Cat guilty....:)

Guilty of building a cheaper mouse trap .

 

Last month, Caterpillar put another nail in the mining industry’s coffin after reporting that itssales declined again in October, marking the 35th straight month of sustained drop

Maybe if CAT would lower their price, they wouldn't lose so many sales. Why would a company want to pay #### near $325K for a 966K when they could buy a John Deere 724 or a Komatsu WA430 for almost $50k less? CAT's used to be the best and worth the extra dough, but anybody that has operated heavy equipment in the past 5 years can tell you that anymore, John Deere, Volvo, and Komatsu make just as good pieces of equipment as CAT does...if not better.

 

Even for the heavy trucks. to buy a brand new rig they are the most expensive and I told the salesman they couldn't hack it with engines and pulled from the industry, left a ton of owners in the wind the partnered with Navistar who makes the worst motor in history and now run that motor in their cat trucks and now they expect me to pay more for this pile of #### than a pete or kw?

 

You have any idea how many fingerprints are on monitors across the planet from people trying to kill that dang bug in your signature? I bet I have tried 4 or 5 times now.

 

I am happy to have done my part

 

Cat equipment sucks to work on compared to almost everything else. They just seem to engineer everything to make it as difficult as possible to fix.

 

I'm sure. I ran a loader at a crusher, and it seemed like the mechanics were always having hell with the Cat equipment. Most of the times, a loader would be down for days (if not weeks) if was anything more than a hydraulic line or filter. From an operators standpoint, the new Cat equipment is a dream to operate. I ran a 980K, and it had more power than the G's and H's did. It was super quiet, and the cab layout was awesome. It's great that they started putting that sidestick steering in the smaller loaders too. So much better than the #### yokes. From a business standpoint though, the creature comforts don't justify the huge price tag and extra maintenance headaches...and that's why you see Deere taking over the construction industry. Hell, that's all you see in the oilfield anymore. Deere equipment with a spattering of D6's and a 140M here and there.

 

I move a LOT of equipment every year for a sand and gravel/road construction company here. In the past they were nothing but a CAT shop but in recent years they have found it better to lease JD equipment. I have yet to move a JD piece to the shop. I have moved many, many pieces of CAT equipment to the shop. We also see a lot of really, really big Komatsu loaders now too.

There was one pit we were hauling from with our belly dumps and that W900 treated us like a box of raisin bran, 2 scoops and we were loaded.

 

Hitachi is king of the excavator market here in Northern Alberta. Probably the best excavator on the market IMO (spent 4 years pulling wrenches for the local dealer). 10x more mechanic friendly. Little known fact that John Deere excavators are just yellow Hitachis. Only difference apart from paint is the smaller ones use a JD engine instead of the Isuzu.