Clarke CDT300 Review: 300kg Petrol Dumper Truck Tested

The Clarke CDT300 is a 300kg-capacity petrol dumper truck powered by a 6.5hp four-stroke engine, designed for moving soil, gravel and rubble across gardens and small building sites. At around £900, it is one of the cheapest three-wheel petrol dumpers on the UK market, and for light landscaping work it earns its keep quickly.

Key takeaways

• Payload: 300kg — roughly four heaped builder's barrows per trip.
• Engine: 6.5hp (196cc) four-stroke petrol, recoil start, unleaded.
• Drive: Three-wheel wheeled layout with knobbly tyres; good on gravel and firm turf, less sure-footed than a tracked dumper in deep mud.
• Skip: Manual tip, high-sided steel bucket.
• Best for: Garden landscaping, patio and driveway projects, allotments and smallholdings.
• Not for: Steep, waterlogged or very narrow sites — a tracked mini dumper is the safer choice there.

Who I am and how I tested

I'm Bob Moorhouse. I've spent over twenty years shifting muck for a living - first on groundworks crews, now building and renovating gardens across Yorkshire. I've hired, owned and broken more mini dumpers than I care to admit, so my judgement here comes from what these machines are like at four o'clock on a wet Friday, not from a spec sheet.

For this review I ran a CDT300 over three separate jobs: a 40-tonne topsoil import onto a sloping back garden, a driveway dig-out where the spoil had to come 30 metres down a side passage, and a patio build with 20mm MOT sub-base. I timed loads, checked fuel use, and deliberately overloaded it once to see how it behaved. Prices quoted were correct at the time of writing.

Clarke CDT300 specifications

Specification	Clarke CDT300
Maximum payload	300kg
Engine	6.5hp (196cc) four-stroke petrol
Starting	Recoil pull start
Drive type	Three-wheel, single driven axle
Skip tipping	Manual, forward tip
Fuel	Unleaded petrol
Typical price	Around £900 inc. VAT
Best suited to	Gardens, allotments, small building sites

Check the latest Clarke CDT300 price at Machine Mart →

Build quality and first impressions

It arrives part-assembled in a crate and takes about 40 minutes to bolt together with two people. The chassis is a plain welded steel frame, the skip is pressed steel with decent gauge sides, and everything is powder coated in Clarke's usual red. It is not a Wacker Neuson — the welds are functional rather than pretty and there's some flex in the handlebar assembly under a full load — but nothing on it felt flimsy.

"If you treat it like a wheelbarrow with an engine rather than a site dumper, it will last you years," is how the hire manager I bought my first one from put it. That's fair. Grease the pivot points monthly, keep the oil clean, and it will keep going.

Performance on site

Payload and load cycles

Three hundred kilos is about four heaped barrows of damp topsoil, or roughly a third of a bulk bag of gravel. On the topsoil job that cut my trips from 96 barrow runs to 24 dumper runs, and I finished a full day ahead of schedule. Loaded and empty, the machine holds a comfortable walking pace.

Traction and terrain

The three-wheel layout is the CDT300's main compromise. On gravel, hardcore, dry lawn and compacted spoil it's fine. On saturated clay with a gradient it will spin the driven wheel and want to slew sideways, and you will end up walking it down the slope rather than driving it. If most of your work is winter groundworks or heavy clay, spend the extra on tracks — I compare the options in our top 10 mini dumpers for 2026 guide.

Tipping

Tipping is manual: release the catch and heave. With 300kg of wet muck it takes a proper shove, and sticky clay needs a shovel to help it out. Hydraulic tip would be nicer, but at this price it was never on the cards.

Engine and fuel

The 6.5hp engine started second or third pull from cold every time across all three jobs. It drank a little under two litres over a hard six-hour day, which is negligible against the labour it saves.

Clarke CDT300 vs the alternatives

Model	Payload	Drive	Tip	Typical price
Clarke CDT300	300kg	3-wheel petrol	Manual	~£900
Hyundai HYTD300	300kg	Tracked petrol	Manual	~£1,200
Hyundai HYTD500	500kg	Tracked petrol	Manual	~£1,600
Altrad Belle BMD300	300kg	Tracked petrol	Manual	~£2,000

Put simply: the Clarke is the value pick, the Hyundais are the all-terrain pick, and the Altrad Belle is the buy-it-for-life pick for trade use. Browse everything we've tested in our mini dumper reviews.

Pros and cons

What I liked

• Cheapest realistic route into a powered 300kg dumper.
• Reliable, easy-starting engine with cheap, widely available parts.
• Simple mechanically — very little to go wrong.
• Machine Mart's nationwide branch network makes spares and servicing painless.

What I didn't

• Wheels struggle in deep mud and on wet slopes.
• Manual tip is hard work with sticky clay.
• No hydraulics, no electric start, no frills.
• Handlebar flexes under maximum load.

Hire or buy?

A comparable dumper hires for roughly £50–£70 a day plus delivery. At around £900 the CDT300 pays for itself in about 14 hire days — so if you have one weekend project ahead of you, hire. If you are landscaping your own plot over a season, running an allotment site, or doing occasional paid work, buying wins comfortably, and these machines hold their resale value well.

Safety and UK rules

No licence is needed to use a pedestrian dumper on private land. If you're using one at work, you're covered by PUWER, which means competent operation, a pre-use check and maintained equipment. Wear steel toecaps and gloves, never carry a passenger on the skip, load evenly against the front wall of the bucket, and reverse down slopes rather than tipping across them.

Verdict

The Clarke CDT300 is a genuinely useful bit of kit that saves your back and your weekends. It won't cope with the worst British winter mud and the manual tip will make you swear at least once, but for £900 it does 90% of what a £2,000 tracked dumper does. For garden landscaping, allotments and small building projects, it's the best value petrol dumper you can buy in the UK right now.

View the Clarke CDT300 at Machine Mart →