When you say locally - Is that downunder?.............My bobcat dealer isn't interested because I went to The "darkside" and bought Cat products........
pm on its way as i'm curious who/where the dealer is. and yep, locally is here, australia, clark's pricing is nation wide afaik.
the first problem for you with the bobcat box blade is that the electronics on it work in weird wonderful ways - the attachments usually feature a circuit board which talks with the bobcat computer through the canbus, therefore the signals on the 7 pin are not so straight forward.
i asked a good sparky to build me a control box to use as an interface so i could hook some of my attachments to non-bobcat machines, they told me they couldn't build the box... :Banghead
there is a fella in usofa advertising an interface box for about $400 (i think) that supposedly works, i emailed him and got nothing intelligible back so didn't go down that path, his website didn't make me warm and fuzzy either tho he may well be dinky di.
have i used the bobcat box blade? no but i do have one on order. the last one left in the country went to an asphalter locally, the feedback is the thing works an absolute treat. more are on the ship as i write.
bobcat's box blade is not dual slope and doesn't feature the dual blade setup like the level best. i don't see that as a major problem, i think most of the rental applications will be level or single slope and those that need dual slope probably need a lot more than a box blade.
if my pitch was house pads - small areas - i'd probably lean to the level best for the ability to work material both directions. that said they are just plain bloody expensive here.
i do think the bobcat blade will work going backwards, it just wont carry much material.
at civinex recently there was a guy, from sa i think, displaying a locally made dual plane for about 34k or about 11k without the dual plane smarts, it didn't do a lot for me. it was a sort of like a level best with some interesting plumbing and linkages. even if it was gold plated i still wouldn't fork that much for a box blade.
next to him was a guy who made hotmix screeds for bobcats, he wanted 18k for something that looked to pretty much be a couple of rams, a bit os bisalloy and a day or two on a press brake. maybe i underestimate the work involved...