Do you want to start a skid steer business but you want to go niche? If YES, here are 27 best skid steer business ideas and opportunities.
A skid steer is a compact machine used to access tight areas where large equipment can’t reach. Using different characteristics, the machines are perfect for a range of jobs encompassing different industries. The skid steer excellent maneuverability means the machine can turn on its tracks, and by adding various attachment options, you can increase the machine’s adaptability.
Mini skid steer loaders are ideal for building development, landscaping, interior demolition and underground construction. Being compact allows the equipment to rotate in tight spaces and reach through narrow passages.
A medium-sized skid steer can support applications and attachments of all kinds because of its excellent engine power, hydraulics and balance. The machine can even offer a bit more muscle than a smaller one but still fits into confined spaces.
Bigger Heavy-duty skid steer loaders are perfect for more significant jobs like excavating, grading, road building and heavy lifting. The engines can lift pallets of brick, unload dirt, and support road construction and forestry cutting with attachments. If you are planning to acquire a skid steer or you already have one, below are business ideas to consider.
Best Skid Steer Business ideas
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Demolition Service
A demolition service is a wonderful business venture to set in motion if you already own a skid steer, especially a small demolition service that specializes in residential and commercial renovation projects.
Forming a crew of construction labourers and subcontracting for renovation companies and contractors for the demolition work has the potential to pay off big. Be sure to acquire workers’ compensation insurance for employees and general liability insurance to guard against potential accidents.
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Landscaping
When recreating an outdoor environment, building an elaborate landscape or constructing retaining walls, a skid steer with the Three-tined grapple, paired with a clamp attachment provide the grasp and precision you need to load/unload and sort material, or move vegetation.
Or combine the Pro Clamp System™ with a three-tined grapple for a perfect solution to handle landscape boulders, timbers or other dimensional lumber in the construction of waterfalls and ponds.
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Urban Gardening
Note that your customers will be homeowners and businesses that want their properties beautified and kept looking good. Consider targeting commercial types like apartment and condominium complexes, hotels and motels, hospitals, large and small businesses and office parks, and government institutions.
Architects, real estate developers and contractors building new homes or small tracts also make good customers. Contact residential customers by going door-to-door with fliers or door hangers.
Since you already have a skid steer, you just need to acquire a power mower, edger, leaf blower, seed and fertilizer spreader and sprayer, an assortment of shovels and rakes, and a gasoline can for on-the-job refills. You’ll also want a pickup truck and perhaps a small trailer to carry it all in.
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Stump Removal Services
One of the most efficient ways to get rid of a tree stump is to grind or cut it out. Purchasing a skid steer helps you to achieve the task easily and efficiently. The cost of a new skid steer machine starts at a few thousand dollars and generally requires a trailer or truck to be used for transporting, as the machines are very heavy.
Contacting and soliciting firms, such as construction companies, landscape companies, architects and property maintenance companies for stump removal work will generally secure all the business that a one-person stump removal service can handle.
Note that when a jobsite is clean and accessible to workers in all areas, it functions at its safest and most efficient. Whether a gravel pile was dumped on the wrong spot, a pallet of sod is blocking an entrance, or debris is cluttering up the area, a skid steer can move things around and open the area.
Because of its size, it does so without getting in the way of workers or larger machines. This idea has also proved helpful in unexpected clean-up situations. An RDO Vermeer customer, a large wrecker/towing company, uses a skid steer and broom attachment combination to clean up traffic accidents.
Using the machine gets the area cleared and safe for motorists quickly and with minimal traffic disruption. Cleanliness may seem like a small detail, but obstructions can add up to a big deal if they’re hampering jobsite productivity or causing safety issues.
With a skid steer, starting a tree trimming and tree removal service is a great business enterprise to activate, especially if you have past work experience or knowledge in tree trimming and removal practices. The equipment needed to successfully operate the service includes a truck, ladders, safety gear, and chainsaws and pruning shears.
A number of measures can be used to gain customers, such as designing and distributing promotional fliers, placing advertisements for your service in newspapers and the Yellow Pages, as well as competing for tree trimming and removal contracts.
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Trail Development
Note that constructing and maintaining asphalt walking/biking trail systems and golf cart paths is tough to do with most machines, but is easier with a skid steer equipped with a trenching bucket and grading blade. With a ripper attachment, these machines can penetrate and scarify frost or hard-packed ground.
Skid steers are ideal for clearing, grading and applying fill material to prep pathways — measuring approximately 5 feet wide with minimal disruption. They also provide the precision to chisel and sculpt sloped land, and the versatility to cut, grade and compact fill material.
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Start Selling Skid Steers
If you have the financial capabilities and the zeal to venture into this industry, then you should consider selling skid steers.
These machines are a key equipment used in the construction industry and there is a large market for them. Just ensure that you negotiate with a manufacturer of your choice so as to become their merchant. You can as well become merchants for more than one skid steer maker.
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Rubbish Removal
Trash doesn’t look nice one bit, but trash could put you on the road to riches. Rubbish removal is charged by the hour, truckload, or by a quote before removing the junk. Note that if you can offer home and business owners fast and convenient rubbish removal services at competitive prices, word-of-mouth advertising will generate more work than you can handle.
