Buy a mini excavator or not? With pictures and data....

A mini excavator costs about €75 per day. The purchase price converted into working days would be roughly about 100 working days.

The question for me is what kind of gardens these are supposed to be or how often per year they want to redesign them until the purchase of a device costing €5-10K pays off? Certainly not for 3 x 1000m².

Best regards
Dirk Grafe

A mini excavator costs about €75 per day. Calculated over working days from the purchase price, that would be roughly about 100 working days.

The question arises for me what kind of gardens those are supposed to be or how often per year you want to redesign them until purchasing a device costing €5-10k is worthwhile? Certainly not for 3 x 1000m².

Best regards
Dirk Grafe

But you can’t calculate like that, because it can be resold after 2 years. If you buy smartly, you can come out of this with zero and at best a profit. Experienced this several times, both with excavators and cranes.

A mini excavator costs about €75 per day. Calculated as purchase price per working days, that would roughly be about 100 working days.

The question for me is, what kind of gardens are these supposed to be, or how often per year do you want to redesign them until the purchase of a device costing 5-10K€ is worthwhile? Certainly not for 3 x 1000m².

Best regards
Dirk Grafe

Well, we also want to sell the excavator again in two years. If the operating hours are then calculated with rent, etc., and the excavator can be resold with little loss, this is, overall, in many cases quite a bit cheaper.
Here, no excavator with 2-3 tons costs €75 per day. Also, you forget the costs for transport to and from, tipper, securing, etc.

Nevertheless, presumably no one here will be able to give a well-founded assessment of the price.

The operating hours are too many for me, I'd prefer a smaller model with fewer hours. At over 6000, you might need a new engine or hydraulic pump. Also quite a few other things.... Joints worn out? Cylinders leaking? The chain isn't much good anymore, and so on. If you can do all that yourself and have a cheap source for spare parts, okay. Otherwise, you should always have 4000 ready in the bank for such a machine. When I compare, that I was just considering a 3.5t, 3500 hours, 3 buckets for 14,000, I would only pay 8,000 for this one.

But that doesn't help you much, because prices vary depending on condition, region, ....

I (unfortunately) wouldn't have any space for it.