For years, we got away with just a small mini skid steer, the Swiss Army knife of landscaping and a full sized tractor loader backhoe to complete our landscape projects. Although we made it work, it wasn’t optimal. We use the mini skid steer for rototilling/removing turf, moving small trees across clients properties and digging holes with a couple sized augers. Where the mini skid steer really was deficient was with bucket capacity. It has a limited lift capacity so the bucket was rather small. In fact, it was quite a bit smaller than our wheelbarrows. I always thought about purchasing a light material bucket but I never got around to it. Over the years, we got creative in how we used our mini skid steer.
Our large tractor,loader, backhoe can do most of what we need to do. It can pick up and plant up to a 6″ caliper tree and dig rocks the size of a Volkswagen but a machine this size has some drawbacks, namely size and weight. Sometimes it’s just too big or too heavy to take into certain areas.
There was a need for a machine that fell in between our large and small machine. After a lot of thought, research and demos, we decided on a small articulating loader. If you notice, we don’t own any track machines. Most of our work over the last 40 years has been on established properties. Because of this, we only own wheeled machines. Track machines involve driving in straight lines or creating plywood roads on existing turf to minimize turf damage and who has time for that? The machine I was looking for would have the ability to drive on lawns all day long without creating any turf damage. It would also need to move more bulk materials across properties per trip than what we currently had the capacity for. Lastly, we were looking for a machine that had more hydraulic flow than our mini skid at 10 GPM.
We ended up purchasing a Multione 8.4SK. It seemed to tick most of the boxes we were looking for and was the only smaller articulating loader that had more hydraulic pressure than our small machine which was extremely import to us.
I’ve known about the manufacturer for years. When Vermeer became a minority owner of Multione, they purchased most of the rights to sell in the US. There is still at least one company selling the blue Multione, Slaymaker Rentals in PA. Although I demoed the smallest Vermeer, the ATX530, I decided I wanted a slightly larger machine. The next sized Vermeer was too large so I went to Slaymaker because they have access to all of Multione models. Vermeer has chosen to bring in only 3 of Multione’s models.
What this machine gives us is the ability to move 3/4 of a yard of soil or mulch across a property on each pass, the ability to use all of our mini skid steer attachments as well as full sized buckets, forks and other full sized attachments that don’t need a ton of hydraulic pressure. We don’t have a lot of time on this machine yet. It wasn’t cheap and we bought it sight unseen. We will see if we chose the right machine as time goes by. I will say that articulating loaders do take some getting used to.
The Multione with loader arms extended
