Mini Excavator Attachments: Thumb, Bucket, and What to Rent

The excavator is half the rental. The attachment is the other half. A 12 in bucket, a 24 in bucket, and a thumb change what a 3.5-ton machine can finish in a day. Do not pick up an E35 class machine with whatever is pinned on if the job is footings on Monday and rock on Tuesday.

Buckets are width and purpose

Narrow buckets (we stock 12 in and 24 in digging buckets for Cat 305/307 class machines, for example) cut trenches and keep spoil down. Wider buckets finish and load. A skeleton or grading bucket is a different tool than a digging bucket. If you only rent one, size it for the trench, not for the backfill — you can push backfill with the blade.

Hydraulic thumbs

Our Bobcat E35 rentals often include a hydraulic thumb because landscape and demo jobs spend half the day placing, not digging. A thumb is how you set boulders, pull roots, and load a dump trailer with debris instead of soup. If the job is a clean utility trench in dirt, you may not need it. If you think you might, get it — wrestling with the bucket as a clamp is how cylinders get bent.

Breakers and augers

Cemented gravel and interior demo want a breaker on a machine with the hydraulic flow to run it — more often the 5.5-ton class than a light 3.5-ton. Augers are fence and pier work; they are not a trencher. Tell us diameter and soil. We would rather send the right coupler than hear that the auger sat on the trailer.

How to order

Describe the tasks in order, not the machine you saw on the website. Call (801) 880-8800 with trench width, whether you need a thumb, and whether rock is in the test pit.