As an operator and part time mechanic I have been impressed with just about everything that I have encountered that John Deere has designed and built.That is not to say everything with the John Deere badge is always desirable from an owners point of view but anything built in house has to be worth a second look.Cat builds great stuff but they have some anchors in their inventory too.If I had a choice in rubber tired backhoes I would take a John Deere every time hands down.Now a 580 Case is a nice nice machine,that is I mean that it is a very capable machine and once you get accustomed to the foot swing you may like it better than the two sticks that most everyone else uses but I just seems that JD listened to input from the customers to design and build what would be,as it turned out,the standard that everyone else has to to meet to be competitive.If you run any of the small dozers from JD (450,550,650) you have to consider them a hotrod,they do everything well,it is almost like the machine challenges the operator to ask of it something that it cannot do,like it is saying to you "show me what you got". If you come to a JD dozer for the first time after running the competition you have got to smile and I have done it many times over the years,you just cannot put those machines in a situation that it cannot handle,I never got in trouble on a JD that was not my own fault.Yeah,I like them.LOL
I happened to see the add on the JD website last night on my own before I read this post and laughed at the comment about sleeping dogs lying and the cat association that they made,there was no mistaking where that was headed.Ron G