I purchased my DL550 last December, its a 2024 model with rubber tracks. I have spent about 65% of its time with the dozer on. I will discuss that performance first. We have pushed about 12K cy with the machine on two jobs that we tracked the cy. I can average about 750-850 cy of virgin pushed material per 7 hours, that includes some ripping. I have the dozer set at 114 hp. CASE did a great job with this machine as dozer, the control handles, the features that are available on their dozers are available here. 6 way blade, blade shake, fine control, its incredibly intuitive. There is a lot of talk on You Tube about ability to hold grade with it. It took me about 4 hours to hold a decent grade, now I can do it in my sleep. I have very little dozer experience prior to owning this machine. The weight of the machine I think really makes this a productive dozer, it has great tractive effort, and pushes a lot more material than I was expecting. The rippers are very helpful, and well thought out. You can preset the number of gears the machine has in Dozer mode. I have it set at 16 and I like it there. You can preset the reverse gear speed. If you want a two speed increase during reverse, you can set it at that you want a three gear increase during reverse, you can set it for that.
When it doesn't have the dozer attached it is running a bucket or the Sharp Grade G128 grader attachment. The SG grader and the DL550 were made for each other. You can push an incredible amount of material, the tractive effort available makes it very productive, both cutting subgrade and finishing subgrade materials. When I
envisioned these two pieces together, I thought it would positively change how we did site grading, Neither one has disappointed. The DL550 has yet to make it back to my the shop since Feb. when it was first put on a job. It can and does everything. The bucket that came with the DL550 was a 1.25 cy HD bucket. It could easy have a 1.75 cy bucket and have zero issues. The machine plays with 1.25 cy It has a very high lift height, loads trucks very quickly.
The machine was very well thought out, when you spend time in it, you quickly realize that the development time on this machine, was very well spent. They thought of nearly everything. Considering the machine is a first of its kind, they missed very little. The machine can be preset with two, three or four speed settings. It can go from High and low, like they all have, two low speeds and one high or two low speeds and two high speeds. I really like that feature. Two engine HP settings, 85 or 114. Comes with 4100 PSI and 42 GPM on high flow. The machine has what seems like a countless number of setting options. If you want to fine tune how it responds, you can absolutely do that.
The only issue I have had with the machine is the fan. I am on my third. This last one is a new design and hopefully will stay together. The other two destroyed themselves. Luckily and hat tip to Titan Equipment, I had a new fan installed in under 24 hours. One came from La. and the other from CO. One of those occured in a very remote part of Idaho. I couldn't afford the downtime and Titan delivered.
Overall thoughts...I paid about 140K for this machine. Prior to purchasing the DL550, I spent a couple days at the CASE Tomahawk customer center in Wisconsin. After spending a combine 6 hours on it there, listening to the CASE operators telling me how to run it effectively, I could see the potential of what this machine could do for us.
I underestimated how impressive it would be. It really does everything you could reasonable ask it to do, and it does it very well. It has expanded what we can do and how fast we can do it. I plan on using on a mulcher as well, which I haven't had an opportunity to yet, because it was tied up with other things. I could see adding another one next year, that one will have single grousers. Seldom does a machine live up to the hype, but in this case, I think it exceeds the hype. If anyone demos one, you really need about 10 hours on it to learn all that it can do and read the manual on it. I have never really done that before, on any of the probably 25 CTL'S and SSL I have bought over the years. You need to on this one.
There are a couple things I would like to see on it. The control handles need to be expanded to offer more options for electric/hyd control switches. The control handles on CATs 285 would be perfect. It could really use more cameras. This thing is huge, and having side cameras would be a help.
When it doesn't have the dozer attached it is running a bucket or the Sharp Grade G128 grader attachment. The SG grader and the DL550 were made for each other. You can push an incredible amount of material, the tractive effort available makes it very productive, both cutting subgrade and finishing subgrade materials. When I
envisioned these two pieces together, I thought it would positively change how we did site grading, Neither one has disappointed. The DL550 has yet to make it back to my the shop since Feb. when it was first put on a job. It can and does everything. The bucket that came with the DL550 was a 1.25 cy HD bucket. It could easy have a 1.75 cy bucket and have zero issues. The machine plays with 1.25 cy It has a very high lift height, loads trucks very quickly.
The machine was very well thought out, when you spend time in it, you quickly realize that the development time on this machine, was very well spent. They thought of nearly everything. Considering the machine is a first of its kind, they missed very little. The machine can be preset with two, three or four speed settings. It can go from High and low, like they all have, two low speeds and one high or two low speeds and two high speeds. I really like that feature. Two engine HP settings, 85 or 114. Comes with 4100 PSI and 42 GPM on high flow. The machine has what seems like a countless number of setting options. If you want to fine tune how it responds, you can absolutely do that.
The only issue I have had with the machine is the fan. I am on my third. This last one is a new design and hopefully will stay together. The other two destroyed themselves. Luckily and hat tip to Titan Equipment, I had a new fan installed in under 24 hours. One came from La. and the other from CO. One of those occured in a very remote part of Idaho. I couldn't afford the downtime and Titan delivered.
Overall thoughts...I paid about 140K for this machine. Prior to purchasing the DL550, I spent a couple days at the CASE Tomahawk customer center in Wisconsin. After spending a combine 6 hours on it there, listening to the CASE operators telling me how to run it effectively, I could see the potential of what this machine could do for us.
I underestimated how impressive it would be. It really does everything you could reasonable ask it to do, and it does it very well. It has expanded what we can do and how fast we can do it. I plan on using on a mulcher as well, which I haven't had an opportunity to yet, because it was tied up with other things. I could see adding another one next year, that one will have single grousers. Seldom does a machine live up to the hype, but in this case, I think it exceeds the hype. If anyone demos one, you really need about 10 hours on it to learn all that it can do and read the manual on it. I have never really done that before, on any of the probably 25 CTL'S and SSL I have bought over the years. You need to on this one.
There are a couple things I would like to see on it. The control handles need to be expanded to offer more options for electric/hyd control switches. The control handles on CATs 285 would be perfect. It could really use more cameras. This thing is huge, and having side cameras would be a help.
