A South Carolina owner bought a $78,000 skid steer instead of hiring sitework. Here is his ledger

He laid out the numbers in a post on Reddit's r/Homebuilding forum. Before any machine showed up, he spent two years clearing the lot by hand with a chainsaw and an axe, according to the post.

The equipment call shapes the whole ledger. He wrote that hiring an earthwork contractor would have cost roughly as much as buying his own machines, so he bought them and has put in about 240 hours at the controls. Once the dirt work is finished he still owns a tractor and a skid steer, and he still owes on the loan.

The 0% rate is a big part of that math. Kubota Center, a Kubota dealer group, currently advertises 0% financing with $0 down for up to 60 months on new in-stock skid steers through Dec. 31, 2026, or instant rebates of $3,800 to $4,500 on SSV models. The rebates apply only to cash or standard-rate deals, so a buyer who takes 0% gives them up. His 72-month term is a year longer than that posted offer.

At $16.67 per $1,000 financed over 60 months, the payment example in the dealer's terms, a $78,000 machine would run about $1,300 a month. Over his 72 months at 0%, the same amount works out to roughly $1,083 a month.