If someone asked you for the one machine typically used to move material on a job site, what comes to mind? For many contractors, it’s the wheel loader. This versatile and powerful machine is a powerhouse on many worksites. Depending on the attachment, wheel loaders can perform tasks such as scooping, lifting, dumping, or scraping.
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That being said, the bucket is the shining star of the wheel loader. Wheel loader buckets come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s vital to research the proper style to complete your construction projects quickly and successfully. When purchasing a wheel loader bucket, spend some time considering your needs to ensure you pick the right one.
There are many types of buckets available for purchase; the general-purpose bucket, light material bucket, rock bucket, grapple bucket, multipurpose bucket, forklift, and more. As you may have guessed, these buckets offer different results and are used for specific purposes. More often than not, you might need to purchase different types of buckets to complete different stages of your construction project.
Another factor to consider when purchasing a wheel loader bucket is the type of material you will frequently be moving. Typically, heavy and high-density material will require a heavy, more compact bucket with strong edges. Carry your lighter materials with a wider and taller bucket. Keep in mind the wheel loader itself can only hold so much weight, so consider the limitations of your existing equipment when choosing a bucket.
Wheel Loader Buckets can be purchased used or brand new. Regardless, knowing where your bucket is coming from is the most important factor to consider. You will only want to obtain buckets from a reputable company like Groff Tractor that meets standards in both materials and processes.
Once you choose the type of buckets that you need for your wheel loader, consider your specific elements. For example, look at whether the bucket has teeth or a straight, cutting edge. Also, look at whether the edges are welded on the bucket or bolted on. These factors all affect the bucket’s performance. Generally, if you want something that maximizes efficiency, look for well-designed teeth. However, if you want something versatile, go for a removable edge so that you can swap it out accordingly.
After reading this guide, you should have a much better understanding of purchasing the right bucket for your wheel loaders. Never rush the process of picking a bucket, and also understand that you might need to invest in multiple buckets for different use cases. Also, only ever buy from a reputable manufacturer like Groff Tractor.
Groff Tractor is Pennsylvania’s premier multi-OEM heavy new and used construction equipment solutions provider. If you are looking for construction equipment parts for your wheel loaders and more, check out what we have in store.
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Download the Virnig Guide Here: https://messicks.com/uploads/assets/Virnig-Skid-Steer-Bucket-Offer.pdf
Neil From Mesick's here, out in our bucket pile, this is where we store all of our stock inventory as skid steer buckets. You can look around down here and it feels like, my goodness, you can buy a bucket in every shape and size with a surprising amount of features anymore actually. We're going to walk through the buckets down here and reference this guide from Virnig. This is the ultimate guide to skid steer buckets. We'll put a link to it here down below if you want to check it out yourself.
I'm going to walk around here and show you some of the attributes of what makes a good bucket. When we talk on our channel, we often talk about buying something for the proper application that you have. When you're looking at your buckets, buckets are made and engineered for very specific applications. Virnig will break up their bucket product line into five different categories. Dirt buckets which are generally low profile buckets where you have a skid steer that you can step out over the top of the bucket. Utility buckets that are usually a little bit higher in the back and are going to be a little bit higher capacity. Snow and light material buckets often having a see-through back and being a little bit lighter built and made for those high volumes of materials but not necessarily something you want to put into dirt. Multipurpose buckets which are going to be things like foreign ones and that kind of stuff that are, say, open on the bottom. Specialty buckets which-- That one I don't know what they're referring to. Like this, in here each has several different applications that's best suited for.
Some pros and cons on those different types of buckets, we're going to start here with the low profile and show you some of the attributes of those. All these buckets are quite obviously made out of steel. When you look at steel, there are a lot of different grades of metals that are out there at wildly varying pricing. A really light soft steel is a lot less expensive than a harder steel with more tensile strength. By Virnig's explanation, here is a grade 50 steel, what they're generally using in most of these buckets has a 50,000 PSI steel. A grade 30 is going to come through at 36,000 PSI being 30% less capable. When you're looking at this, you simply can't use the thickness of the metal as your mental gauge for the build quality of that bucket. There's a lot more to it than that and the material that's actually used in pouring and constructing that metal.
Probably a lot of guys out here that know a lot more about steel composition, those of you that are welding and stuff, I'm sure, have a much better understanding of this than I do. Leave some comments at the bottom of what you think about that kind of stuff and the materials that you look for and how you might be able to identify them. The one thing that will be fairly constant across there though is weight. A higher grade steel is generally going to weigh more than what a lower grade one does. Simply by looking at the weight of the buckets themselves is going to tell you a little bit about the construction of them.
Our better quality buckets, generally, are going to have some optional things on them that the less expensive ones did not. You're going to notice these red plates over here on the end. These are side cutters. Those are going to be there in order to help the edge of that bucket cut into hard material. It also helps stiffen and protect these corners. If you catch those against things, they can be bent easy. It also usually is the first place that your bucket is going to wear out as those corners usually do a lot of the cutting and stuff. That edge piece there helps protect it. They add generally about $100 to the cost of a bucket to have those wear pieces there.
On the front edge of your bucket, you're going to have either a flat cutting edge or teeth. That's going to depend on the application that you have for that bucket. If you're trying to do grading and have a smooth finished product, you're going to want that edge on the front. If you're trying to break into hard materials, come into piles of dirt, teeth are going to help loosen those things and get that bucket filled. Those can be switched, a couple of bolts you can go from one of the other. Generally, a new bucket, you're going to pick one or the other. You don't see guys changing those out very often. More often than not, you're going to own a bucket that has one of each.
