What is the Best Grader Bar for Skid Steers?

What is a Grader Bar and What is the Purpose?

Skid steer attachments such as buckets, grading bars, or land planes are commonly used to loosen, remove, and replace ground to make the surface more suitable for drainage, sports, landscape features, and turfgrass or lawn preparation.

Grader bars for skid steers are primarily used in construction, landscaping, or other agricultural applications. This attachment is particularly useful to smooth out surfaces, such as roads, driveways, and fields.

Grader bars for skid steers, such as a Bobcat, are made up of heavy, welded steel. This helps it to withstand the rigorous force required to level ground. Equipped with blades, and sometimes scarifier teeth, land planes are a fast and efficient way to relocate earth by taking it from higher points to fill in depressions.

The operator can simply lower the land plane to engage the cutting edges with the high spots, and the grading bar automatically relocates those to the next low spot in the travel path. This works very well for small peaks or sloped earth and valleys that are close in proximity to each other. Whereas a bucket can cut a peak down and relocate the soil to a more remote location by scooping the soil in the bucket.

The Problem with Bucket Grading

Using a bucket to do fine-tuning grader work is time-consuming and inefficient. Granted, this may not be the case for seasoned veterans in the landscape and construction industry. However, once they get their hands on a grader bar for skid steers, it is a game changer. Suddenly, they are able to do fine-tune work faster and more efficiently.

Operators already using a land plane understand the importance of having both available. They can use their bucket for the heavy lifting by filling in large cavities in the ground and switch to the land plane to do the small peaks and depressions in their target area.

However, in an application, such as a gravel driveway or road, you may want to rip up more dirt than what the standard blades on the grader bar for skid steers can do. This is where a land plane with ripper teeth comes in handy. This allows you to control the cut depth of the grader bar.

The challenge with this is that dropping the teeth down becomes cumbersome. The operator either needs to get out of the cab to drop the teeth manually, or they have to hook up hydraulics. If the operator has to do an extra step such as unhooking hydraulics to get the bucket or get out of the cab to drop the teeth to get the job done, there is a greater likelihood that it will not get done right and will take longer to do.

The Solution

The best grader bar KAGE is the GreatER Bar. This is a 2-in-1 land plane with hands-free mechanically-activated scarifier teeth. This grader bar for skid steers is unique because it does not require a hydraulic hose, or the operator to leave the cab to drop the teeth, or get the bucket.

Because the teeth are mechanically activated, all the operator has to do to activate the teeth is press the top bar of the land plane on the ground and the teeth lock up or down into place. Switching between attachments is just as easy! Just latch the skid steer pins and go!

The teeth are also depth adjustable. The operator can either drop the teeth lower simply by taking out depth blocks, or they can increase the depth of the cut by popping off the teeth with just a hammer and possibly a punch. Each tooth is easily replaceable with a roll pin, all you need is a hammer and your new tooth!

The GreatER Bar also has double edge bolt-on cutting edges. This allows you to level ground forward and backward.

Another unique feature is that you do not have to continuously reactivate the teeth every time you need to use your leveler. The teeth will automatically lift up and float when you switch the skid into reverse and then they are ready to go when you drive forward again!

This leveler is built with multiple corner gussets to provide structural integrity of the grader throughout years of use. The latching system is also built with Hardox steel to prevent premature wear and provide the necessary hardness for a well-built grader bar for skid steers.

Click here to visit our website and see the available GreatER Bar options.

Kaydence Stephan is the Creative Marketing Assistant at KAGE Innovation. She has working at KAGE for 4 years, spending the first 3 ½ years on the production floor performing duties in laser operation, assembly, shipping, research & development, photography and snowplow operation. She has also worked in the snow removal industry plowing snow outside of KAGE.