Hi all I came across this forum while researching for Mining and Construction equipments. I saw that most of you have experience in using these equipments. What better way to know the company than ask the users of its products? I work for an asset management firm and we are currently researching Equipment manufacturers like Caterpillar, Komatsu, Hitachi, Deere etc... I would like to know your views on the following areas, if possible with supporting data or personal experience: 1. What is it that separates Caterpillar from the rest of the players? - is it their brand, their dealer network, their products, their quality.... - I mean it is a combination of the above, but what is it that CAT is doing differently that the others are not able to push CAT from its position Downtime of CAT vs. the others - company claims their record is 95% rate to ""get the spare parts and make the machine up and running within 24 hours" - how true is it in reality? 2. Safety of CAT products vs. the others - - Firstly how important is safety features of these equipments, because I was told by one of the company officials that use these equipments, that safety is not their top priority in selecting an equipment manufacturer. - How much better are the safety features of CAT products 3. Maintenance of CAT vs. others 4. Financing provided by CAT vs. others - How easy is it to get financing? How aggressive is CAT in providing financing. Bottomline is How is CAT different from its competitors It would be great if i could some of your views on the above aspects. Thanks
well it is what my daddy had and his daddy before him.....
if its not a CAT its a DOG sorry, you've head the nail on the head with most of your points, they arent to cheapest but the parts and backup from their dealers is second to none (in Oz anyway)
The other day my boss & I were looking at a document listing all the current issues being worked by the factory on a certain model of machine, what stage the particular project was at, and the estimated time to have the fix into production. As he said, and I agree with him, "that's what separates Cat from the rest".
In one word - Yes.
Quality - availabilty - no one can come close to Cat. Bet 90% of end users will tell you the same. It will be an arguement but the $ will prove it.
A name. Quality of machines is no different among the big 3. Deeres and Komatsus maybe be a little cheaper but they haven't got the ego feeding that Cat can do with their machines. Cat's marketing in the past and current has people convinced that to be a real man you need to run Cats to the point that people are blind to their faults when they do show up. In areas where Finning is the Cat dealership the dealership is the biggest drawback. In essence its a name and marketing and not much else.
I don't know about Canadians Cat machines, but the Cats in the USA is alot better quality! The Komats I've been around would be converted to Cat parts when replacement was needed, like pins and bushings on bachoes sticks, buckets, booms, starters, undercarriage and etc. I've been around all three mfgs and the bills are alot less on the Cat stuff. Anyway thats what the records show. Also the dealership has nothing to do with the quality of the machine. I will agree there is some dealerships that leave alot to be desired but that is also the same for all mfgs dealers and doesn't have anything to do with the quality. Also your local salesman has alot to do with the performance of the dealer. Make sure he's doing his job for you and supports you.
To speak of specific machines I'll tell what we're finding out here. This is Alberta specific. 20-50 ton excavators The market is about 40-50% Deere/Hitachi. Komatsu 10-20%. Cat 10-20%. The reasons. Initial price is more on the Cats and operating costs tend to be more. Dozers D5 size and under. 60% Deere, 30% Cat, 10% Komatsu. The reasons. Again initial prices on the others tend to be less than Cat. Somewhat simpler machines than Cat and cheaper maintenance. Dozers D6 size. 60% Cat, 20-30% Deere, 10% Komatsu. A lot of guys I've talked to would prefer to run an 850 over a 6 because Deere has a good 3-way but the guys in the oilfield want only Cat. Dozers above D6 size This is Cats biggest domination. Deere doesn't have a dozer over their 850 size, well they do but we won't go there... Komatsu builds a good dozer and would sell a lot more machines but its the oilfield thing again, if you don't run Cat you don't get the job. I've noticed a huge difference in auction prices on Komatsu dozers between the US and Canada. They bring more here. Rock Trucks 10 years ago mostly Terex, than Volvo and now it seems like Cat is making a reemergence. Don't know what changed and I won't hazzard a guess at market percentages Wheel Loaders 40% Deere, 35% Cat, 10% Komatsu, remaining 15% Case and Volvo. Kawasaki, Hyundai, Daewoo, etc have little to no presence here. The % would higher for Cats competition on the smaller end and higher for Cat on the bigger units. The reasons are initial prices on Deeres and Komatsus tend to be less. On the smaller units the overall operating costs in the long run tend to be cheaper than Cat as well. Komatsu loaders bring much more on Canadian auctions vs USA auctions. Graders local road maintenance Volvo 40%, 35% Deere, 25% Cat. This still stems back to before Volvo bought out Champion. Champion was cheaper to buy, operate, and maintain. In the past in most of western Canada you didn't have a proper snow plow unless you had a Champion Snow Fighter. Deere's market was non-existent before they came out with the G series. They took market share mostly from Volvo but some from Cat. Graders road construction. Ever since the venerable 14G this has been Cats market. Deere has put a very small dent in it with their large G series units but not much. Its because for years the only good grader for road construction has been the 14 and if Cat doesn't mess up it will take MANY years of someone else building a SUPERIOR product to break into it successfully. Building a somewhat better product won't do it because the 14 is a legend.
