Just bought some land in Tennessee and am looking to purchase a backhoe to have onsite full time to help clear the property and for ongoing property development. I am having trouble deciding on an enclosed cab vs open station. I found a sweet low hours machine for a great price but it is not enclosed. I am looking for opinions from anyone in that neck of the woods that operates year around. If you love what you have or if you bought something and wished you had gone a different route let me know. Thanks.
If you get snow a cab is a must have. You'll be hating yourself for buying an open cab the first time you have to clear your driveway.
I have an OROPS Case 580M and wish it was EROPS. My first farm tractor was OROPS and is now only used when it's big brother with EROPS is tied up or when hand spraying. My CTL is EROPS and although has a poor excuse of a A/C unit it's better than nothing. Numerous encounters with Africanized bees made my mind up. Keep in mind there will be broken glass and you have to maintain the system or the glass will come off quick. I don't care to be in the heat or cold as I mature.
Dave, I agree, thus my quandary. We currently live in Utah which I think might be causing me to lean towards needing a cab due to the cold snowy winters and hot summers here but our land that we are moving to is located in Harriman Tennessee which, on average, only receives 5" of snow per year and the weather tends to be relatively mild in the summer. Anyone in Tennessee or Georgia have any opinions on this?
Legdoc, thanks for your response on this. This is the way that I have been leaning but have just been wondering if I am being too picky and could do without the cab in the milder climate we are headed to.
How much less expensive are open station's? If not much look for a cab model.
Weather is probably the biggest driver, but how you work plays a part in it as well. I mostly work by myself so that means every time I need to get out to open a gate, hook up a chain, etc. I am hopping off the machine. My backhoe is open cab and it suits me just fine. My bobcat has a cab, but I have only put the door on once or twice. I am just in and out of it too often to be worth the hassle. Now yesterday, baling hay in 105*F, a cab would have been wonderful!
Not without working AC. It would be an oven.
Welcome to the Forums JP! Glad to have you. Sorry but I chuckled at the "relatively mild in summer part". Have you spent July, August and September in the southeast? Some call it Hades with a wet blanket wrapped around you. Today it was 98 which felt like 105 and around 98% humidity. It's been raining everyday and everything is soaked so the heat of the day pulls the moisture up, then it rains in the heat of the afternoon - rinse and repeat that daily cycle for at least 90 days. My pressure treated wooden privacy fence has mold on it. Fall comes for about 2 weeks at the end of Oct into the beginning of Nov then the winter rains set in. Other than that winters are very mild. Tennessee gets more snow than we do in central AL due to the higher elevations but nothing substantial. Depending on what you are doing a cab is a must for the heat during the spring, summer and fall. A cab is also good when it's cold and raining the other 1/4 of the year we call winter. Then there's hurricanes and tornados but we won't worry about that just yet.
If you can choose when to operate, an OROPS is just fine. EROPS are nice, but are a lot more work to maintain, and they need special care around timber! We're soft societies today, virtually all machines come new with EROPS and sound systems. I've seen operators refuse to operate a machine where the sound system was U/S! But think about all the major construction projects done in the 30's to the 90's - every one of them was done with OROPS! - even ploughing snow in the depths of Winter. Those operators simply put on more weatherproof clothing, or wore dust masks and dust-proof goggles, and got on with the job! I spent 30 years as a full time earthmoving contractor, and never owned a tractor with even an EROPS! I did have tree-resistant open canopies for clearing work. ROPS didn't start to appear in numbers on new machines, until around 1970.
Oz while I agree wholeheartedly the ones before us were tougher men for braving the elements, I have become soft and expecting a fully enclosed cab complete with A/C and radio. All of our production machines with the exception of the mini-ex are EROPS with A/C and some even have air suspension seats and blue tooth radios. Purchasing a 325 NG trackhoe and that cab is like sitting in a Lexus. Before long the A/C in the cab will be cooling down the auto pilot electronics running the machine as there will be no operator.
As a follow up, anything I purchase going forward with the desire for a bit of comfort will be EROPS. I am 25 miles from the Gulf of Mexico which just pumps the humidity up. It is uncomfortable at 7:00 AM and miserable by 10:00. I had a heat stroke years ago working cattle. I guess I'm a wuss these days at 62.
Ya'll have it worse down there than we do. Where we can cut the summer air with a sharp knife ya'll need a sawzall.
I have run machines with both style ROPS. An open one is nice because I had unimpeded view from the seat. But they are very uncomfortable when it is hot out and the sun angle is low enough to shine on me. Very miserable if it windy out and the temperature is in the 50's or lower. I cannot think of too many cons for an EROPS other than you cannot see around the work are as well as an EROPS. On a really hot day a EROPS is more uncomfortable than an REROPS. If the EROPS has a heater and AC it is no brainer as to which ROPS to have. IMHO !
Only good thing about an open cab in Tennessee and I lived and built a house there, is the ability to shoot copperheads and coyotes ( of course with a revolver that had different loads in it) out of the open cab when working. Light up the bush hog and out come the coyotes, then the vibration gets the copperheads moving around. Lol It was Buchanan TN in Paris county.