A little backstory... Late last year a good friend started a new business scrapping barges, and perhaps one day servicing marine vessels. We've reached a point where we need to purchase some heavy equipment of our own. Primarily a crawler crane capable of 100-120 ton lifts and an excavator. Probably a 300 or slightly larger. So... That brings me to my question. If you needed to purchase these two pieces of equipment, which manufacturer / models would you buy, taking into consideration ease of operation, reliability, availability of spare parts, etc..
So... No one has any opinion at all.
I think maybe I'd split this up into two threads (each piece of eqpt) in their respective forum area. May be some hesitant to post because it can turn into two broad discussions going on at once.
New? Komatsu is pretty hard to beat in these parts, but I'm a big fan of Deere and nothing wrong with the new cats too. Going to be putting a shear on the hoe? I don't know about cranes the operators I've talked to its all personal preference.
It's all about service. Ask around and find out which local dealer will serve you the best. We run case cat and Deere. I prefer komatsu but no service here.
Richie bro's sale! stick to brand names and bring someone knowledgeable in machinery! Just depends what your budget is when it comes to reliability
I considered two sperate threads, but I had hoped it would be easier to consolidate. The new business keeps me pretty busy so I don't have a lot of time to keep up with multiple threads.
I've been operating a rented Komatsu, and frankly I like the machine. But service for them is very limited here as well. I'm leaning towards a Case or an Hitachi.
Agree on all points. Our budget is a concern, but frankly I'm willing to extend a bit if necessary. The excavator is the most critical item at the moment. The Hitachi we've been using has a hydraulic thumb, which helps greatly since we're literally using it for everything, from pulling giant pieces off of the barge to loading the processed steel into roll-off boxes. Right now we're making all of our cuts by torch, but eventually we'll use a shear for all but processing.
I have mainly case trackhoes because of servise (dealer support). We also have a Hitachi - good machine - but NO local dealer support. We use the local Deere dealer for parts on that machine. Case has a nice lease option with all services included, I have in on two units - works good - I know to the penny the cost to run those machines and frankly a 4 year lease just ended, we put an average of 4000 hr on the unit and it was the cheapest hoe I ever ran in the fleet.
well 200+ ton crawlers and "budget" dont really go well together.
I know it sounds like a foreign concept. But it can be done, and planning ahead of time for maintenance and repairs will certainly help the cause.
Komatsu is the best for the money.