was like, we can get this done. When you get back from vacation, he still handled everything. So the process has always been very seamless, not awkward whatsoever. As you know you're buying a car. Am I getting a good price? Am I getting hosed? Do I need to call other people? I go in there and I feel confident that I'm being taken care of, but I have had great luck with all of my Kubota equipment. Knock on wood. No issues other than changing
batteries. I do all the service myself. But yeah, great buying experience. So if you, if you are in the market for Kubota equipment, I believe they sell New Holland there, they have some red Max leaf blowers. And I got a a generator there when we had a huge snowstorm and nobody else had generators, and I got a generator from them. It's, it's right down the street for me.
Honestly, I don't think it could be closer. So super convenient for me, but if you are interested, or you're in the market, and I know I've referred, my brother bought a tractor there, my neighbor Matt bought a tractor there. So anyone who is in the market, I typically send them over there, because I've had great luck. They've treated me well, and it's been a very enjoyable process parting with large sums of money, which typically isn't the case. So thanks, Brian,
thanks cherry Valley tractor. And I hope that this podcast was informative for you, like I said, I rolled 100 hours on this, and I kind of just wanted to get get on here and give you my thoughts and my perspective on it, and never. Never saw myself purchasing this based on what I do and based on what I've done for the past 10 years, 15 years, but I'm at the point now where I want to be doing different things. I want to invest in much of myself. I want the equity. I want to be able to
handle so much of our own house build. I want to be outside, and I just want to be as well rounded in this field as possible, and I'm excited for the challenges of learning new things and really hopping into this adventure of building a home for our family, with my family. So I hope that you enjoy this podcast, if you have any specific questions, or you're in the market or you want my perspective on it again, by no means a pro 100 hours on this equipment is 100 hours total
behind the controls of an excavator. But if I can help you out, or you have any questions, let me know also. Thank you. I guess it might have been two podcasts ago. I feel whatever I discussed in that podcast really resonated with a lot of people, because I've gotten far more requests for consulting than I typically do, like I'm always getting a couple of weeks, but I got slammed with requests for consulting, and it worked out well because Rachel and the kids were away, so I've been trying
to get everyone in as quickly as possible the last two weeks. But thank you to everyone who has booked a consulting call, who's taken the time out of the day, who's hopped on a call with me, who's invested in themselves and in my consulting services really great. It also provides me like, let's do a consulting call, and I'm probably going to follow up that call with a podcast based
on the conversation that I had with you. To elaborate even more, because I go through and I have these consulting calls and I record them. We have a it's basically a video conference call. I record them, I take that transcript, we summarize that transcript, and then outline everything that we discuss, and then create some action items. So as I'm doing that, I'm thinking about our conversation, and I'm able to create these action items, and it really sparks great conversation for my
midweeks. So there's probably a chance that you're going to have a follow up, and it's completely anonymous. I'm not mentioning the people that are hopping on these calls, but if you listen to this and you're booking consulting call and we speak, I'll probably follow up with some additional information on the podcast to share, just based on our conversation. So a big
thank you to everyone who scheduled them. There's been a huge outpouring of support for people who who just wanted to hop on a call and discuss their business and their life and how they can make some positive changes and not really just overwork themselves. So thank you to everyone for that, and if you are interested in hopping on a consulting call, shoot me a email, Tyler at TRG, home concepts.com and we can discuss what that looks like, what my schedule looks like, and
hopefully set something up. All right, guys and girls, I will catch you next week. Hope everyone had a good Easter, good spring Break. That's it. See you guys later.