Building Smarter: Essential Gear for Machine-Assisted Trail Work

It sounds strange to talk about hand tools when we’re primarily working with excavators and earth-moving equipment and try to do 95-99% of the work with a machine, including most of the shaping and compacting. It is always more effort when the shovels and rakes get pulled out, so when we pull them out, we really need them to work well for what we do. Here are my top three tools when I am utilizing them along with a machine.