PRODUCT FOCUS: Mini Skids

s the golf course superintendent for a parks district in Colorado, Dave Tooley deals with a myriad of maintenance needs. The first five years of his job, Tooley used a number of different machines to get the job done at the four public golf courses he oversees, but he found them to be bulky and difficult to transport from course to course. Then the parks district purchased a mini skid-steer – a Toro Dingo TX 425 with wide tracks, to be exact – to save time and energy.

Tooley oversees Family Sports Golf Course and South Suburban Golf Course, both in Centennial, Colo., Littleton Golf and Tennis Club in Littleton, Colo., and Lone Tree Golf Club in Lone Tree, Colo. Family Sports is a 9-hole course, Littleton and Lone Tree are 18-hole courses and South Suburban is a 27-hole course.

Tooley notes that it’s difficult to share only one mini skid-steer among four courses, but they make it work. They transport the unit on a trailer that also holds all of the attachments to whichever course has a job requiring its use.

"Of course they all want it at the same time," Tooley says. With a roughly $3.4 million maintenance budget, the district has looked into a second mini skid-steer, but given the economy Tooley says it’s not the time to buy. So for now, the courses have to wait their turn.

When it comes to the attachments, the ground prep attachment – used for rebuilding a tee, preparing an area for sod or seed or rebuilding a bunker – is used most often. The crews also get a lot of use out of the backhoe. Other attachments in their arsenal include a breaker bar, boring bar, pipe puller, bucket, trencher and snowthrower.

Given that four courses have been working with the same Dingo for five years, Tooley says the unit has required some repairs, but nothing too costly.

"I think it’s saving us money in its versatility because with all those attachments you can do most anything with it," he says. "And the beauty of it is with the wide track, the machine itself does no damage to the existing turf," Tooley says.

The mini skid-steer is small and maneuverable. Even when the attachments are in use they’re no wider than the machine itself. The courses have a large tiller that sits on the back of a tractor, but Tooley says it’s too bulky when it comes to certain jobs. With a bunker, for instance, the steep slopes are not conducive to using a large machine.

Among the four courses there are at least a dozen different workers who use the Dingo.

"The learning curve to really be good with the Dingo is so much better than the learning curve being on a tractor or an individual type trencher because everything is out in front of you and the controls on it are really intuitive and easy to use," Tooley says. With an average of 90 employees in season and 35 off season, this ease-of-use is important.

Tooley is impressed with the resourcefulness of the mini skid.

"Rather than have eight or 10 pieces of equipment that probably don’t do as good of a job to start with, one does it all," he says. "So there’s certainly some economy there, but I don’t know how you’d put a dollar number on it." Tooley says he was able to auction off a large trencher for $30,000, more than the cost of a mini skid-steer, after buying the Dingo.

For now the district is continuing to acquire attachments to further its maintenance abilities. Tooley typically purchases one or two attachments every year, though he wasn’t able to add any this year.

"It’s easy to add to the package because adding to the package in kind of small increments is better than coming up with $30,000 to do something," Tooley says. Purchasing a second mini skid-steer is a thought that he hopes to make a reality. GCI

Alyse Lamparyk is a freelance writer based in Athens, Ohio.