Currently running Deere 380G with a short arm and 66" bucket loading 730 haul trucks in housing development work. Little real rock. Mostly moving topsoil and subsoil. It has full GPS. Had to have the boom pin redone twice in 6600 hours. Operator isn't shy about greasing using the 3% molybdenum grease. He works the machine hard. Big bucket strains it. All the pins and bushings are getting loose. Can't keep the grease in the bushings on a hot day. Pump drive issues until we started using synthetic 85W90. Change the synthetic every 1000 hours. Pumps are showing their hours in reduced cycle speed. Hard to keep the pumps sealed to the pump drive. Many, many other issues from high heat(I shot the sheet metal on top of the house last summer on a 92* day with an IR thermometer, sheet metal was 165*). Every seal, o ring, and hydraulic cylinder is starting to leak. Cooling fan pump and motor have been done. Every time I replace an o ring, Viton goes back in. House bearing is getting loose. Will a Cat machine hold up better? All our dozers are Cat. Numerous sensor and wiring issues with them. Especially the four cylinder engine models(D6N, D5K, etc.) Lost count of how many pitch sensors and harnesses have been installed on the latest D6N under warranty. Latest D6T is 3 years old and 4800 hours. After the initial round of issues, its been pretty trouble free. But we're skeptical(tier 4 final). Like to keep the dozers to 10K+ hours. Cat's service here is second to none. Deere struggles(lots of guessing and part changing). We use SIS and ET but not real proficient. Haven't pulled the trigger on Serviceadvisor. All the pipe crew loaders are Deere. Is Cat getting their electrical system issues ironed out with the latest machines? Cat mechanics have talked about how many computers the new excavators use. Don't need a production machine down often. We don't try to keep spare machines around. Like to keep the excavators to 10K hours, and figure a Cat machine pins and bushings would hold up better. We have two new PC360s and the operator is not interested in one(I asked him one day this spring after a full day in one if he was going to commandeer it, he said absolutely not). Not balanced right and rough hydraulics. Their good pipe machines. though. Not afraid to go back with Deere, but it will not be kept past 5K hours. I'm just the mechanic, the one who spends all day solving problems.
For what it's worth I have an '11 321DL with 6850 hrs on the clock and the pins and bushings are still tight considering the years and use. This machine spent it's first 1500 hrs as a rental machine in the Rental Store fleet, the remaining 5400 hrs we have logged. The machine is greased daily, sometimes twice or 3 times a day depending on what it's doing. I plan on running this hoe another 2 years/3K hrs before I get rid of it.
I give the 336E a solid thumbs up. Had two injector replaced @3k hours because computer said "mechanical faul on injectors 1&4. Only symptom was light on monitor, even oil samples stayed good. Waited 1k hours before having the changed. Only unknown was having to take DPF off at 5k hours, and have it cleaned. It was spotless, but, Cat puts a 5k hour clock on the system. As for grease running out, you're using the wrong grease.
Reading the OP that was also my first thought. To the OP. What grease are you running..?
I'm a mechanic for a contracting company in Charlotte NC. We have 4 2018 cat 335 and 6 2019 CAT 325s. They dont have a lot of hours on them yet but our operators put the them through HELL and they stand up well to the abuse so far. I have to constantly check machines because our operators dont even grease machines. We had one of the new CAT excavators at 500hrs so I went to do a service on it and looked, factory grease came out whenever I added grease to the joints. Sad really but the machine was still tight and no slop or play anywhere. We load trucks constantly and the new cat machines are used for removing the new dirt out when we come in to get everything to grade. They run them 8+ hours a day, 6 days a week and I have yet to get a call about any of the new cat machines we have. Now the d6 dozer we have, jesus the electronic issues we have had with that thing. Everytime I turn around I'm calling cat for electrical issues and they have to come out and plug in their computer and look it over. 2 harnesses have been installed since it was under warranty and multiple sensors. I hope this helps some and I can post back in 6 months time and by then our new machines will have around 1k-2k hours on them and let you know how they're holding up. The new CAT wheel loaders are amazing also. All our pipe crews use the new CAT wheel loaders. All of the others we own are old Volvo L70Es.