Picking a NEW CTL, Deere, Kubota, NH, Bobcat, Cat?

[HarleyHappy]

I was quoted 60 to 80 k to put in a 800’ plus driveway over an existing farm road to my new house.
That included 3 runs of 2” conduit and 1 run of 3” to a transformer pad.
That was with me paying for the pad and the conduit. I got 3 bids and yes I was turned down by a bunch of other contractors for most everything for the house.
I ended up buying an older backhoe and me GCing the whole project.
Granted, took 3 months off from my business.
The driveway cost me 12k in gravel and used the existing farm sand pit for a base.
We are in a crazy situation here, most of the home builders are into developments and no one wanted to do just a single basic ranch house.
Around here, every one wants to make bank off every job.
While I’m sure I didn’t find all the contractors around here, there is no yellow pages anymore.
If it’s not word of mouth, it’s hard to find builders that aren’t 2 years behind.
I won’t question anybody for quotes that seem out of line after the experience I had building my house.
The damn well driller that I have known for 40 years quoted me 16k for a new well.
The builder I hired recommended a well drilling company I had never heard of. He’s 2 towns over and he drilled 440 and total work was 6,800.
Its all who you know, I guess.

 

[CM1995]

Why the attitude?? You stated the $80 to $100K from the lowest bidder for what took you two weeks to do with a rental. Nobody believes that.

Give it a rest Dave and move on.

 

[CM1995]

Around here, every one wants to make bank off every job.

Not going to lie - I do. I want to make as much as I can on every job I do. Old enough I don't need the experience and young enough that I've gotta put back more for retirement.

It's the reason we are in the commercial side of the business. It's all just business with no one's personal feelings involved.

 

[materthegreater]

The damn well driller that I have known for 40 years quoted me 16k for a new well.
The builder I hired recommended a well drilling company I had never heard of. He’s 2 towns over and he drilled 440 and total work was 6,800.
Its all who you know, I guess.

Cushing and sons?

 

[HarleyHappy]

We all want to make money, that doesn’t give a license to charge unfairly.
For the longest time, we only had a couple of reasonable surveyors and civil engineers around and with the boom, they were booked solid. Unfortunately that gave some other less known companies the ability to start charging outrageous fees. That lasted for a couple of years and now they all are charging outrageous fees.
Sorry but designing an as built septic design that is just out of date and charging 20k is outrageous and it’s going on all over on regular homes.
The guys doing developments are just doing the same design all over and getting 4k.
It has to end sometime.

Cushing and sons?

Nailed that one!
The older brother.

 

[CM1995]

We all want to make money, that doesn’t give a license to charge unfairly.

It's a free market, if someone accepts a price they are not being held at gunpoint. Prices for goods and services always fluctuate.

Sorry but designing an as built septic design that is just out of date and charging 20k is outrageous and it’s going on all over on regular homes.
The guys doing developments are just doing the same design all over and getting 4k.
It has to end sometime.

That sounds more like a governmental issue?

On a broader topic I think it's supply and demand. Not that the demand has skyrocketed, rather the supply of people and firms to do the work is in short supply.

 

[Welder Dave]

I mentioned it in the past but my former neighbor needed a partner to put a bond on a large gov't. demo project. They had the low bid by a decent margin but before awarding the contract the gov't. asked if they would like to modify their bid since it was much lower than the other bids. They said no, we can do it for the price submitted. They were trying to salvage as much as possible which I think was part of the original plan even though I heard that nothing was to be salvaged. Long story short it turned into a big **** show and the neighbor was kicked off the job. There was a big lawsuit that I think lasted at least 5 days. Several years ago the lawsuit was posted on the provincial courts web page. That was the job where I got yelled at by the neighbors wife, who was selling salvaged items from the parking area, for riding in an excavator bucket. I was cutting open cable trays so wire could be pulled out and also cutting pipe for salvage. The alternative was climbing over a huge pile of broken concrete and rebar. If I had to do it over I'd still get a ride in the bucket. One slip and I'd be impaled by a chunk of rebar, no thanks!

 

[BRProperties]

Lets all get back to the original topic, and cut this pissin contest out!

 

[CM1995]

Lets all get back to the original topic, and cut this pissin contest out!

Easy now. Since you are new here to HEF I'll explain the informal rule of thread hijacking.

This is a discussion forum and sometimes the topic strays onto other topics that may be related or very loosely related and sometimes not related at all. It's part of the discussion. The proper way to ease the thread back is to say something like - Back on topic or something like that.

Now back on topic -

Bobcat sucks and I wouldn't buy one. Just my $.02.

 

[fortworth-cowboy]

What ever you do, if you decide on Bobcat stay away from the R-Series. (Like T66, T62, T76, T86...)
Personally I would go either for the T595 or T650. Both New Models have the newer Engine in with the Bosch Injection System (waaaay more reliable then the old Delfhi System). If you want a DEF Machine, then I would go for the T770.

