Anybody using the Billy Goat vac? Investing in a dump trailer and vac system for the fall and thinking about a Billy Goat vac...just not sure what size to get. They are 18hp and 25hp. The difference in price is about 2k. Dealer says the 18hp should be fine. I used to work w/ a 16hp that sometimes didn't have enough "umph" to suck up wet leaves, acorns and pine needles. Does 2hp make that much difference? I want to be sure to make the right investment but not go overkill if not necessary.
We use the 18hp one using the trailer hitch mount on our stake truck and discharging into the back of the truck. It works quite well. Occasionally we have to clean the pickup tube when it is wet because debris tends to stick to the corrugations but it is only once or twice in a day.
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Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Beer in one hand - Nacho's in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming : Woo Hoo, what a ride!
Mine is the little 11 hp, and I had to put a piece of stove pipe on for a hose (it's semi permanently mounted) If it clogs, there is something big in there, like a census taker...
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Axtell Landscape and Maintenance
With the loader....We were losing a guy on the hose for the day all day
Guys still have to blow out properties......tarp it up....carry it to the truck
With the loader.....guys with tarps dump it near the loader....One Guy.....sucking it up
If the men have to carry the tarps to the truck anyway.....not much time to climp 5, 6 steps of a ladder and dump in the truck......all hands are actively working moving forward....rather than.......One Guy.....always on the nozzle of the loader.
Granted our dumping facility is rather close to the bulk of our working area......so the dump runs weren't much of a problem.......I still pay by weight.....
Also with the loader there were the occasional obstuctions that had to be cleared......slowed us down.....Wet leaves.....slowed us down anyway, with the loader, many days we just did without it. We had a Billy Goat something like 12hp.....it was rear mounted on the truck....seen lots of guys on the net using or a swing away mount......so we had to physicaly remove it when going to the dump.......needed 5 guys.
There is the expense of the machine......maintenance/repairs.....gas
For the 6 weeks of fall cleanup for us........once we went back to not using the loader.....we were able to get another 1-3 houses in a day
I can understand that Glan. Obviously for you it was not the right machine for the job. I agree if you have to pull a tarp full of leaves to the truck you may as well load it right on the truck. Vacuums are great along fence lines or if you can bring the truck right up to a pile of raked up leaves on the property. If you have to pull the leaves to the truck manually you might as well go the extra 3' and load it on the truck.
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Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Beer in one hand - Nacho's in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming : Woo Hoo, what a ride!
I know this isn't exactly the setup you're looking at, but it might help.
I use a leaf vacuum that is almost identical to one of the two Billy Goat self-propelled vacuums (it has a different engine, but other than that was built with the same molded parts).
I've only used it on my own property, where I shred the leaves further and use it for mulch, but you could easily dump what it picks up and haul it away.
I'm not sure if the larger units have a similar impeller, but I don't notice much breakdown in size most of the time. How well it shreds things depends on how wet the leaves are.
The smaller hoses on the self-propelled units tend to jam frequently ~ especially with wads of wet leaves ~ although that's another problem that shouldn't be as bad with the larger units.
Tree load?........Well.......unfortunately we are seeing more and more trees removed in poperty and on the curb strips....not being replaced.
We have some locations that the general neighborhood is tree covered......40 - 60 foot Maples, Oaks, Sycamores....among others and the pretty specimen types. Dogwood, Cherry, Pears, Plums and so on.
I am in an urban environment...though there are many areas of the Island that are wooded..........Map search Nassau Coliseum and you'd get a better idea.
Lot size?........we've always considered the 60x100 the average....that seems to be the minimum for the most part......many 1/5 of an acre......some to 1/4.
That would be what we deal with concerning residential accounts
Thanks Glan. That explains a lot about the differences between your accounts and mine, which leads to the difference in operations.
I'm in a rural area, minimum lot size here is 1 acre, but they are relegated to only certain parts of town. The majority of homes here are on 3 acres or more with one to two acres "finished" or maintained. On many of the parcels I can blow the leaves into the surrounding woods, back far enough where they aren't immediately visible or blow back into the yards easily. Some however have no area to deposit the leaves, or that area is so difficult to access that it is easier to truck out the leaves, plus some customers simply request the leaves be hauled out.
I tried your method initially but it was so tough to load my 1 ton dump that I considered not taking the jobs where the leaves had to be hauled. You can imagine the length of the drag to the truck from the larger lots, then trying to hoist the tarp into the truck without spilling the leaves, and once it is in the truck even emptying the tarp without losing a bunch of the load was tough. Each tarp load had to be stomped down then, I'd look like I was crushing grapes in the back of the truck, and even then each account would require several trips to the dump site which was a good 45 minutes round trip. There was no weight to the load but I just couldn't get much in in volume. In addition, a tarp would only last a week or so before it was shot.
