Attachment answers / Pins & couplers
Can I put a skid steer attachment on an excavator?
Short answer
Not directly. Skid steers use a universal quick-attach plate mounted to loader arms; excavators mount to stick pins with a completely different motion path. Stick-to-quick-attach adapters exist and work for light material handling, but curl geometry, rated loads and hydraulic flow all differ.
Last reviewed August 2026 · Quarrymark Attachments sales engineering desk
The two machines carry attachments in fundamentally different ways, and the mount is the smaller half of the difference.
The mount
A skid steer or compact track loader uses a universal quick-attach plate - a flat, vertical interface with two top hooks and two spring-loaded lower pins, near-standard across the industry since the 1990s. An excavator mounts through two pins at the end of the stick, with a link and H-link driving the curl.
Adapter brackets that put a universal quick-attach plate on an excavator stick are commercially available, and we carry loader-to-skid-steer adapters in the coupler category. They are legitimate products with a real use case.
The geometry, which is the real problem
A loader arm keeps the attachment at a roughly constant attitude and moves it vertically. An excavator stick swings the attachment through an arc and rotates it through about 180 degrees of curl. An attachment designed for the first motion often behaves badly in the second: a skid steer bucket presented to a pile by an excavator stick attacks it at the wrong angle, and a grapple designed to clamp against a flat loader plate loses its clamping line entirely when the stick curls.
Rated loads differ too. Skid steer attachments are rated against loader lift capacity and the machine's rated operating capacity. Excavator lift at reach is a different, lower, more position-dependent number, and an attachment that is comfortably inside a loader's rating can be well outside an excavator's at full extension.
Hydraulics
Powered skid steer attachments are built for standard-flow or high-flow loader auxiliary circuits, typically higher flow at lower pressure than a mini excavator's auxiliary line. Running a high-flow attachment on a mini excavator's auxiliary circuit gives you an attachment that runs slowly and hot, and it is a good way to cook a machine's hydraulic oil.
When it does make sense
The honest use case is a fleet that already owns skid steer attachments and wants occasional reach - moving pallets of block, placing material over a wall, or feeding a hopper. For that, an adapter and a light attachment is a reasonable thing to do. For any production work, buy the excavator-mount version of the tool.
What about the other direction - excavator attachment on a skid steer?
Also no, and less useful. An excavator bucket has no quick-attach plate and its profile is designed for a curling motion the loader arms cannot produce.
Do skid steer attachments fit compact track loaders?
Almost always, yes. Both use the universal quick-attach plate. Check the flow rating - a CTL is often specified high-flow where a comparable skid steer is standard-flow.
