I manage procurement for a 40-person landscaping and farm services company in western Wisconsin. I've tracked every equipment invoice since 2019—buy prices, repair costs, rental day rates, resale value. We spend roughly $240,000 a year on equipment, rentals, and repairs. So I don't get excited about a machine's paint job. I get excited about total cost per hour.
Here's the thing: there's no single best choice between loader backhoes, a cultivating tractor, a skid steer excavator setup, and the spreaders sitting in the barn. There's only the best fit for what your week actually looks like. But a lot of buyers pick a machine like they're picking a pet—based on personality—and then pay for it for a decade.
So let me break this down by scenario. Before we get into each one, start with three questions.
Before You Buy, Ask These Three Questions
- How many hours per year will this machine actually work?
- Can the job be rented for less than the ownership cost?
- What else will it push you into buying?
That third one is the one people forget. A loader backhoe seems like a bargain until it requires a bigger trailer, a heavier truck, and a line of attachments. I'll come back to that.
Scenario A: Loader Backhoes for Digging-Heavy Operations
Loader backhoes do one thing brilliantly: dig. They also load, lift, and run other hydraulic attachments. If your work is drainage, foundation repairs, septic lines, or any job where you need to dig a hole and then move the spoils away, a backhoe earns its reputation.
But makes sense and you should buy one are two different statements. In 2023, I audited every hour on our compact backhoe. It cost us $31,400 in depreciation, insurance, and repairs that year. We logged 137 hours on it. That's $229 per operating hour before fuel. A rental backhoe in our area goes for $350–450 per day including delivery (rate sheet from our local rental yard, October 2024). For fewer than 200 hours a year, the math rarely justifies ownership—unless you need to be working at 6 AM and can't wait for a rental.
If you run a small excavation company, if you dig footings weekly, if every day starts with a trench, then yes—buy a used TLB with service records. Just don't buy one because of the old idea that a backhoe is the only machine that can do everything. That thinking comes from an era when rental yards were far away and compact loaders didn't have the attachment options they have today. That's changed.
Honestly, a backhoe is also a poor fertilizer distribution machine. If spreading is a big part of your revenue, a loader backhoe is the wrong anchor for your fleet.
Scenario B: Skid Steer With an Excavator or Backhoe Attachment
This is where our operation ended up after the backhoe made us do the math. A skid steer with a backhoe attachment—some dealers call it a skid loader backhoe—doesn't dig like a full tractor-loader-backhoe. Reach is shorter. Breakout force is weaker. If you try to lever big roots out of clay, you'll stress the loader frame in ways the factory didn't plan for.
But for shallow utility lines, post holes, and 18-inch trenches, it's enough. And when you take the backhoe off, you still have a skid steer for grading, moving feed, clearing snow, running pallet forks, or carrying seed bags. The same machine can earn money on the loader side of the day and still do light digging after lunch. That flexibility is the real argument for a skid steer excavator setup.
Here's a price comparison based on dealer quotes we collected in January 2025:
- Compact tractor-loader-backhoe: roughly $68,000–78,000 new
- Skid steer loader: roughly $42,000–52,000 new
- Backhoe attachment for a skid steer: roughly $9,000–14,000
At the high end, the skid steer plus attachment is around $66,000 versus $78,000 for the TLB. That leaves a $12,000 gap. At our local mini excavator rental rate of $275 per day, that gap covers 43 days of serious digging with a purpose-built excavator. For most small farms, that's a three-year supply of trench work.
So I tell people to think of a skid steer and a rental excavator as a team. The skid steer does the daily material moving. The excavator shows up when the dig gets serious. Together, they're often cheaper than a new backhoe, and you're not dragging a heavy machine through mud every time you want to move a pile of compost.
One warning: buy the backhoe attachment from a brand that matches your skid steer manufacturer, or at least get written confirmation about hydraulic flow and frame mounting. We compared universal options and saved some money upfront, but the hoses didn't match our machine. It cost a week of downtime and a $240 adapter. Not the end of the world, but avoidable. Prices as of January 2025; verify current rates.
Scenario C: Cultivating Tractor Plus a Farm Spreader
If the word cultivating is central to your operation, start with the tractor. A cultivating tractor with a front loader is less nimble than a skid steer and less dedicated than a backhoe. But it's the only one that will prepare a seedbed, mow a pasture, pull a disc, and tow a farm spreader without complaining.
In our 2024 review, we compared the TCO of our skid steer plus a 10-year-old 55 HP tractor against a new compact backhoe. The tractor won, not because it was more impressive, but because it did three income-producing jobs in one day. The backhoe would have done one job well and sat idle the rest of the week. Not flashy. Just efficient.
A tow-behind grass fertiliser spreader with a 500–800 lb hopper costs anywhere from $4,000 to $9,000 based on quotes we got in fall 2024. It looks like a simple piece of steel, but spread pattern matters. Cheap spreaders are why you see stripes on athletic fields. When you're comparing farm spreaders fertilizer spreaders, budget for a calibration kit and a set of test tarps. That step gets skipped, and it's the difference between a professional result and a flaky one.
The tractor route makes sense for a mixed farm: row work, hay, loader work, and spreading. It's wrong if your property is mostly hardscape and structural digging. If you're moving mud between buildings and never touch a field, a tractor is a compromise that costs almost as much as the machine you actually need.
How to Tell Which Scenario You're Actually In
I can't give you a one-size-fits-all answer, but I can give you the decision rule we've used since our 2023 equipment audit:
If a machine won't be used at least 150 hours a year, renting is usually smarter than buying. If it will be used more than 300 hours, ownership starts to pay. Between 150 and 300, the deciding factor is whether it can do more than one kind of work.
That rule came from tracking our own numbers, not from an industry study. Mileage will vary, but it's a solid starting point.
Ask yourself:
- What does a normal week look like? If it's 70% loading and lifting, buy a skid steer. If it's 50% digging, buy or rent a backhoe. If it's 50% cultivating or spreading, buy the tractor.
- What does the machine do when it's not doing the main job? The more roles it can fill, the fewer idle hours it will have.
- What does it cost to carry? Depreciation, insurance, storage, and repairs. If that number exceeds what you'd pay to rent, you're paying for the machine to sit still.
Last spring, we had two days to decide on a used skid steer from a nearby dealer. Normally I'd spend two weeks getting quotes, checking service records, and comparing insurance. There wasn't time. I ran the ownership cost on a napkin, negotiated the price down, and wired the money. The next two weeks, I kept waiting for a catastrophic failure. The hoses leaked on the third day, the dealer covered it under warranty, and I didn't relax until we passed 150 hours without a major repair. That's the reality of buying used equipment: you make the best call with the information you have, then you live with it.
Bottom line: the right machine basically comes down to your hours, your jobs, and your tolerance for repairs. If someone says there's one perfect answer for every farm, they're probably trying to sell you a machine.
