Yellow Iron Fever!!

[CM1995]

I can understand if you have a fleet of Cat equipment and get top notch service from the dealer. I have talked with a ton of operators and fleet managers and found that not all Cat dealers give the type of service that is worth paying an extra 10-20% more for a machine.

Wow- 10-20% more for Cat? Pricing must be all across the board in different areas of the country. Every time I am considering purchasing a new machine I shop around. I have found that in my neck of the woods Cat is very competative with most brands ( Deere, Hitachi, Komatsu, Kobelco). Here no one can beat Cat's parts and service although Komatsu is close.

Sometimes a $10 part can render a $200k machine useless. If it takes 5 days to get this part shipped in compared to 24hrs - it doesn't take many break downs to make up the intial price difference. Take for instance- if your hoe is the main production machine loading 2 artics. If the hoe goes down, you not only have a hoe down but 2 artics, a dozer and a roller sitting. That's 5 pieces of equipment and 5 operators that you have to find something for them to do while you are waiting on parts. The actual and opportunity costs can skyrocket in this situation.

But it does boil down to a business decision and there are as many differing ideas on how to run a business as there are preferences in machines. In the end you just have to chose which one is right for your business.:my2c

 

[CascadeScaper]

Sounds like pricing for Cat around the nations is different. Around here, Cat is within 5% of anyone else, including Deere, and the service is 10 times better. A no brainer for us to run Cat if the machine specs. correctly. We're currently shopping for a 3,000 ROC skid steer which Cat doesn't produce, would love to buy Cat again, but they don't make anything that large.

 

[stuvecorp]

Around here the Kobelco is likely neck and neck with Cat if not more. The big boys started running them in the late 90's and have stuck with them through trade cycles and are working down the food chain. The Deere/Hitachi are popular too. We have rented Kobelcos for land clearing and have been good but used a 312 from Cat rental last summer and it was a really nice machine. It's funny, it always ends up in a Cat rules/Cat sucks type debate. The downtime is a big deal but if you get a machine that was taken care of and continue taking care of it, the paint color souldn't matter.

 

[ForsytheBros.]

thanks guys for follow ups- any information is always helpful.

Dare i hijack my own thread and start a ford vs chevrolet vs dodge discussion?

PS- To Dayexco's point, i buy equipment trader from time to time down here and note a savings in cost on equivalent komatsu/kobelco machines vs cat. Tough to get a true comparison on the used stuff, but i do get a vibe that cat machines are a little higher in price (at least in that mag.) Are they better used machines? Hard to say, as i haven't saved up enough nickels to buy yet.....

 

[ILLICEMAN]

trackhoes

i just bought my 3ed. cat el200b. these are getting old now but have always been a great machine they are a 320 but with out the better can and other items.
over the years my hobby was to buy ,use on my farm,and then to sell hoes.
time after time when i checked other hoes our for the hrs. showing the cat units had less wear over al thany others.
i know that there are alot of very good machines out there but this is what i say.i would also say a cat hoe would be easier to resell. thanks jim:usa

 

[Dirt Dogg]

I work with a lot of deere machines and the new D series ex's are hard to beat I especially like deere control monitor it lets you change pump flow settings at the touch of a button This is very useful when switching attachments from hammers and shears to thumbs and buckets.
If you have several employees running this machine to monitor will tell you how many minutes he worked at what % throttle, % idle, max pressures, fuel consumption at timed intervals, etc very useful when you are looking for production and your operator says he's been digging as hard as he can for days.

 

[surfer-joe]

Yellow Iron Fever

I bought several Cat 320's used (from dealer rental fleet), for my outfit in California, some of those got sent up to western Wyoming. They were great machines and we had very little trouble with them. Our yellow iron was mainly all Cat, and we received excellent service and parts from Quinn and Wyoming Machinery.

We had a couple of older Deere machines as well, powerful, but the electronics weren't good, and parts were tough as they were out of production (892's). The Deere service manuals for those were poor, and my techs were probably better at working on these machines than anybody over to the Deere hut.

I think cm1995 pretty much hit the nail on the head with the Cat's, but dayexco, Deere John, & farm boy have some valid points too. Cat in some areas has had a history of ignoring smaller equipment owners, mainly farmers and ranchers. Wyoming Machinery was guilty of this for years & years. They just loved big outfits tho. But that attitude has changed I believe.

Cat can get down and dirty with pricing, but you got to play real hard to get. Otherwise, resale value on Cats in most areas beats anything else hands down. Even though the Cat excavators are essentially designed in Japan, Cat did put some extra meat in the machines to allow them to hold up longer for the long run.

 

[stumpjumper83]

And my boss just traded 10 hoes from a 315 thru a 330 cats for new cases, & kept a 450 deere. He also traded 12, case 580m's for 310sg deere backhoes. When it comes down to it, its the financing and what your trading that matters. Sometimes what you have the dealer has sold so he wants it bad and he is willing to give you top money for it. Combined with that what you want is his lot lizzard....

 

[ForsytheBros.]

In my continuing quest for information on "tracks", I ran into an "old timer" of approx. 25 years in the business. He alluded that Komatsu produces some of the most cutting edge technology in excavators, while Kobelco typically buys this technology a few years down the line for their machines....

Can anybody confirm or refute this statement?

I must confess that i'm made a little nervous by "technology" related to computer controls in machines..... Maybe lower technology is actually better?

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[CAT245ME]

I feel the excavator market is so watered down, there are many, many companies that have excavators like Cat, Deere, Komatsu, Hitachi, Link-Belt, Samsung, Daewoo, Case and on and on and I dont think there is one company that owns the market, unlike dozers were Cat, Deere and Komatsu are just about the only dozers you see for example. The excavator makers is like the car makers, there is so many diffrent names of cars that we couldn't name them all, just like the excavators. But I am sure a fellow member will try

 

[excavator]

Deere, Hitachi, Kobelco, Komatsu, Case, Link-belt, Cat are all good machines, I have not had experience on Hyundai, JCB,Volvos ect. They all have made good ones and bad ones. Parts and service are number one, Komatsu, Case, Linkbelt and Kobelco use hydraulic fittings that, at least around here the average local hose shop don't stock. I've seen some of these brands set for several days from a blown hose.( I've heard though that the newer Kobelcos' have gone to standard fittings on some of their hoses.) IMO, Cat and Deere/Hitachi have by far the best parts system out there, i've always been able to get parts the next morning if ordered before closing time. But it makes a big difference which dealer your dealing with.( Is your parts man just a warm body or an actual parts person)The next thing is owner preference, and then operator preference. If the operator don't like a machine it's never going to be good and they likely will not take care of it like they would if they liked the machine. And of course, financing enters the picture some where in there. I run a mobile repair service so I just have to repair them and not worry about the rest!

 

[dayexco]

i love contractors that feel they have to "roll" equipment when they hit 2-4k hrs.....if they've been maintained, i buy them for at least half price what they paid for them, charge them out the same rate of a new one, and made more money net in the process. you'll find 2 people happy 1 month after you buy a new one........the dealer, and your banker. unless your workload is so unGodly heavy that you must have and can justify new.........it's not in the books dudes/dudettes