Julie Mach’s skidsteer is her most valuable piece of equipment and the workhorse of her operation. Mach is the owner of Elements Mountain Composting, and if you visit her facility, just outside of the mountain town of Salida, Colo., there’s a good chance you’ll see her using the machine to sift and turn over composting material or load product for delivery.
As a small business owner, Mach can’t afford to take risks and she’s not about having the newest and fanciest equipment. But when her old skidsteer was reaching the end of its useful life in 2023, she saw it as an opportunity to trade up to a new, all-electric machine.
It was a step toward ensuring that the company was acting in accordance with its values. It was also a way to get a killer deal on better technology, thanks to a grant from the Colorado Clean Diesel Program.
“We’re a composting company, and the reason we started was to have an impact on climate and emissions,” Mach says. “So it really fits in perfectly in our ability to walk the walk. We want to shift away from fossil fuels.”
In a very real sense, Elements Mountain Compost is a working hub of Salida, Chaffee County and the surrounding area as far as Crested Butte and Gunnison.
The company runs a pick-up service to collect compostable material from dozens of participating restaurants, breweries, grocery stores, hospitals and schools; residents can also drop off their food waste at several locations. Each year, more than 500 tons of material comes into Elements’ processing facility and, gets turned into high-quality compost, which is then sold in bags or in bulk to the region’s backyard gardeners, landscapers and small ag producers.
The all-electric skidsteer that Mach opted for – Firstgreen Industries’ Elise 900, with a maximum load capacity of 1,984 lb. – has proved to be well matched to the job. “Overall it’s been great,” she says. “Operationally we haven’t had any issues with it. It has enough power and torque.”
The quiet operation is the first thing that Mach comments on: “The fact that it’s quiet is huge. It’s great not to hear the diesel engine cranking really loud. It starts right away – even in the winter, it instantly turns on.”
She adds that there’s no exhaust, so the machine can be run in an enclosed garage. Maintenance is minimal, with only occasional hydraulic filter changes. She likes the joystick operation, although it took about 50 hours to become fully competent with it.
There’s the extra matter of charging the battery, of course. Mach saved money by setting the machine up to plug into two 120-volt outlets, rather than installing a 240-volt charging device. Charging overnight brings the battery at 25% up to a full charge, which is enough for five to eight hours of operation, depending on the type of work and the outside temperature. Mach says the battery drains faster in winter, but even on the coldest days it seems to last at least five hours – more than enough for her operations.
Mach doesn’t know exactly how much it’s costing her to run the skidder on electricity because she leases her property and all the buildings are on a single meter, but she’s certain it’s less than what she used to spend on diesel.
The Elise 900’s retail price was $91,580 – about $30,000 more than a comparable diesel skidsteer. But fortunately for Mach, the dealership where she bought the machine told her about the Colorado Clean Diesel Program, which was able to provide 45% grant funding.
“The grant was a major factor – it made the electric equipment cheaper than the diesel,” Mach says. “By the time we got the grant it saved, not a ton, but maybe 10-15 grand compared to a diesel one, a similar sized diesel.”
There was one other quirk to the process: the CCDP requires all grant recipients to scrap the old diesel equipment that the new electric machine is replacing. The program’s goal is to reduce emissions, and simply buying a new electric machine won’t reduce emissions if the old diesel is resold and remains in service.
Mach approached the scrappage requirement like a true composter. She removed and resold the old skidsteer’s bucket and tires, then sent the rest to a scrapyard for recycling. “I can see how scrapping is kinda hard for some folks – the culture is to use it till it dies,” she reflects. “But for me it was always about the emissions. Even when [the old machine] was running perfectly, you could literally see the smoke when you started it up.”
Now that source of emissions and pollution is gone, and Elements’ compost is an even cleaner, greener product.
