Today's short conversation is going to be about the process that it takes to take an older tractor that has a pin on bucket on the loader and install a skid steer quick coupler. Skid steer couplers have become almost standard equipment on modern machinery anymore, because of the flexibility that it gives you for putting attachments out on the front of your machine. You'll see this older tractor right here has these land pride pallet forks on the front. Those forks actually wouldn't be possible to put onto this machine, say 15 years ago. When it would have been sold new, these couplers were not offered as a standard factory option. At that point, back in the day, then there were various manufacturers out there who made aftermarket couplers, where we would be able to go and then put that coupler on the front loader.
Nate made a bucket to it in order to give this flexibility. As years went by the majority of the industry realized that this was a good idea, and have now made it an option on new tractors. We always have guys looking for solutions to update the older machinery that may not have that coupler on it. This tractor right here is equipped with one of those aftermarket couplers. This is from a local company to us here called ATI, and ATI makes aftermarket couplers that fit a huge variety of machinery. Machines with say pin on buckets or weird proprietary couplers can all have that hardware taken off and replaced with the industry standard skids to your coupler. Now, because they're custom made pieces by small machine shops, they do tend to be on the expensive side. It's not unusual to see an $800 plus price tag just for that replacement coupler itself.
Once you've put that coupler on, now that coupler is not going to be able to drive up and connect to the pin on bucket that you once had on your loader. The bucket itself needs to either be replaced with a new bucket or have some welding done on it in order to have a blank, a quick coupler blank, put on the back of the bucket. Most of the time, we're usually going to go the welding route where we can have a mechanic or a welder, take a torch, burn the coupler mounts or the [unintelligible 00:02:23] mounts off the back of your bucket, then take what's called a skid steer blank, a blank plate, flat plate on one side with the skid steer mount on the other. That blank plate is laid up against the back of the bucket and welded in place, so that your existing bucket will now fit onto your skid steer mount.
Till all of that is said and done, until you do that quick coupler, you do the plate, you pay for the welding, it's not unusual for it to be a $1,500 plus price tag in order to get all of that set up. Once it's said and done, you've now updated your loader with a whole bunch of new functionality and a whole new world of implements that you can put on there. If that's a process that you'd consider going through and you'd like some help through it, give us a call. We're already a local supplier here for ATI. We pick up down at their warehouse weekly, and so we can get you some great pricing and stuff on those couplers and skid steer blanks as well or something. We keep a lot of in stock and ship out to you if you need one. We're available on (800) 222-3373 or online at messicks.com
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.
