Equipment World
November 2008
By Tom Jackson

A trencher only has to do one thing, do it well and do it often. So contractors who want to find out how much to charge for their trenching services should have no trouble zeroing in on an accurate number.

To help us explore the owning and operating cost parameters of chain type trenchers we contacted Greg Adkins, trencher product manager at Ditch Witch. Adkins recommended we base our trencher O&O cost exercise on the Ditch Witch RT40 model, the company's best seller. This rubber-tire, ride-on unit has a 42.2-horsepower engine and cuts to a depth of 5 feet, 3 inches, making it a good size for plumbers and electricians or trenching subcontractors who put pipe or conduit in the ground.

In this example we went with a no-frills model—a tractor with a centerline trencher (no side shift), standard axles without rear steer option and a 6-inch-wide dig capability and four-wheel drive. Adkins quotes a price of $37,700 to $38,500. If you wanted more features, say a traversing boom, a tilting backfill blade and four-wheel steer, those would bump the price up to $43,000 to $45,000. It's worth noting that if you plug in the price for the fully-featured model into our calculations on page 40 it only bumps up your O&O costs about $3 per hour.

Please remember that in all these discussions the dollar figures provided are not actual amounts, but theoretical, and used for discussion purposes only. Your final tally will be different and depend on numerous variables, which you need to discus with a dealer.

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