I think your dad did you a service by making you learn how to drive a manual transmission. I think one day manual trans. will be a like a friction crane, not many around and not many who can drive the few that are left.
I guess our Kubota 121 is about the size of your E42 but yours sure looks bigger. We got an Eager Beaver trailer but it is a 20 ton. I think sometimes it would be nice to have a 161 but like you said, getting into the tight places.
Without a doubt, I'm glad he did. Like he said if you can drive an 8 or 10 speed, you can drive an automatic, not so the other way around.
We definitely like the size of the E42. We had 334s before that, which are 7,500 lb machines, which we would push the limits on and always seemed like we wanted another couple feet of reach.
Something we do a lot of, concrete removal. Gotta love night work, got to try out the GC's old Michigan loader. Definitely would rather have our newer Komatsu or Doosan