The machine DNA of a compact utility loader is a spiral of versatile implements and applications. The iron bones and hydraulic bodily fluids of a CUL are designed to power a myriad of auxiliary appendages, giving it the ability to morph into every attachment on the market - trencher, auger, backhoe, bucket, breaker and ever onward.

The compact utility loader is the ultimate protean piece of equipment. Using a Toro Dingo, Ramrod Taskmaster or Ditch Witch mini skid steer, a contractor can harness the ultimate collection of hydraulic tools to spearhead countless jobs on small worksites. In a walk-behind and ride-on platform, CULs can bridge the mechanized missing link between the wheelbarrow and the skid steer (between manual and machine labor).

Like charting the thousands of signposts along DNA strands, professionals must have a blueprint to navigate the vast world of attachments, implements and applications for compact utility loaders (also called compact skid steers or mini track loaders, depending on the manufacturer and brand). While there are hundreds of unique implements in the marketplace, most CULs use a universal quick-attach plate that allows it to share attachments regardless of the OEM (similar to what a skid steer or track loader uses).

In order to track this expanding attachment industry, our research staff has pooled its resources to begin to catalog the categories of hydraulic tools in an encyclopedia of attachments for compact utility loaders. Relying on experts from Vermeer to Toro to our own crack staff of equipment analysts, we have compiled the first 10 categories of implements for our compendium of compact utility loader attachments.

Each month, come back to visit us and we will expand this reference source on our voluminous Web vault. Bookmark us and continue to visit us online as we complete this ongoing guidebook for compact utility loader attachments.

Keith Gribbins is managing editor of Compact Equipment.