I'm buying a new CTL for general ranch work and some brush shearing. I've narrowed down my choices to the Cat 299c and the Takeuchi TL250 and its clones sold by Gehl (CTL85) and Mustang (MTL325). I haven't looked at the Tak, Gehl, and Mustang individually. Does anyone here know what differences exist between them, if any? BTW, the machine will be fully loaded; cab/air/high-flow. If there are no obvious differences, I'll see which dealer seems best, and try to negotiate the best deal with them, and then compare that deal to the Cat.
I own a tak and the cat you mentioned. I would say for the money go with the tak. You will pat extra for the yellow paint and the Cat stickers. As far as the tak, gehl, mustang. I would still say the Tak. The tak front door/window opens up over your head allowing you to run with it opened or clesed. For me that is a great feature. The gehl and mustang have regular style doors. I don't think there are any major differences other than the paint and stickers
bonanno23, thanks for the reply. The local Cat dealer is supposed to get more 299c units this week. I want to run one to see how much more comfortable the Cat is vs the Tak. I'll be running in cattle pastures, and they tend to be a little rough. Do you find your 299c to be way more comfortable than the Tak when on rough terrain?
The 299 is def smoother, but lacks in pushing power. What exactly will you be doing with the machine?
I am going to put a Fecon buncher shear and a sprayer on it. That way I can cut brush, spray herbicide on the stump while it's still wet, and carry multiple plants to a burn pile; all in one operation. We have three ranches, and at one ranch we have a Cat 262B with a shear and a separate grapple. With the new setup, there will be no attachment swapping. It will also be used for gravel road repair/grading, stock tank cleanout, forklift duties, and whatever it does better than a farm tractor.
sounds cool. I don't have ranches were I'm from ( Long Island NY ) I would say give both try and see what machine works best for you. With the economy in the crapper, I'm sure the dealers would give you more than enough time to test out the products.
I know some here really like Tak. I was looking at some used units advertised on the internet and noticed two things: 1) several used units with 10, 20, 30 hours. Sounds like the units failed to meet the buyers expectations? 2) very low prices for units with 400, 800, 1200, etc. hours. Either used units are very good buys, or there is very little trade in value on Tak loaders. Is this because they are little known and used buyers are afraid, or because they are worn out with a thousand hours? Please don't take this as an attack on Tak, I'm just surprised at what I've seen and wonder why. thanks, Ken
Repos.
Obviously I don't know for sure why they were traded in. But theres no way you can learn something in 10 hours. Theres a better chance that they were either a demo machine, repo like the last guy said or maybe someone bought something thing they'd have more work than the actually do. I'm not sure about trade values. A cat is a cat. Its yellow and says cat on it. People get excited when they can say the own a cat. I've notices all machine seem to be way down in price as well. The tak has been around longer than the cat track machines so there are plenty of places the have knowledge on them. I only own a few cat skid-steers because the rest of our machines are cat and the dealer mad us offer that we couldn't refuse. otherwise they are way to expensive to own. to do an undercariage on a tak is around $7,000. same job on a cat is a little under $20,000
That's nuts! You need to visit your local ASV dealer. I can buy an entire undercarriage package from my local dealer for right at around $7,000.00. The kit comes fully assembled on a pallet with the tracks, wheels, rails, sprockets, etc.so that all I need to do is slide it onto the axles. ASV has a package for every model of machine they sell and I am 100% sure none of them will cost you $20k.
That price was with Cat dealer doing the job. there is no way in the world you are getting a full undercariage including tracks for a 287 for $7000. the tracks alone are $3500 each. I own 5 287BII and 2 297C machines and know the prices very well. If don't mind let me know where I can get all those parts for that price and I'll stock my warehouse tomorrow. By the way, it was 5am when I posted my latest comment and forgot the original post was concerning a 299C which has a completely different undercariage than the 257-297C. so to the original poster, disregard most of my comment.
You're right. I was talking about my RC50. the dealer actually quoted me a price of $6,762.60 for the complete kit. I asked what the price was on the RC100 since it uses the same undercarriage as your 287 and the cost for the list price for the package is $11,988. Here is a picture of the package that he sent to me.
Thats pretty cool. when we do ours we get boxes of the rollers and bolts, bearings, etc. I like it all together like that. We do the work ourselves, but 2 years ago there was a recall and Cat gave us a print out of what it would have cost with labor and it was a few hundred shy of $20,000
$20k is nuts. I bet that is almost half the price of the machine when you can get an entire assembly for a fraction of the cost. I did the math and if you put one of these packages on your 287 and replaced the entire undercarriage again at 1500 your cost would be $7.99 per hour and $5.99 per hour at 2000hrs. My RC50 would cost me $4.51 per hour at 1500hrs and $3.38 per hour if I replaced the whole undercarriage at 2000 hours.
I got a ctl 80 with 1400 hrs on it and it has rattled itself apart Structural cracks. Its just built cheap thats the problem please let me know if the 299 is better im seriously looking for a new one
$20,000 is not even a 1/3 of the cost of a 287C. When you think about it, a large tire machine is around $40,000. add $20,000 and you can get a large track machine. We can't even begin to try and figure out the costs per hour to run track skidsteers. some days they are on dirt others they're on pavement or concrete. We've already traded in 2 of our 287Cs with over 2500 hrs. I think we have over 8 skids now and they are all used everyday all day long. We absolutely get out moneys worth.