One of the more frustrating things about using a backhoe is repositioning your tractor as you move along your trench. I would spend probably 25% of my time on this implement, getting on and off this machine in order to roll my tractor along as I'm digging. However, there's a more advanced technique that you can use that allows you to move the tractor with the backhoe.
We need to start here today by saying that I'm calling this an advanced technique. There are things here that if not done properly or not done with care can put you in a situation that may be a little bit unsafe. If you are a novice at operating a backhoe and you're not used to running a machine, you definitely want to be doing your movements of the tractor with yourself up here in the seat. Some of the stuff that I need to do here goes on the edge of the bounds of safety sometimes for an operator that doesn't know what they're doing.
I'm sitting on the backhoe and want to move the machine, so I have my loader bucket up in the air and I do not have my parking brake set. I'm going to have the backhoe planted in the ground here by having the outriggers down. Now, if you're doing the hardest of hard digging, this is not a great idea. The tractor is definitely going to be more planted if you have the loader bucket down on the ground and the whole tractor picked up in the air getting as much weight as possible on the outrigger. I'm giving up a little bit of my plantedness in order to be able to move the tractor along here. Once I've reached the end of where I'm digging and I'm ready to go ahead and move, what I'm going to do is take my bucket down here to the ground and use the loader to actually pick up the entire back of the tractor and then lift my outriggers up off the ground.
Now, as I lift these outriggers up, I'm keeping them just an inch or two off the ground, so if this thing happens to tip one way or the other, the outriggers are going to catch me. Now I'm going to reach up here behind me and kick my range selector into neutral, allowing my wheels to roll. Then, I'm going to use the backhoe to actually push the tractor forward. I take a step forward and put my outriggers down again to hold the machine from rolling. Bring my bucket back in again. Raise my outriggers just a touch. Lift my rear end up off the ground and roll myself forward another notch.
You can see just like that, without me having to get off the seat and jump around to the front of the tractor I've moved back about an extra 4 feet. I'm ready to go continuing along my trench here and get back to digging again. You definitely could be a lot more productive this way and get right back to digging faster without having to get on and off the machine all the time. It's a technique that you'll see a lot of more experienced operators using.
You want to be mindful of planting the machine back down again, putting the thing back in range, keeping the outriggers down close to the ground, so if this thing goes a little sideways or decides to roll or something, you can catch the machine. When you're in the back there's no seat belt around the back of the machine and none of the controls are exactly easy to grasp. Definitely something you want is to work in a flat area the first couple of times to practice before you get in a sticky situation. Digging like this can really add a whole lot of productivity to your day.
If your situation calls for it, you could also use that boom swing, so again picking the tractors back in just up in the air a little bit and then using that boom swing, I can start to throw the side of the machine this way and maybe change the direction of my trench that I'm going now. Ultimately, you're on your next step here. You're probably going to need to reorient the machine, but if you're working into some tricky situations or you have a funny corner to step into, using the boom pivot is also an option back here, allowing you to straighten out your trench.
Another thing that you want to understand about your backhoe that's a little bit more of an advanced technique is, how to dig without packing the bucket full of dirt. When we go through and explain to a new owner of a piece of equipment how to dig with a backhoe, usually we go through and explain the different functions between the bucket boom and dipper here and how they relate to digging. Explaining to somebody that all of your power comes from the bucket circuit at the bottom.
If you're digging in hard ground or you're trying to break roots, that small pivot point down there of your bucket is going to have the most power, but while it has the most power, it's not necessarily the best thing to use for digging. If you go down into hard ground, into a lot of clay, like what I have out here, and you go and you do your digging by curling this thing shut, you're going to pack all that clay into the back of the bucket, causing yourself to have to get a shovel out and then dig it out in order to be able to continue digging again.
You can avoid doing that and avoid packing the bucket full of dirt by digging with the teeth and digging with a combination of the boom and the dipper, pulling that back in towards the machine, and digging off in layers and pulling those layers and that loose soil up into the bucket, rather than just going in and going around in that pivoting motion. What I'm going to do here when I go down on my trench is, I'm going to bring my bucket around so that my teeth are angled down just a little bit. Then, I'm going to pull back using both the boom and the bucket cylinder there and dig the bucket back in towards me. You'll see how those teeth break up the soil and then the soil collects in the bucket. When I would come up out of my trench and dump, I get soils that dump out of my bucket rather than packing into the back.
I'm going to set my bucket floor basically flat with the teeth angled down just a little bit. By pulling back on both of the sticks, here I'm bringing back in the bucket and trying to keep it flat across the bottom of my trench and loosening those soils with the teeth as I go. We're doing this slow here at a low rpm, so we don't make a whole lot of noise so you can hear me. Following this kind of motion creates a better flat bottom and makes it a lot less likely that you're going to pack that bucket full.
Now, if we go through and we do this the wrong way, basically, using just the bucket circuit to dig. We'd go down and put those teeth down in the ground and then curl that bucket shut around. You'll see when we bring this dirt up out of the trench here, notice the difference in the soil. You see how I have a big clump as opposed to loose soil. You're not using the teeth here to do the work. That's using the sides of the bucket shell in order to break all that loose in those clumps. You don't really want that when you go back fill this again. You want that soil that's been broken up by the teeth.
Then, if you look at the bottom of my trench down here, I also rather than having a nice flat bottom in the bottom of the trench, I have this arc where my bucket keeps on curling around. If you're doing things like laying pipe like I'm doing here, you're not going to have a nice straight run over the top of your pipe. You're going to have all these humps and stuff as you go down over top of those. Keep that in mind once you've gotten used to the functions of the backhoe.
Going and using that boom and bringing the bucket back into you with a bucket bottom flat is going to give you a nicer end-product to your dig than using that powerful curl circuit. You need to understand the curl, right? That's the way you break roots and stuff and understand where the power comes from in your backhoe, but it's not necessarily the best way to dig.
