The front bucket on the tractor is about the last resort for moving large quantities of dirt. It will get it done in time, but it puts allot of strain on your loader and driveline. Most compact tractors are not really designed for serious dirt moving, but more towards pulling and PTO type stuff on smaller acerage. I would guess that every hour you put on your tractor moving dirt will be equal to three hours of normal use!!!

Of course, having the tractor means you can do it at your leasure, but if you remove 300 yards, and your loader is 1/3 a yard, that's 900 trips to where you plan on dumping the dirt. How far is it and how rough is the road? Is it level driving or will you be on an angle?

Another consideration is that by starting digging in the middle, you will be piling up the dirt where you will have to dig again. That dirt will have to be removed before you can dig in that spot.

The best thing would be to either buy an older dump truck, rent one or hire it out. Load the dump truck and then dump it. This way you are only handling the dirt once, you are moving it efficitently and once moved, it's done.

I do this with my backhoe. I dig with the hoe bucket and load it into my 5 yard dumptruck. While it's a slow process, I've moved over 200 yards in a day a quarter mile from where I'm digging without too much trouble.

Digging is easy, the real challenge is in moving the dirt that you dig!!!!!

Eddie

Lake Marabou http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=139488&fpart=1

It's not how many ideas you have, but how many you make happen.

3/4 and 4 acre ponds.