About Skid Steer Brush Cutters

A brush cutter is the attachment that makes overgrown land usable again. It is also the attachment people most often buy wrong, because two specs decide whether it performs or disappoints, and neither one is the price. Get the hydraulic flow and the front design right and the rest is straightforward.

Hydraulic Flow: Low, Standard and High

Every hydraulic brush cutter is built around a motor sized for a specific flow range, and your loader has to supply it. Send too little flow and the blades bog down in anything heavier than grass, so you end up creeping along and stalling out. Send more flow than the motor is rated for and you build heat and shorten its life. We stock low flow, standard flow, and high flow versions, so look up your skid steer or compact track loader's auxiliary hydraulic output before you choose. If your machine has both a standard and a high flow circuit, buy for the circuit you will actually plug the cutter into.

Open Front Versus Closed Front

An open front cutter has no bar across the leading edge, so material feeds straight into the blades. That is faster in heavy brush and saplings because nothing hangs up at the mouth, and it is how our direct drive 72 and 78 inch units are built. The tradeoff is that an open front will throw debris forward, so it needs real distance from roads, buildings, windows, vehicles, and people. A closed front cutter has a bar across the front that limits what can exit, which makes it the better choice along property lines, in parks, and anywhere bystanders are possible. It feeds a little slower in dense material because stems have to be pushed under the deck first. Neither design replaces a properly guarded cab and a cleared work area.

Cutting Widths We Stock

We carry 66, 72, and 78 inch cutting widths for full size skid steers and compact track loaders, and a 42 inch closed front, low flow cutter built for Toro Dingo and other mini skid steers. That 42 inch unit is the one to look at if you run a stand on or walk behind machine, since a full size deck will simply outrun the hydraulics on a mini. On full size machines a wider deck covers ground faster but asks for more flow and more machine weight to stay planted on side slopes.

What You Will Use One For

Fence line and right of way clearing, reclaiming pasture that has grown up in briars and cedar, trail and food plot maintenance, ditch and pond bank mowing, lot clearing ahead of construction, and knocking saplings down before a root grapple pulls the stumps. Land clearing contractors and anyone maintaining acreage get the most out of them.

Choosing a Skid Steer Brush Cutter

Work in this order. Confirm your machine's auxiliary hydraulic flow and pick a cutter rated for it. Choose open front for speed in heavy material or closed front for control near people and property. Then size the deck to your machine's weight rather than to the largest number available, because an oversized cutter on a light loader cuts poorly and handles worse. Each listing states the cutting width, front design, and flow rating.

Related Categories

Brush cutting is usually step one. Once the standing material is down, pull the stumps and roots with our skid steer grapples, clear the rock a cutter exposes using a rock bucket, move soil and spoil with our skid steer buckets, and finish the seedbed with a soil conditioner. For farm and pasture work see our manure forks and grapples, and for winter, our snow pushers, blades and buckets. Blades, pins, and shop tools stay organized in our steel storage cabinets.