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Remember playing with your Tonka trucks as a wee kiddo? If you grew up before tablets displaced little metal keepsakes, you ruled an imaginary work site, moving clumps of sand, dirt, and mud from one place to other spots. Granted, those other places were often your hair, shirt, and pants pockets. Oh, those were the days. Fret not, forever child — Yardmax has a tool that bridges the gap between practical equipment and a rideable Tonka-style toy.
It’s the Yardmax YE0610, a 1,432-pound mini-excavator with a host of available attachments, from a claw to a grading bucket and rake. Better yet, you might just be able to scoot on down to your local Tractor Supply and pick one up.
That said, Yardmax’s diminutive earth mover isn’t the smallest thing in the mini-excavator market. In fact, if you want to get crazy with your tiny tools, Honda and Komatsu once teamed up to make what may very well be the cutest little digging machine ever.
Yardmax’s contender for the smallest excavator is part workhorse, part sandbox throwback
You’ve seen the big stuff. You know, the massive, earth-moving heavy construction equipment required to build a modern highway. Monstrous bulldozers, cold milling machines, and long-necked dinosaur-ish excavators are all part of the process. Some of these dirt-munching excavators can get properly huge, with the biggest examples tipping the scales at over 2 million pounds. Yes, you read that right.
Other excavators, however, go for more of a park-it-in-your-garage footprint. That’s what the Yardmax YE0610 mini-excavator is all about. At just 27.5 inches wide, the wee digging machine’s width takes up considerably less floor space than a common go-kart. Even with the canopy installed on the YE0610-575003 model, the mini-excavator is 62.4 inches tall and 1,674 pounds. Opt for the topless base YE0610, and that weight drops to 1,432 pounds. Not exactly a 2-million-pound earth mover.
Okay, so it’s cute. Can it dig? Yardmax asserts the YE0610 can dig up to 47.2 inches deep, or just under four feet. Then there are the attachments. Depending on the model, the Yardmax can use a claw, grading bucket, or rake for your digging, filling, clearing, and leveling tasks. As far as power goes, the mini-excavator features a 306-cc engine capable of hustling the little machine at a cautious 1-mph pace. As expected, the excavator can rotate 360 degrees, regardless of track position.
This wee workhorse might be one of the wildest things Tractor Supply sells. Then again, it might not be. After all, this is a retailer that also offers a teeny tiny minibike to awaken your inner child.
The Yardmax mini-excavator isn’t even the smallest one around
As of this writing, the Yardmax YE0610, complete with its removable canopy, grading bucket, and rake, is for sale at Tractor Supply for $6,999.99. Want to save a couple hundred bucks on your backyard digging machine? The same setup is available at Walmart for $6,799. Of course, if you’d rather go in another direction entirely, Tractor Supply also sells a Power Wheels-esque mini truck. Your mini truck won’t likely do any excavating for you, though.
Here’s the thing, though: the Yardmax YE0610 isn’t the smallest thing on the mini-excavator market. Croba, a sub-brand of MechMaxx, produces a MEC06 mini-excavator that weighs 87 pounds less than the Yardmax and undercuts the Tractor Supply price for the YE0610 by nearly $2,000, though its max digging depth falls shy of the YE0610 by 3.9 inches.
Like a shrinking set of nesting dolls, things can get even smaller. Komatsu, a Japanese heavy machinery manufacturer, joined forces with Honda in 2022 to produce an unbearably cute rideable excavator for the Japanese market. The result was the Komatsu PC01E-1, a 750-pound electric micro excavator with unmistakable toy aisle looks.
Better yet, the PC01E-1 falls just shy of the 771.6-pound max load capacity of Japanese mini trucks. So, go ahead, load your pint-sized electric excavator into your tiny truck.