Hi Guys, thanks a lot. As I keep reading about CAT, I get more and more confident. Now a few queries from the responses - - When you say that quality is good, could you be more specific about it. For example like the Komatsu or the Volvo machine starts giving up after xx hours of working and CAT goes on smoothly for yy hours without a hitch. - In terms of the support from dealers - How exactly do they support which the other dealers are not able to match up? What kind of proactive or active activities do they do I am just trying to get in deep and more specific in comparison to open ended statements like The dealer network and support is great, or the quality is good etc
Unfortunately what you are asking for is usually the subject of a subjective opinion process than a qualitative measurement one. I had 4 years experience of working in India and I consider that am reasonably familiar with how the mind of the Indian engineer works. The comments below refer to my experience with Caterpillar equipment in the field of open-pit mining rather than construction, by that I mean the larger-size machines. 1. No one can say with conviction that a certain manufacturer's machine will go xx or yy hours without problems unless the maintenance scheme used to care for it is appropriate to the operating and climatic conditions in which the machine is working, and to the available skill levels of operators and maintenance crew. 2. The Maintenance Manual is a starting point not a Bible as many people seem to assume. The Maintenance Interval Schedule and the items that are maintained at each PM intervention has to be tinkered with in order to produce a customized maintenance schedule that will be appropriate to a single operating site. 3. What works for one operating site will in all probability not work for another without some changes to service items and/or frequency. 4. What works on one make of machine may well not work on another brand. 5. What works for one Maintenance Dept full of committed people who are never happy with the status quo and are always striving to get better will in all probability not give the same results in a Maintenance Dept that simply slavishly just copies what the Maintenance Manual says to do at the specified intervals. 6. Without the use of quality lubricants and spare parts any maintenance schedule also falls apart, however good the skill level of the Maintenance Team and the operators may be. 7. Caterpillar has a unique (as far as I know) system for any dealer to get help to solve issues where he (the dealer) has hit a brick wall trying to diagnose a problem. The dealer tech guy plugs the details of the problem into an on-line system called DSN and the factory experts for the particular product in question try to help him work through his problem in order to find a solution. 8. Cat & its dealer network have been active in the area of Contamination Control for more than a decade now. I know of no other manufacturer that puts the effort into trying to convince the machinery market (end users) and oil suppliers of the benefits in component life extension of keeping systems as clean as possible. 9. The quantity of service-related literature produced by Caterpillar is at times mind-boggling. As you can see from most or all of the points above, any particular person or company's view of a machine being "Good" or Bad" can depend to a large extent on factors which are in no way under the control of the equipment manufacturer or even of the dealer who initially supplied the machine.
Coming up in the trade, I noticed that almost all the owner-operators I worked with owned Cat equipment. Most of them took good care of their machines but the attitude that prevailed was that you can rebuild a Cat and you will still have a reliable machine. I can't tell you how many operators I have met working production jobs that have over triple the manufacturers recommended total frame hours on their rigs and ALL owned Cat. None of them had plans of retiring their old dogs either (till the repower debacle). 'Nuff said? Try that with a ??????.
I'd echo that comment. On the subject of large off-highway trucks & wheel loaders the last numbers (and it was a while ago) I saw was that the highest hour machines still working world-wide were:- 777 - 105,000 hours 785 - 134,000 hours 789 - 115,000 hours 793 - 108,000 hours 994 - 85,000 hours Think about how many times those machines will have been rebuilt ..... Cat's Certified Rebuild Program takes a used piece of equipment & rebuilds it from the ground up for around 60% or less of the price of a new machine. After rebuild the machine gets a new Serial Number and a warranty equal to a new machine, usually 1 year for the machine and 2 years for the power train components. That indicates confidence in the product on the part of the factory.
Now I have never heard of that program but am glad you posted it. That is a great program. You learn something new everyday if you try. Just to say something about an earlier post I saw, a man I met had some older 657B's and when I asked how many he was having problems with, he said he had 95% availability. I called BS on that one and asked how he thought he did it. He said the maintenance is performed by factory specs and even if there is no problems with the part, it is changed out at life expectancy. Something to be said for that I guess. I never had that much extra cash but he was serious. Thanks Nige
we imported a bunch of D400EII artic trucks from the UK, they had around 5500hrs on the clock but looked brand new, story goes the company in who ran them buys them new, runs them till 3000hrs then feeds them back into the dealer for a rebuild to get another 3000hr warrenty then back out to work again for 3000hrs, they used to run around 100 of them at any one time Davvinciman, basic idea is if the engine is good for 10 to 12,000hrs and a turbo is good for 8,000 then if you change it out at 6,000 then it won't fail on you before the motor does, we used to change out turbos on our 3126 equipped 950G CAT loaders as they seemed to sh&t themselves at around 6000hrs on the dot we had 5 machines and all of them had 2 turbos changed out before the engine was rebuilt around 16,000hrs
Zactly I have always thought that the materials that made the component had a lot to do with it. Research and testing on mean time before failure is something where Cat always exceeded expectations. I think manufacturers put their research money into different things just like contractors seem to short a job of something to increase their profits. I never thought Cat was really never the biggest innovator but they certainly perfected good ideas that other companies came up with. It's like different grades of steel that have a higher carbon content or oil that has a higher sheer rating. Some things last longer because they are built better. Why would anybody pay for Amsoil if it wasn't at least a little better? The thickness of the hydraulic ram barrel, the links on your controls, materials used for the gear packs in a transmission. All of them make a difference. And I always thought Cat was a manufacturer that downgraded they failure factor like they way they test ladders. If it is rated for 350lbs, then it has to pass putting 1050lbs on it as a test. Nothing is perfect but for the abuse that happens to heavy equipment by not paying attention or just bad habits, but Cat holds up the best I have seen yet. No, I don't sell Cat equipment, work for them or promote them for any other reason than I am a happy end user just waiting for the next round of prosperity. Hopefully, soon.