Attachments Guide

Buying a new machine for every job is not a business strategy. It is a fast way to overextend your budget and crowd your yard with equipment that sits idle half the year. Attachments solve that problem. One base machine paired with the right attachments covers work that would otherwise require five separate pieces of equipment.
This guide focuses on skid steers and compact track loaders because they run the widest range of attachments of any equipment category. The principles apply to mini excavators as well, which share several attachment types.
Here are ten attachments worth knowing, what each one does, and where each one earns its cost back.

1. Bucket

The standard bucket ships with most machines. It digs, scoops, and moves loose material. Bucket capacity on compact machines ranges from 0.1 to 0.5 cubic yards, depending on model and configuration.
General-purpose buckets handle soil, gravel, and demolition debris. Heavy-duty rock buckets add reinforced cutting edges and stronger side plates for quarry work and rocky terrain. Light material buckets go wider with less structural weight for mulch, wood chips, and snow.
Your bucket choice depends on what you move most. Match the width to your machine’s rated operating capacity. Overloading a bucket tips the machine forward and wears the lift arms faster.

2. Auger

An auger drills holes. Post holes, tree planting holes, foundation piers, fence lines. The hydraulic motor on your machine drives a rotating bit into the ground.
Bit diameters run from 4 inches to 48 inches. Depth depends on your extension configuration. A standard auger and one extension reach 10 feet on most compact machines. Add a second extension and you reach 16 feet.
Hard ground and rocky soil need carbide-tipped teeth. Soft to medium soil runs fine on standard steel teeth. Replacing worn teeth costs far less than replacing a worn bit, so check tooth condition regularly.
One operator drills a post hole in under two minutes with the right auger setup. Manual post hole digging takes 15 to 30 minutes per hole, relying on soil and depth. On a fence line with 80 posts, the time difference is important.

3. Hydraulic Breaker

Concrete, asphalt, rock, and frozen ground all stop a bucket. A hydraulic breaker does not stop. It bears repeated impact blows to break hard material into pieces, your bucket then releases.
Breakers are ranked by impact energy in foot-pounds or joules. Compact machine breakers vary from 200 to 1,500 foot-pounds of impact energy. Match breaker size to your machine’s hydraulic flow rating. An undersized hydraulic system running a large breaker damages both.
Road repair crews, demolition contractors, and utility installers all run breakers regularly. Renting a breaker for periodic use makes more financial sense than buying one if your work demands it only a few times per year.

4. Grapple

A grapple grabs material and holds it. Where a bucket pushes and scoops, a grapple reaches, closes, and lifts. This matters when your material does not stay in a bucket.
Root grapples clear land after tree removal. They sift soil through the tines while holding roots, stumps, and brush. Destruction grapples grip irregular concrete pieces, twisted rebar, and mixed debris. Industrial grapples handle pipe, lumber, and scrap metal.
Log and lumber yards, land clearing crews, and demolition contractors use grapples daily. The attachment turns a loader into a sorting and handling machine, not just a pushing and scooping one.

5. Pallet Forks

Pallet forks turn your compact machine into a rough-terrain forklift. Two steel tines slide under a pallet, your machine lifts, and you move the load.
Fork capacity ratings matter. A set of forks rated at 4,000 lbs on a machine with a 2,500 lb rated working power still limits you to 2,500 lbs. Your machine’s ability is always the limiting factor, not the forks.
Construction sites, nurseries, landscape supply yards, and agricultural operations all use pallet forks regularly. If your work involves moving bagged goods, blocks, pavers, or any palletized material, pallet forks pay for themselves quickly.

6. Sweeper

A rotary sweeper spins a cylindrical brush at ground level. It cleans paved surfaces, pushes debris into windrows, and prepares sites for the next stage of work.
Angle brooms let you sweep material to one side instead than directly ahead. This works on road boundaries, parking lots, and areas where you need material required rather than just pushed.
Municipalities, parking facility operators, and contractors finishing site work all run sweepers. A sweeper cleans a 50,000 square foot paved area in under two hours. Manual broom crews take all day.

7. Cold Planer

A cold planer mills asphalt and concrete surfaces. Rotating carbide teeth cut into the surface at a controlled depth, removing material and leaving a textured base for repaving.
Compact cold planers mill widths from 12 to 24 inches. Depth control runs from surface skimming to 6 inches deep, depending on the model. Road repair crews use compact planers for patch work, utility cut repairs, and full-lane milling on residential streets.
Renting a full-size milling machine for little repair jobs is expensive and often unnecessary. A compact planer on a skid steer handles the same work at a fraction of the expense.

8. Trencher

A trencher cuts a limited channel into the ground for pipe, conduit, or cable structure. Chain trenchers use rotating cutting teeth on a straight chain. They cut through soil more quickly than an excavator bucket on narrow utility trenches.
Widths run from 4 to 18 inches on compact machine trenchers. Depth reaches 48 inches on most configurations. Utility contractors, irrigation installers, and electricians running underground conduit all use trenchers regularly.
A chain trencher cuts 100 feet of 12-inch deep trench in 20 minutes on moderate soil conditions. Digging the same trench with a bucket excavator takes longer and leaves a wider disturbed area to backfill.

9. Tilt Rotator

A tilt rotator sits between your machine’s arm and the attachment. It lets the attachment tilt side to side and rotate a full 360 degrees. This turns a standard excavator bucket into a precision grading and placement tool.
Operators grade slopes, lay pipe at precise angles, and place materials in positions that a fixed attachment cannot reach without repositioning the entire machine. Tilt rotators reduce machine repositioning time significantly on detail grading work.
Adoption is highest in Scandinavia, where the attachment originated, but North American and Australian markets are adding tilt rotators at a steady rate as operators see the time savings on grading and utility work.

10. Snow Blower

A snow blower attachment throws snow to the side rather than moving it forward. Where a bucket or blade builds snow piles, a blower clears the surface totally and throws material up to 30 feet away.
This matters in urban areas where snow storage space is limited. Sidewalks, parking structures, and tight commercial sites do not have room for large snow piles. A blower solves that problem.
Municipal contractors, commercial property managers, and airport ground crews run snow blowers on compact machines through winter. One machine with a blower attachment takes work that previously required a reliable piece of seasonal equipment sitting unused for nine months of the year.

Making Attachment Decisions

Before adding an attachment to your fleet, work through three questions.
How often will you use it. An attachment used three times per year is a rental, not a purchase.
Does your machine have the hydraulic ability to run it. High-flow attachments like cold planers and snow blowers need machines fitted with high-flow hydraulic systems. Standard-flow machines cannot run them at full performance.
Does the coupler match. Universal quick couplers fit most attachments, but not all. Confirm compatibility before ordering.
One machine with a planned attachment design covers more job types than three machines without one.