I'm standing out today beside this Kubota R630, one of their bigger wheel loaders that they offer. I thought it'd be interesting to show you today the ways that we actually use one of these pieces. Guys always seem to be interested at the equipment that we choose to use ourselves. We actually use the R530 wheel loader at our different locations for loading and unloading trucks.
I'm going to show you a little bit today about why we've chosen to use that machine and how it works out for us. The first reason that we moved away from using a skid loader to load and unload trucks was because of our operating costs. When we worked back through the expenses that we were putting into a machine in the course of the year, we were finding that because we typically run skid loaders on asphalt.
We're doing almost turning in circles all day long, on and off from the truck and back and forth with loads. We were wearing through tires like nobody's business. It was not unusual for us to be putting a set of tires onto a skid loader every six months because we were on asphalt all the time. We were noticing that $10,000 to $12,000 a year was not unusual for our operating expenses on that machine.
We took a look at wheel loaders because of the articulation in the middle wasn't nearly as hard on the asphalt surfaces as what the skid loaders had been. By making that change we now noticed that we were able to put three, four or five hundred hours onto a wheel loader before we typically sell it. We're not noticing any significant tire wear at all.
That one big difference is saving us a significant amount of money. Besides that tire wear alone, the operational characteristics of a wheel loader just work a lot better for us. Because of the longer boom we're able to reach further across trucks or further into the back of a box truck and fork and lift things much more easily.
We also have an adapter on the front with pallet forks and trailer hitch that just when you move up to a machine because your bucket is further out in front of you, you could see what you're doing a lot easier than what you can on a skid loader where the mount plate is so close to the machine. We just continue to find all these applications where we've just been really happy with how the wheel loader has worked for us in that loading and unloading application.
That tells you a little bit about why we choose to use wheel loaders in our yard. If you have any parts of service needs for your machine or we can help you purchase a piece of equipment, give us a call at Messicks we are available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
