That $400 post hole digger rental nearly broke me

I spent $400 renting a tracked auger for a big job in Columbus last month thinking it'd save time on 80 post holes. The machine kept getting stuck on roots and I lost two full days messing with it, plus the rental place charged extra for a broken shear pin. Anyone else just stick with a manual clam shell digger for tricky soil, or is there a better machine I should try?

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3 Comments

ward.anna4mo ago

Wow, that seems a bit dramatic for a broken shear pin.

2

fiona_carr264mo ago

Ask how many shear pins they've broken in the last month alone. That kind of tone usually means someone's been dealing with repeated failures on the same machine. Is this on a piece of older equipment or something that's been modified, because those are the setups where a simple snapped pin turns into a whole ordeal.

3

maxl934mo ago

Yeah, right? I had one machine eat three pins in two weeks once.

4