I would also consider, who invented the Skid Steer---Bobcat.

 

[CM1995]

I would also consider, who invented the Skid Steer---Bobcat.

Technically it was Melroe.

 

[TXRweather]

On a broader topic I think it's supply and demand. Not that the demand has skyrocketed, rather the supply of people and firms to do the work is in short supply.

I beg to differ on that one. Demand has sky rocketed in our area the past three years, due to the population invasion from the west coast and large scale business relocation.

I agree that the people and firms are in short supply. It's that way everywhere. You can't find any help. Not sure exactly what the younger generation is doing to survive the past few years. Professional video game playing and professional text messaging doesn't pay much..........
We hire greenhorns all of the time. We start them out at $20-25 and hour, with zero experience. We give them a 90- day probation period so they can acclimate to a real world working environment. Over 90% of them don't make it past 60 days. They can't survive without playing with their damn phone every 3-5 minutes. They either quit or get **** canned. The future work force is doomed.

 

[CM1995]

Same here on labor. We have found a staffing service that we have had decent luck with.

Posted this is a few other threads. I firmly believe we'll have robot laborers sooner, way sooner than I ever imagined. Say a robot costs $150K once they are in full production. Today the labor burden for a green horn, low on the totem pole is $50K for a round number. The robot pays for itself in 3 years and doesn't have a grandmother die 5 times a year, got to jail or have an old lady that's wearing it out on the phone all day.

A robot could be programmed to be a pipe layer since it's a repetitive process of line and grade. We are already making grading and pipe models for loading into the machines so a similar model could be loaded into the robot. Put some GPS on them and they become walking data collectors.

At the end of the day just hit the "Gather up" button and the robot gathers all the tools up, puts them in the job box them plugs himself into the charger for the next day.

That type of tech is coming way faster than I ever imagined. We are experiencing a disruption akin to the industrial revolution where steam replaced horses. Fascinating times.

 

[Welder Dave]

The trick is finding young people that aren't afraid of of work and realize they can't get the big bucks right away.

 

[FLYWHEEL PRIME]

Here's my $.02 to the OP's question, @bradhfo , BLUF I would stick with either Kubota or CAT. There are a lot of guys on this forum who work at dealerships and see the same failures week after week, they tend to not recognize things like recency bias.

"I've seen 20 DEF failures, therefore all DEF systems fail" of course is not reality. For every 10,000 DEF systems in operation, how many have premature failure? How many of those failures see less than 20 hours of operation per week? Lots of questions like that from the 40k foot view you won't see because nobody here has access to that data.

My personal experience is that I own all my equipment outright and perform all my own maintenance. Kubota and CAT both have good design engineers. I have owned Bobcat in the past, and would say the exact opposite, I will never own another Bobcat because of their **** poor design. I've got videos on here of me pulling my 289D motor and replacing it, I also just finished a frame rebuild on that same 289D to make a machine with 5k+ hours run, feel, and sound like a new machine. CAT makes a good product, but I think they are overpriced. CAT parts are also comical in the cost department at times. Yes, it is great they have a functional supply chain, but the cost of access to those parts seem made up at times. "Yes, we found the part number for those motor mount bushings from 2014, they cost $297 each and I will have to transfer them in from our dealership in Guam, they should be here when your kids graduate college". Yea, I'll just drill a hole in a hockey puck and call it good my guy.

More than likely I am going to sell that 289D and purchase a new 97-3. Aside from the modernization piece of it, a big creature comfort is the cab entry door closure. Whatever dumbass designed a door that can only open at full top or full bottom of operation needs to get slapped in the face. Any machine with a side swing door needs to be removed from existence.

I do not have any other good dealer support in my area, which is why I limit to those 2 brands. I know some guys who have good experience with ASV, but I've never even seen a dealer. I completely left out John Deere because I think they are generally anti-American globalist turds who have sold their souls to the almighty dollar. Pretty much none of these companies want us to be able to maintain/repair this equipment on our own, but JD is the only one actively spending money hand over fist to prevent right-to-repair legislation from advancing. I will never give them another red cent.

 

[FLYWHEEL PRIME]

Same here on labor. We have found a staffing service that we have had decent luck with.

Posted this is a few other threads. I firmly believe we'll have robot laborers sooner, way sooner than I ever imagined. Say a robot costs $150K once they are in full production. Today the labor burden for a green horn, low on the totem pole is $50K for a round number. The robot pays for itself in 3 years and doesn't have a grandmother die 5 times a year, got to jail or have an old lady that's wearing it out on the phone all day.

A robot could be programmed to be a pipe layer since it's a repetitive process of line and grade. We are already making grading and pipe models for loading into the machines so a similar model could be loaded into the robot. Put some GPS on them and they become walking data collectors.

