I am a newbee to the site, but I need some advice. If you were buying a new finishing dozer would you buy a John Deere 850, Cat D6N, or Komatsu 61EX. I need this dozer to build a compost site?
get a long track. who is your best dealer
I'd be happy with any of the above, like clintm says go with the nearest and best dealer
Thanks. Long track for sure. Best dealer??? Well Cat is good and John Deere is good and Komatsu is fair. I guess komatsu is out.
How many hours a year are you planning on running the machine? I ask this question because I have found through personal experience that a dozer is not exactly a front line piece for me and don't really use mine all that much. I have a case 850h with about 3200 hours and she has performed very well. I would buy something from the auction or used, I don't see much use in brand new iron at this point after doing it for close to 20 years. You can save a ton of money buying something used with low hours. Cat, Deere and Kommie are all fine machines, now check when the next Ritchie brothers is. Regards, CD
If you are working in alot of soft ground i would recomend a lgp unit
What your asking is the ford, dodge, gm debate, they all have their fine points, some like one over the other, some are brand partial and others not, all those listed are great machines, your going to have to make your own decision which to buy and who you want to deal with for parts and repair in the future. I'll second what Colorado digger said about used machines vs new one's, its only new for a day.
Treedoc; Are you aware that the 850 is a size bigger than D6-N or a D61-EX. Most likely the 850 will put you over weight and over width where as the 61 and 6 are just a bit wide but will gross less than 80,000 on most lowboys. However the 850 will do a lot more work. We have all three, all have gave us some trouble but have been good over all . The D61EX-15 we've replaced the constant velocity joint 4 or 5 times in around 7500 hours. The D6-N we've replaced the center balls and pins and rebuild the joints twice on the P.A.T. blade in about 7000 hours. Our 850-C mostly have been electrical shifting problems it has about 10,000 hours.
Chum Duffy. I am aware that the 850 is equal to the D6T and not the D6N or D61-Ex. That being said, these are all large finishing dozers (except for D6T) and I was wondering what most people preferred. It seems most people I have talked to prefer the 700 John Deere as their favorite all round finishing machine if they could only have one machine and one machine only. That seems a bit strange to me. Where I live Cat is King and not one person has told me to buy the D6K a machine I have driven yesterday and really like.