Unfortunately, because of my experience a few years back with Liebherr, I would never buy another Liebherr machine. A chap I knew was the salesman there at the time and he wanted me to have a look at their wheel loaders. They held a demonstration day and I was very impressed, they had an L541 they wanted to get out into the field, so they burnt the price on it and I bought it, that was the only saving grace. Now I realise this is an old machine today, so I hope they have improved the newer machines and their attitude dramatically, to what it was then. I still have this machine, it has done a bit over 14,000 hours and I will say, when it is going, it is a very good machine to operate, although it is getting fairly sloppy now.
The first problem was when they told me they had a complete machine in parts on the floor, three months after I purchased the loader, they sent all the parts back to Germany, because the boss said they were carrying too much inventory and this is the head office for the South Pacific. From then until this day, nearly every part we needed, was two to three weeks wait from Germany. The second problem was when the transmission failed under 5,000 hours, then it failed three times again, since. The pumps have been resealed twice and are leaking again, the travel motor has been rebuilt, the splitter drive, driving the pumps on the back of the engine, broke three teeth of the main drive cog, both axles have pulled teeth off the pinions, all this on a hydrostatic machine, where there should not be as much shock load. Whenever I questioned them on whether other operators were having these problems, of course I never got a straight answer and even the mechanics, who were very good, were kept in the dark. Also, I am not quite sure where the problem lies, because while the loader was Liebherr, a lot of the componentry that failed, was ZF. Being hydrostatic drive, a new pump retails for over $20,000 and each repair was between $8-$12,000, $10,000 for each diff and $25,000 for each transmission, plus all the other incidentals. The only thing we have not had any problems with, is the engine, Liebherr do build a very good engine. Leibherr loaders also have very little resale value here, mainly because there are not a lot around.
You may say I and my other operators are rough, we work the machines hard, but being a small outfit, we can not afford to be rough on our machines, this machine has been serviced regularly through out it's whole life. Liebherr were quite good in the early stages and paid for the replacements, but as time went on, they paid for less and of course there was the lost productivity while the machine was down and the cost of the transport to send it back to them, 200 km away, or their travelling fees to come to us. I would say that I have paid for the machine twice.
I will say, that in the early days, I was looked after in other ways, invites to their annual dinner, tickets to the corporate box at the Grand Prix, which was all very nice, but unfortunately, everything else has left me rather PO'd, when I was trying to build a business and this was my main machine.
As for Volvo, can not comment on them, because I have never operated them, but friends of mine run a few of them and while they do have some problems, they are very happy with them.
RnR.
