Let me respond to this while I have coffee in my veins but from this rednecks point of view Caterpillar has nothing to worry about!!!!
I consider all that Swedish equipment the most unfriendly POS I ever HAD to run.....I say HAD to run because very often it was all there was but I can tell you if I had a choice and I often did I would disassociate myself from anything with a Swedish name and in some cases an American name with Swedish parts like Michigan for instance.The only way they can hurt Caterpillar is price.
The old Ackerman was a pretty well made Excavator but when they changed colors they were junk!!
Any of the other stuff like Volvo will really test your patience.Try sitting in the cab and try to figure out what all those symbols next to the switches mean?Where is the button,knob or switch to preheat the engine for cold starting?
You need instruction to change from the bucket to the forks and you can never be sure you did it right!!!What if you drop the bucket on someone working around it?Turbo lag is terrible on those things.......they are coldblooded to start in the winter and terrible to work on.A Volvo L90 needs THREE different size wrenches to change the air filter element!!!Where the F**K were the engineers when they designed those things??Oh,I forgot....you better open the petcock to drain the engine oil first before you do anything else because it takes so long to drain through that tiny drain hose,that is after you pull the bellypan off looking for the drain plug and finally figuring out what they had provided to do the job.
Trust me,Caterpillar has NOTHING to worry about!!!! Ron