Power post hole digger vs manual - $700 lesson learned

I dropped $700 on a hydraulic post hole digger attachment for my skid steer last spring thinking it'd save me days of work. First 50 holes went smooth as butter, then the auger hit a buried rock vein and bent the shaft on me. Repair cost another $200 and two days of waiting on parts. My old manual digger with a sharpening stone has never let me down like that, but man it's slow. Any of you guys had better luck with power augers or am I just unlucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

oscarb7127d ago

...but is it really that serious though? People act like a bent auger shaft is the end of the world. @averysullivan I get your point about the rock vein being a nightmare, but $700 for a tool that dug 50 holes fast is still a win in my book. My buddy's manual digger barely gets through three holes before he's calling it quits for the day. Yeah repair cost sucks, but that's just the price of using actual machinery instead of playing archaeologist with a hand tool. You'd be crying over a $200 manual digger that takes you two weeks to finish the same job.

averysullivan27d ago

$700 and another $200 on top of that? Man, that stings bad. I can't believe a rock vein bent the whole shaft, those things are supposed to be tough. Sounds like you hit a spot that even a manual digger would've fought you on for hours. Must've been gutting to watch that auger twist up after spending all that cash. Did the repair shop say anything about that spot being a known trouble area or just bad luck?

andrew77818h ago

Hold on, is everyone else okay with calling a $700 tool a "win" just because it dug 50 holes? @oscarb71 I get your math, but that's still $14 a hole before you even count the auger or the gas. And then once it broke, you're at $18 a hole if you add the repair. That's brutal. For that kind of money, I'd expect that thing to survive a surprise boulder or two, not fold up like a cheap paperclip. A manual digger might take longer, but it's way more predictable. You know what you're getting into, and you're not suddenly staring at a $200 repair bill because you hit a hard spot. Sometimes slower and cheaper is the smarter move, especially if you're not a pro doing hundreds of holes every weekend.

-1