sdPete
You got it there.
Everytime there is a leap forward in tedchnology, there are a minority of hard headed folks who are stuck on the old way, and to them the new way will never work.
Look at the swith from cable operated blades on dozers to hydraulic. The naysayers said it would never work right, hydraulics drift, no power, leaky, and a host of other complaints. We are almost totally hydraulic in spite of the critics.
Same way with loading shovels. They could never advance. Same with automatic transmissions instead of manual in anything, cars, trucks, equipment. I especially remember another very controversial move by Cat when they introduced the high track crawlers. It was said they would loose all their dozer customers, it was unstable on a slope, it would never last, etc. They seem to dominate the dozer market now, and I suspect they will continue to dominate the grader market, although they have some quality competition there from Deere and Volvo.
We already have graders with grade control, so it is not a large leap to think that they will soon have auto steer as well, for cutting highway grade, as well as large mining haul roads and other applications as well. As sdPete pointed out, Ag already has it, and for several years now. Farms get more efficient because of it. Less wasted fertiliser, less wasted tillage effort, because overlap can be eliminated, without leaving gaps.
I have a good friend who is in his 60's, and he recently got hired to run a 140M. He called me and was very nervous about it. I eased his worries, and he went ahead. I talked to him the first day, and he struggled the first few hours, but then picked it up. A couple of weeks later, he told me he ends up roading 30+ miles almost every day, and mostly on public 2 lane roads, and he has no steering issues. He did say its best to lock out the blade functions when roading though, so you do not inadvertently raise or lower the left end while steering.
It is just like anything else new, you have to take the time to get the feel for it before moving into a high risk situation, like plowing in traffic or something. You would not take a dozer operator, who had never ran a grader, and send him down the public street without some time in an isolated area to learn the machine. Same goes with the new control style on the M, and available on JD and Volvo as well. Take the time to learn the machine first, before judging it harshly.
Just look at all the machines without steering wheels, and you can see they are not the only way to get the job done.
:drinkup
