Landplane Attachment Rates No. 1 with Homebuilder

Homebuilder Tom Schmidt says he can't get by without his Bobcat landplane attachment.

If you're doing any amount of residential land leveling, I don't see how you can get by without it."

That's how homebuilder Tom Schmidt describes the value of his favorite Bobcat® attachment-the landplane.

Schmidt, who owns 5 Star Homes, Tacoma, Wash., uses a 78-in.-wide landplane with his Bobcat T250 compact track loader for a variety of grading and dirt moving jobs on his new home construction projects.

The multi-purpose landplane allows him to control grading and leveling while driving forward and in reverse for cutting and finishing work. In addition to grading around houses, Schmidt has built several roads in subdivisions with this attachment. If needed, he can also use it to peel and remove sod and-with its built-in, retractable scarifier-to scarify hard ground.

"A small dozer can do this kind of work," he says. "But I can do it faster and better with my landplane. I haven't seen any dozer operator who can keep up with me. Even then, if a dozer drops into a low spot, the bucket may cut too much and then you have to come back and fill in that area. But the landplane doesn't drop into a depression. It just lays flat to leave a smooth finish. It does a really sweet job."

In open areas, Schmidt works his landplane with quick, sweeping moves, cutting into dirt as he pushes it into a pile. Then, after raising the attachment to let the dirt drop through the screen, he reverses direction, pulling the dirt with him as he spreads and smooths it out. "I can move about a yard of dirt at a time this way," he says.

When working close to house foundations and inside garage foundations, his expert hands finesse the landplane using short, deft moves. "I can finish jobs without touching a thing with a shovel," Schmidt notes.

While the landplane is his attachment of choice, it's not the only one that makes his work easier. A Bobcat soil conditioner is handy for preparing new lawn sites.

"It picks up rock and other debris, which I can windrow to the right or left in cleaning up the area for seeding," he says. "Once I used it to finish off an 11.5-acre site in just two days."

His other Bobcat attachments include an auger for drilling holes for fence posts and deck piers; a tooth bucket for clearing sites and digging foundations; industrial fork grapples for demolition work and handling brush and logs and a tree spade for transplanting trees around new homes.

Aided by his durable, work-saving Bobcat equipment, the 67-year-old contractor, who's been building homes all his life, has no plans to call it quits any time soon. "I don't have to work anymore," Schmidt says. "I do it because I love it."

Tom Schmidt

A Tried and True Veteran of Bobcat Equipment

Homebuilder Tom Schmidt knows compact loaders. Not only has he topped the field of competitors from around the country in a contest of skid-steer operating skills, but few people have a longer history of operating Bobcat® equipment than he does. He first took the controls of a Bobcat loader in the early 1960s when he used the very first model, the three wheeled M-200, to save time and labor cleaning out his uncle's cattle barn in Minnesota.

Today, he's still saving time and labor with a Bobcat loader-a rubber track T250 compact track loader equipped with an enclosed, heated and air conditioned cab and selectable joystick controls.

"Over the years, I've tried many types of small dozers and compact loaders. My T250 is one of the best machines out there," he says. "It's bullet-proof. It flat does everything I need it to do."