All I will use is Cat filters on my Cat equipment - there better not be a red or orange filter on any Cat iron I own.
Our equipment puts food on the table and just like a damn good mule you take care of it.
I could care less that a Cat filter costs $10-20 more than Baldwin or Wix. We change engine oil and filters at 250, engine oil, engine filters, hyd filters and hyd oil at 1K. Those parameters are set in stone for my company and not up for debate as far as I am concerned. We track hours on all the equipment weekly so we can plan services accordingly.
Ditto on the PSSR on UC. Put a new UC on our 953C the end of last year - the loader needed it and we needed a tax deduction, perfect combo. I could've saved $5-8k on the UC going aftermarket over Cat. However that loader had over 5K hours on the original chains. We had replaced one idler (shaft broke) one top roller and had one P&B turn.
5K hours on the original UC is pretty darn good for a 953C. It was a no brainer to go with Cat since we're going to run this loader to 10K hrs if everything else holds up. The loader is a support machine and the price of a new 953K is $200K.
The flip side of the argument is our 321DLCR need some new chains and sprocket segments the end of last year as well. This machine has 7K hours on it and is a mainline machine. The 321 is up in the next 2 years to be replaced before it reaches 9K hours or so. We got 7K hours out of the factory Cat UC which is pretty darn good as well.
I priced Cat and aftermarket and I could buy chains, sprocket segments and hardware for 1/2 the price of just the rails from Cat. If the Korean rails last 1/2 the time the Cat did that's 3.5K hours which leaves some meat on there when it becomes trade in time.
The 321 still gets Cat filters at every service.
When it comes to rubber tracks for our 279's there is no doubt I will go back with the OEM Bridgestones. 279-01 has 1400 hrs on it's factory set. The Bridgestone's are double the price of aftermarket however I've never in 17 years of running CTL's got 1400 hours out of a set of tracks.