My mower dealer had a self contained trailer built by Trac Vac for leaf collection that intrigued me. It was a dump trailer that had a tin box added to it, along with a large vacuum mounted to the trailer tongue. The gears started turning in my head and I figured that system would work for me, but in a modified manner.
I need to tow my own equipment trailer to the clean up sites for the tools, so I originally built a box on top of the dump body of my 1 ton dump, utilizing the sideboard pockets as attachment points. I bought the same vacuum assembly by Trac Vac that was used on the trailer and fabricated a mount to my plow frame for it, then ran SDR-35 8" pipe over the hood and cab to the box. The vacuum has a 16hp engine and 10" vacuum hose, very powerful and the large hose size helps prevent clogging.
This setup works very well, the leaves are shredded and packed increasing the amount of leaves on the truck I'd say by an easy six times. I eventually sold the dump and purchased a flatbed to use for the leaf collection and built a new bigger box which holds about 12 yards of leaves. I also went from a dump gate style tailgate to a barn door, I found the leaves were more difficult to dump with the tailgate style.
I've got a system worked out now that works real well for me. I've got 2 backpacks, two 9hp walkbehind blowers and my 52" Scag with JRCO leaf plow on the truck. With a 3 man crew, I can service 3 accounts a day under good conditions, either getting all 3 jobs on the truck or dumping just once during the day.
I've also perfected our procedure, the first thing is to walk the yard and collect branches that could clog the hose and throw them in back of the truck or trailer depending on whether the truck is loaded, then one or 2 guys go around the house and obstacles with the backpacks and one or 2 start moving the bulk of the leaves with the walkbehind blowers toward the truck. When the windrow gets too big for the blowers, the leaf plow comes out and moves bulk piles to the truck. One guy then is stationed on the vacuum loading the leaves brought to the truck. If the truck fills, I can either move the guys to a new job to work while I dump, or dump while they continue working at the one they are on.
I'm one of the few companies to have a vacuum truck in my area so as a result I get calls from some homeowners asking for me to vacuum the leaves they have already blown or raked to piles. This is pretty lucrative and I welcome this work. My area is so competitive the only way I can increase income is to squeeze more work into a day and the vacuum helps do that for me.
I don't doubt your system works better for you Glan, I wanted to offer sandim a different scenario to make his decisions with. Part of your frustration with the vacuum may have stemmed from the size of the machine, smaller units will clog much more easily than the ones with larger diameter hose. sandim, my advice to you is get as large a vacuum as you can afford, a larger unit will speed your operation tremendously.
Pelican and Glan are on almost totally different ends of the size of lots that they typically maintain. Most of the lots that I maintained when I was doing it were 1 acre and larger and we could typically move the leaves into large piles with blowers and then drive the truck to the piles. The few smaller lots we did by just mowing with the bagger several times while the leaves fell. Now that I am with a municipality the bulk of the pickup is done with large tractor pulled sweepers that dump into trucks. The vacuum is used to clean fence lines and areas where the sweeper can't reach.
I will say one thing....with all the new technology in the last 15 years....it isn't very often that we use a rake anymore.
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Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Beer in one hand - Nacho's in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming : Woo Hoo, what a ride!
Yes......for my location...not all that difficult carrying an 8x10 or 10x12 tarp of leaves.
I will admit though......the neighborhoods where we got pounded with leaves....the loader was usefull......definitely cut down on the volume in the truck
Our loader had a 10 inch or larger intake hose....
The Billy Goat units were smaller and had I believe an 8 inch hose.
If we were doing acre + properties with wooded conditions......i'd definitely have a tow behind unit.....most all the companies here that do those properties have tow behinds.
For years I used a 8" Billy Goat loader blowing into a box I built for the bed of a John Deere ProGator. I towed the Billy Goat on a small cart behind the Gator. Servicing properties with 2-5 acres of lawn to be cleared of leafs. I strongly suggest that you purchase a transparent loader hose. My Billy Goat came with a black 8" hose and it was difficult to see the flow of debris (leafs and twigs) through the hose and to identify the location of jams. I replaced the black hose with a transparent hose I bought online and everything changed: I can see when when I am overloading hose and it is easy to identify the location of a debris jam. It hardly jams at all now that I can monitor the flow of debris. Huge increase in productivity. Transparent hoses may be standard now.
I have since moved to a combination of an Agrimetal leaf and debris collector and the Billy Goat. I sweep the flatter, accessible areas with the Agrimetal machine and then blow and vacuum the rougher areas. The Billy Goat sits in the bed of the Gator and blows into the Agrimetal machine through an access port for which I fabricated a hose connection.