Just ensure you build and sustain alliances with people who can refer your business to their customers and clients; these referral brokers include real estate agents, residential and commercial cleaners, and home service companies such as carpet cleaners, contractors, and property managers.
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Farm Equipment Broker
If you already have a skid steer, then you can start a business that hires your machine to farmers. In this business, International connections can really pay off, especially if you’re planning to start a farm equipment brokerage business.
Your international connection will not only help in the marketing of the equipment overseas but also in locating discounted farm equipment for North American purchasers. According to reports, the market for good quality used farm equipment such as skid steers, tractors and hay combines is huge worldwide.
Selling just one piece of equipment per week can generate business revenues of $200,000 per year and more. The key to success in this business is to build and maintain vital contacts and alliances with farm equipment dealers and other brokers of farm equipment, as well as to seek international opportunities with booming economies.
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Product Assembly Service
Since you already have a skid steer, then this business can be started with peanuts, less than $500, and marketed through retailers who do not currently offer product assembly services to their customers; additional revenues can be earned if you also provide delivery services at the same time.
Note that retailers of the products that must be assembled after purchase will be your big market, but at the same time do not overlook the possibility of building alliances with home and office movers because moving often requires furniture and equipment to be disassembled for the move and reassembled after the move.
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Remodelling Project Management
If you already have a skid steer, then you can use your knowledge of construction and home renovation to earn a reasonable income by starting a remodelling project-management service focused on helping clients to manage their home, office, or store renovations, but especially in the red-hot residential home improvement industry.
Irrespective of whether a homeowner tackles his own renovation job, or if a renovation company is hired to perform the work, a nonbiased remodelling project-management service can save thousands of dollars, while ensuring that all work conforms to code and that the highest-quality products and installations are used.
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Fire and Flood Restoration
With a skid steer you can start a fire and flood restoration service. The main duty of a fire and flood restoration service is to initially go to the job site and carry out immediate or sometimes temporary measures, to limit any further damage to the site.
These measures can include boarding up broken windows, covering roofs that have been damaged, and removing water that may have accumulated inside the buildings. The secondary duties can include repairing the damage or hiring subcontractors to repair the damage.
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Construction Project Company
Construction company plan, coordinate, budget and supervise construction projects from start to finish. Note that this might mean a plumbing job one day, a roofing project the next and a big masonry job after that. Different companies work on different-size projects. But whatever sizes the construction company is, a skid steer helps you work in the field and carry out your activities.
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Organic Farming
Organically grown and produced food products have really taken off in popularity and have been scientifically proven to be better for our health. Indeed, operating a farm that grows organic food requires a great deal of consideration and research prior to committing, not to mention an extremely large financial investment.
Nonetheless, the current demand for organically grown foods shows no sign of slowing down and will only continue to expand as the human population continues to become more concerned about maintaining a healthy and balanced diet.
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Skid Steer Rental Service
Skid steer loaders are perfect for rent in construction sites, especially small building projects. If someone in your neighbourhood is remodelling, a skid steer can be a good piece to have on hand, especially for moving materials. You can also advertise your private company’s services to clients who need one-day digging projects, such as for gardening, pool construction, and others.
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Herb Farm
These farms are tremendously popular these days—from the smallest shop to the largest discount warehouse, you’ll find medicinal herbs, culinary herbs, and herbal teas, baths, candles and aromatherapy essences. If you love the romance and mystique of herbs and you like farming, then a large scale herb farm might be just the business for you.
You’ll plant and raise your herbs, then sell them to wholesale or retail customers. You can also sell container plants or herbal products like soaps or vinegar. Some herb farmers operate pick-your-own fields where customers can gather their own plants.
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Haulage Services
With the right attachments, you can use a skid steer to start haulage service business and make good money from the construction industry.
Haulage business is all about transporting goods from one location to another. As a matter of fact, bags of cement, rods, gravels, blocks, construction equipment and other stuffs needed in construction sites are transported via the services of haulage companies.
As such, if you are looking for a cool means of making money from the construction industry, then you should start rendering haulage services targeted towards the construction industry.
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Retaining Wall Construction and Maintenance
With a growing emphasis on climate change and wet weather patterns, many urban and rural areas are seeing increased stress on dike and levee walls. With a grading bucket and an extendable arm available on your skid steer, walls can be reshaped by re-forming levy shelves.
The soil can then be rolled downhill and sloped with a tilt accessory for improved mowing and spraying. Likewise, these same features allow contractors to groom land prior to constructing large stone retaining walls along freeways and metropolitan interstate roadways.
Logging business is one wonderful construction related business that an entrepreneur who is has a skid steer should consider starting. The logging industry is indeed a very big industry in the united states of America. Logging companies are known to be major players in house construction and forestry industry.
Majority of the houses in the US and Canada are built with logs; hence the sale of log is tied to the real estate industry (the construction and sales of homes). Starting a logging company can be considered to be capital intensive but it’s indeed highly profitable.
A skid steer can be small, but it is mighty, and it’s easily one of the most productive machines to have on the jobsite. While the skid steer presents several advantages, perhaps its biggest is versatility. Paired with the right attachment or used in unique situations, the skid steer can kick up productivity and efficiency on any jobsite.