1156versatile - 8/24/2015 04:20

I've run about every color imatoginable as far as skid loaders go. I've never been impressed much with jd skids. When working landscaping and snow removal they gave us problems. Nh weren't too bad, better than the Jd's. Case skids were better yet. The 1845c has to be the absolutely best skid loader ever built as far as reliability goes. If a person doesn't need huge capacity I'd buy one of those in a minute. Very economical and easy to use. Downfall is they weren't the most comfortable cabs come winter. Bobcat were pretty good before they went to all the computerized stuff. If you don't need high lift capacities a good old 863 makes for a good machine. I've rented gehl skids and was very happy with their performance and reliability. I wouldn't be afraid of a gehl at all. I don't remember the number of the last ones we rented for snow removal but they'd out push the , jd, Bobcats, and caterpillar skids we had at the time. Personally my favorite were the original series caterpillar skids. They were very trouble free and had the nicest pilot controls. They had good heaters and sealed cabs for snow removal. With the pilot controls you could get out and actually walk straight after running one for 12-14hrs, unlike with foot controls. The b series caterpillars seemed to have substantially more problems. I owned a 236 a series and other than one hose and a new cable for the hand throttle it never got touched with over 3 thousand hours. I still miss that machine. All the new machines are way over priced in my opinion. When you start talking 50, 60, 90k for a skid loader I'd go buy a small used payload first for what I'd use it for. A person better be able to have it returning income to spend that kind of money on a machine. Otherwise it's just an expensive toy.