A 988 is a big fuel burning pig. Unless you have a quarry operation to keep going I would steer clear. They like to move into a site, and live there as long as possible. Even though I am a fan of the 950F over the 966C, at least you can walk the 966 down the road, or go into a subdivision, and clear property, or dig a basement. A 988 would pretty much have to stay in a pit. Our construction season here shuts down for the winter. The loaders stay busy plowing snow. The 980 which is noticably smaller than a 988 sits in the quarry all winter because it is too hard on fuel. A 950 is a nice all around loader, and I guess to me, an F would be newer. If you really have your heart set on bigger, for a small operation, get the older 966, but I would stay away from the 988.
We hauled out of a quarry that had a 992 loading rock trucks. We were hauling R5 with tandem trucks to a road job. Their 980 was down, so the only thing down where the R5 was piled was the 992. We would back 2 tandems tailgate to tailgate, and he would load 2 at a time. What made me think of that, was your name TD15. We had 2 TD15s on the job. One had a plywood cab.
They were just old site trucks, spent most of their time hauling along side of articulated rock trucks. The quarry was just across the highway from the job. I'm not sure of the exact spec, but I think our R5 is 4 to 6 inch. The young fella was pretty careful, plus it makes the bean counters in the office pretty happy to get 2 trucks loaded at a time.