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That cutting edge on the front is a costly piece. To give a little bit of caution on this here, when we talk about application on these buckets, we're looking at skid loader buckets here. A lot of guys watching our videos come from the compact tractor side, you're using a lot of smaller equipment. Cutting edges are pretty expensive. On a bucket this size, that big piece of steel can cost you $300, even 200 bucks on the smaller loader bucket. There are applications where I start to say that edge is not worth the money because the edge itself can be 50-60% of the cost of the entire bucket when you start talking small tractors. Not necessarily something that I would always encourage. The odds the guys with small machines are going to wear those buckets out are fairly few and far between, but they are a costly piece in some cases.
The other benefit to that edge too is not just for where it does stiffen the front lip of the bucket. This is one place where now you small bucket guys might want to consider this. You're never probably going to wear your bucket out and you're never going to wear through a cutting edge. That extra big piece of metal on the bottom does help stiffen a lighter duty bucket. That cutting edge can be dual purpose in that way. They're for wear on these heavy buckets and heavy use applications. On a lighter bucket, it can be there to help keeping you from getting a little smiley face across the bottom edge of your bucket as you work it and, say, pry things with it.
A lot of times when we're spec-ing a bucket for somebody buying a piece of equipment, a lot of guys that come in and they want a big bucket. They're going to do a lot of work, and they want a big oversized bucket in order to help get that work done fast. With the skid steer coupler, you can do that. You can fit all kinds of inappropriate buckets to your equipment because that universal amount will allow you to do it.
We do really need to caution against that. You can cause performance problems with your equipment by having oversized buckets on it. When it comes to sizing these buckets, you're going to have a couple of recommendations of how you're going to do that. A bucket is going to have two numbers that are going to be specified for it. The struck capacity, basically, the amount of material that fits inside the bucket itself, and a heaped capacity. When you fill a bucket and you look at it scooping up a pile of dirt, you're always going to have a little bit that extends outside of the bucket when the bucket is rolled back.
What we're going to want you to do is take that heaped capacity number, then find a chart of the materials that you might be lifting and carrying, and look at the weight of those materials per cubic foot and figure out how much weight of material you're going to get inside of the bucket. Then add the weight of the bucket itself and compare that against the lift capacity of your machine. You're going to notice when you go and you look at the OEM buckets, generally, they're going to look at the amount of capacity for stone. Good heavy dense material and size that bucket appropriately to the tractor. Most of the time I'm going to discourage guys from going with larger buckets unless they're exclusively going to be using their machine for things like mulch and snow that aren't very dense and aren't very heavy.
When you're into a hardworking bucket, whether it's a front loader bucket or an excavator bucket, one thing that you can look for to know whether it's a heavy bucket or not is wear plates. When you look at the underside of this Virnig bucket right here on the underside of the bucket that's always going to be cutting against the ground as you're cutting grade or working as you go into a pile of dirt, those plates are down there on the bottom to allow that surface to be able to wear against the ground and not immediately start to wear through and thin the floor of the bucket.
When you see buckets break, it's usually where the floors start to wear out and you'll get a crack against the backside of the cutting edge or you'll start to get holes in the back over here. Those wear plates help to prevent that. That's something that you usually will not find on those light material class buckets that are your snow and mulch type buckets, but your heavier dirt buckets will have those plates. You want to take a look because they're on the underside of the bucket, they're not always the easiest to spot.
Another construction difference that you'll find between those dirt oriented buckets versus light materials is how the back of the bucket is built. A bucket like this that's made for dirt, you're generally going to find the back of the bucket has a really nice smooth curve to it. That keeps dirt and sticky materials from sticking into the back of the bucket when you dump it. It's less of an issue on a material bucket where again snow, mulch, and those kinds of things that are not going to stick into the back in the same way that dirt does.
Keep in mind, a dirt type bucket with this curved back is going to work a lot better for you. This is a feature, if buckets can have features, that's generally usually only found on better more premium buckets because it's a lot more welding work in order to build these corners and stuff with this curved type back to it. Something you want to keep an eye out if you're looking for a premium bucket.
There's all different sizes and shapes that tooth bars and cutting edges will come in. One of the more interesting ones though are these serrated edge bars. These are going to come in a lot of different options, but conceptually they all work the same way that by having these cuts back here, these things will work more like a knife when it comes to trying to cut a grade and cut all hard materials. A little bit more expensive, but if you're trying to do a lot of work in hard soils like that and you're trying to cut something smooth, these do actually a really nice job, even more so than some of the straight edges do.
Just like cutting edge, tooth bars can have a lot of variety in them too. These are generally fairly standard size hardware when you look across different manufacturers of these things. There's going to be industry numbers for the size and part numbers of these shanks, the different kinds of teeth that are on here. You're getting better quality stuff generally if you look for stuff that's going to have, say, "number 23 teeth" on it and those kinds of numbered things. You can get some really cheap product out of China and stuff, where you're going to find like teeth welded onto buckets or odd part numbered shanks or ones that don't have replaceable teeth on the front. Generally, that's the kind of stuff you're going to want to avoid. You're going to find some quality concerns there compared to this heavier stuff. I bet, you never would've guessed that there's so much application and science behind something as simple as picking a bucket to go on the front of the piece of equipment. Props to the guys at Virnig, this is a really nicely done document. We'll put a link down here at the bottom of it if you're shopping for a bucket. It's got a lot of information for it and it also goes through some of the specialty buckets and says some of the things that you might want to look for to tell whether those specialty buckets are going to be good for their application or not. Really interesting stuff there.
We're a vendor for several different bucket companies that are going to give you, say, different price points, different options different build qualities. If you're seeing here for the background for some of these videos, there's a lot of stuff if you want to walk around the lot here. Check some of these things out and maybe we can make sure we're picking up the right bucket for your application. If you have a piece of equipment that you got parts or service needs for, or you're shopping for some new tractors or attachments, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373. We're online at messicks.com.
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