Anyone hired a mini digger?

[JD_975]

Hopefully I will be renting an area of waste land behind some neighbouring houses to use as car storage before long, the problem being it is very overgrown and as ever I'm looking to expend the least amout of personal effort to get it usable!

Has anyone ever hired one of those bobcat type mini diggers? Just wanting to know if there is much to operating them, do you need special licenses etc or is there any special considerations when hiring them?

[gizgrey]

pretty easy to use an hour fafing around and youll be an expert,so long as you dont tip it..dont think you need an operaters licence to hire them,only if your doing site work..

[Wolfracer]

That lever makes it go forward...
That lever makes it go backwards...
That one lifts the bucket...

You get the idea...
snot rocket.

Just make sure you get one big enough for the task, otherwise you'll spend more time faffing round than actually doing the work.
Depending how much needs shifting, it might be worth asking around the local firms/building sites at going home time as there could be man with a big JCB happy to do it for you in a 10th of the time for a lot less than hiring it yourself, the trailer hire and your time....

[KERRSURF]

What he ^ said. If you have access for a bigger machine a bloke who knows what he's doing could sort it out in a tenth of the time for not a lot of money. Mini digger is around £80 to £100 a day plus fuel.