Volvo Inroads

[Steve Frazier]

Has anyone else noticed the aggressive marketing by Volvo of late? They've recently aquired Mack Trucks Inc., have been aggressively advertising their equipment in trade mags and have started up ther own rental chain Volvo Rents for small equipment.

I've seen them branch in to almost every type of heavy equipment including road graders, skid steers and backhoes. Locally I'm only seeing Wheel loaders and off road trucks.

Caterpillar had better watch their back!

[RonG]

Let me respond to this while I have coffee in my veins but from this rednecks point of view Caterpillar has nothing to worry about!!!!
I consider all that Swedish equipment the most unfriendly POS I ever HAD to run.....I say HAD to run because very often it was all there was but I can tell you if I had a choice and I often did I would disassociate myself from anything with a Swedish name and in some cases an American name with Swedish parts like Michigan for instance.The only way they can hurt Caterpillar is price.
The old Ackerman was a pretty well made Excavator but when they changed colors they were junk!!
Any of the other stuff like Volvo will really test your patience.Try sitting in the cab and try to figure out what all those symbols next to the switches mean?Where is the button,knob or switch to preheat the engine for cold starting?
You need instruction to change from the bucket to the forks and you can never be sure you did it right!!!What if you drop the bucket on someone working around it?Turbo lag is terrible on those things.......they are coldblooded to start in the winter and terrible to work on.A Volvo L90 needs THREE different size wrenches to change the air filter element!!!Where the F**K were the engineers when they designed those things??Oh,I forgot....you better open the petcock to drain the engine oil first before you do anything else because it takes so long to drain through that tiny drain hose,that is after you pull the bellypan off looking for the drain plug and finally figuring out what they had provided to do the job.
Trust me,Caterpillar has NOTHING to worry about!!!! Ron

[cat320]

I have only had the pleasure of running and L90 but from the few days that we had it on site to load it performed well ,But I didnot have to fuel or fix it just get in and run it.Maybe if it was mine and i had to work on it i would consider another type of machine.Most of the towns and contractors here run the volvos I like cat but like anything your paying for that cat name I know because a freind of ours bought a 416 backhoe and they knocked $10K off the price that they origenly quoted him because he said they were too high and he was going to get the case.Cat does have some nice stuff and I would like to get one some day but there cadalac price just drives me to another equally quallified brand machine.

[Grinderminder71]

Wasnt Volvo recently aquired by fomoco? maybe its just the automotive stuff but that might explain the new high visibility. I agree that cat only need be worried bout them in the $$$ area but, then again thats a BIG area for most, they may be in for some competition.
dave

[dumptruck]

Volvo is taking the market away from Kenworth in my area with there heavy duty on road trucks at the local dump.
I havent seen much Volvo heavy equipment though.