At the end of the day just hit the "Gather up" button and the robot gathers all the tools up, puts them in the job box them plugs himself into the charger for the next day.

That type of tech is coming way faster than I ever imagined. We are experiencing a disruption akin to the industrial revolution where steam replaced horses. Fascinating times.

I don't know what part of AL you're in, but I'm not too far from you, in southwest MS. My day job is in industrial automation & AI integration, and this stuff is coming fast, at least in a relative sense. In the next 5 years you will see more manufacturing in the states, but lower overall jobs. We have 3 different multinational customers that we are part of their "dark factory" initiatives. The idea is essentially a giant metal box, on one end you get raw material, and the other finished products loaded into trucks to be delivered.

The "dark factory" moniker comes from the metal box not having any lights inside of it because it is 100% run by humanoids. One of our largest accounts already has the Tesla and Boston Dynamics robots running label film swaps on packaging equipment at some of their plants. Scary days ahead for traditional labor careers, but an unlimited amount of money to made designing, building, maintaining, and optimizing these automation integrations.

 

[CM1995]

I don't know what part of AL you're in, but I'm not too far from you, in southwest MS. My day job is in industrial automation & AI integration, and this stuff is coming fast, at least in a relative sense. In the next 5 years you will see more manufacturing in the states, but lower overall jobs. We have 3 different multinational customers that we are part of their "dark factory" initiatives. The idea is essentially a giant metal box, on one end you get raw material, and the other finished products loaded into trucks to be delivered.

The "dark factory" moniker comes from the metal box not having any lights inside of it because it is 100% run by humanoids. One of our largest accounts already has the Tesla and Boston Dynamics robots running label film swaps on packaging equipment at some of their plants. Scary days ahead for traditional labor careers, but an unlimited amount of money to made designing, building, maintaining, and optimizing these automation integrations.

Wow!

It's happening faster than I would have ever imagined even 4-5 years ago.

Went to the Cat excavator plant in Illinois back in the mid 2000's and it was a factory like you describe. Raw materials (plate steel) on one end and finished 330's rolling out the other. Even at that time they had autonomous robot parts fetchers along with robot parts handlers.

The guy assembling a pump for example would request a certain parts order and the robots would fulfill it. As we were touring the facility the robots would cruise by. They told us they wouldn't run over us but stay clear in order to not disrupt the production.

I remember they had a robotic welding set up for 330 under bodies. It was fascinating seeing that big of a piece of metal spun around with a robot welding it up.

Look how far it has come now. No need for the human to summon the robot..

Located here in central AL where 65, 20 and 59 meet. Headed down to Biloxi next weekend for some much needed R+R.

 

[fortworth-cowboy]

"I've seen 20 DEF failures, therefore all DEF systems fail" of course is not reality. For every 10,000 DEF systems in operation, how many have premature failure? How many of those failures see less than 20 hours of operation per week? Lots of questions like that from the 40k foot view you won't see because nobody here has access to that data.

Problem is also, that a lot of people do not run these machine with DEF how they should be run.
I know of a lot of owners who run these machine at 2000 RPM because that is a comfortable speed for them, not knowing that the machine should run at 2600 RPM for peak performance. But then they are upset when the machine throws all kind of codes because it never reaches regen and the soot is not burned off.
So that is one of the reasons people don't like DEF machines, because their knowledge is from 1980!

 

[Welder Dave]

I'm not sure about that. Skid steers and CTL's are known to run best at full throttle and most users know that. Cat put throttle pedals in them because they were very jerky trying to do precision work. Apparently newer models are better. Certain machines are known to have problematic DEF systems and it's not because they are being run at less than full throttle. One just has to read the forums on here to see which models are the most problematic.

On a new CTL worth $70K+ I would expect to get a lot more than 5000 hours before needing to replace the engine. Hydrostat components maybe depending on how hard they are worked but 10,000 hours on the engine shouldn't be hard to achieve with proper maintenance. Kubota engines in Lincoln welders state 10,000 hours before needing major service. That's a very common number for most diesel engines. I'm sure a lot of them go a fair bit beyond that. I put new glow plugs and adjusted the valves (which weren't out much) on my Kubota powered skid steer with 4500 hours and the engine runs as good as the day it was new.

 

[KSSS]

What ever you do, if you decide on Bobcat stay away from the R-Series. (Like T66, T62, T76, T86...)
Personally I would go either for the T595 or T650. Both New Models have the newer Engine in with the Bosch Injection System (waaaay more reliable then the old Delfhi System). If you want a DEF Machine, then I would go for the T770.

I would also consider, who invented the Skid Steer---Bobcat.

The Bosch system has been way more problematic than Delphi. The CP4 units that GM, Ford and Ram used for a time in their diesels are the same system. GM stopped in 2015ish. The units that Bosch uses in these systems is very similar I am told to the CP4.