Attachment answers / Buckets
What is a ditching (grading) bucket used for?
Short answer
A ditching or grading bucket is wide, shallow and toothless, with a smooth continuous cutting edge. It is used for finish grading, slope and batter work, ditch cleanout, spreading backfill and stripping topsoil - anywhere you need a flat plane instead of maximum capacity.
Last reviewed August 2026 · Quarrymark Attachments sales engineering desk
If a digging bucket is for moving material and a trenching bucket is for opening a line, a ditching bucket is for leaving a surface behind. Everything about its shape follows from that.
Why it is toothless
A tooth concentrates force at a point, which is exactly what you want when you are breaking into compacted ground and exactly what you do not want when you are cutting a plane. Teeth leave a scalloped, rutted finish that a grade check will fail and that a subsequent trade will have to fix. A continuous bolt-on or weld-on cutting edge leaves a clean surface in one pass.
Why it is wide and shallow
Width covers more ground per pass, which matters when you are grading rather than filling. The shallow profile keeps the bucket's centre of gravity close to the stick, which is what allows a wide bucket to be carried by a machine whose lift capacity would never support a digging bucket of that width. Our 60 in. ditching bucket is rated for 5-6.5 t machines - no 5 t machine would carry a 60 in. digging bucket.
The capacity is deliberately low. This bucket is not for filling trucks.
Where it earns its keep
Roadside ditch cleanout and re-profiling. Cutting batters and slopes on pond banks and swales. Spreading and levelling imported backfill. Stripping topsoil in a controlled layer. Final trim before pipe bedding, gravel or concrete. On a machine with a tilting coupler, the same bucket cuts a compound slope without the machine having to reposition, which is the combination most grading crews end up on.
Sizing it
Ditching buckets are sized wider relative to class than digging buckets, because they carry so little material. Across the classes we build for: roughly 42 in. on a 3-9 t mini, 42-48 in. on a 5-6.5 t, and 48 in. on backhoe loaders. If in doubt, go one width wider than you would for a digging bucket in the same class, and check the empty weight against your lift capacity at reach.
Is a ditching bucket the same as a grading bucket?
The terms are used interchangeably in the field. Some suppliers reserve grading bucket for the tilting version and ditching bucket for the fixed one. Ours are listed as ditching buckets and are the same toothless, wide, shallow tool.
Can I add teeth to a ditching bucket?
You can bolt on tooth shanks, and you will lose the reason you bought it. If you need to break ground and then finish it, that is two buckets and a coupler, not one bucket and a compromise.
Do I need a tilt coupler to use one?
No. A fixed ditching bucket grades perfectly well when the machine can sit square to the work. A tilt attachment earns its money on slopes, batters and any grade the machine cannot easily square up to.
