AN we think new farm equipemnt is costly!!!!

JD Seller · Mar 28, 2018

I just talked to a old classmate of mine. I had kind of lost track of him for a number of years. We caught up with each other a few years ago. His son and him run an excavating business. They have over 100 employees. They do a lot of development dirt work. They just took delivery of two Cat scrapers. The big double engine ones. $1,650,000 each!!!! Over three million dollars on the two scrapers. They own ten older ones too. WOW.

I can't get my mind around those kind of numbers. I do not see how you could ever pay for them. Makes farm equipment look cheap. LOL

Philip d · Mar 28, 2018

Oh I hear ya,it's no wonder they have to charge so much for jobs with an overhead like that.

sms · Mar 28, 2018

My friend has gravel pits, not huge, the loaders with 5-6 yard buckets are around $500,000. He has 5 or 6. He also does trucking/deliveries, what is a new triaxle now about $180,000? And he does excavating, three excavators 200 size and larger and several smaller ones, along with dozers and everything else.

8850dave · Mar 28, 2018

Well at least they can use those scrapers more days in the year than we use our harvesting equipment.

Mike(NEOhio) · Mar 28, 2018

Isn't most large equipment leased these days? Talking to a friend in the excavating business once and he said with the cost the large machines weren't sold but leased from the manufacturers. This was ever fifteen years ago.

Welding man · Mar 28, 2018

I took a cylinder head to my local machine shop Friday.Owner is a good friend of mine. He is rebuilding an Engine out of a CAT D11. I said to him, I'll bet that is a cheap rebuild. He said well yes but I'm only charging a little more than half what the CAT dealer wanted. My bill will be close to $60,000. Cat wanted over a $100,000 for an engine rebuild. Hard for me to grasp that one too.

matthies · Mar 28, 2018

Was at the Cat dealer yesterday making an appointment for them to come to my work and help us with a project. Said they have been busy all winter rebuilding machines. They had two of the two engine scrappers like mentioned, rebuilt from front to back engines, trans, final drives. 150-200 K for each.

jon f mn · Mar 28, 2018

Pound for pound, probly a lot less than most farm machinery.

DoubleO7 · Mar 28, 2018

The buyers are not limited to the largest machine at the top of the line up offered.
Buying one to do the work of three is evidently advantageous to some that have the need.

Goose · Mar 28, 2018

My cousin owns about a half dozen of those. When his business first got big enough that he was interested in one, Cat flew him to their HQ at their expense to give him a sales pitch.

Financing on them, at least in the Midwest and northern states, is structured so there are no payments due from November through February when the machines will probably be idle.

steve19438 · Mar 28, 2018

if he is big enough to employ 100 people he will probably make the 3mil up on one job.

carvel minne farmer · Mar 28, 2018

good morning jd, now you know why Ritchie bros. shares are at $27.00 each. a lot of mid size and even bigger construction co.s up here do there equipment buying at Ritchie's. now just imagine the depreciation on those babys by the end of the first year :lol:

Traditional Farmer · Mar 28, 2018

Yea but he'll make about 20X an hour more than most farmers will with any piece of farm equipment they own.

ptfarmer · Mar 28, 2018

The construction company I used to work for had a few Caterpillar scrapers. They had Caterpillar rebuild them, it was a whole lot cheaper than buying a new one. When they rebuild them they take them completely apart, and rebuild every system.

hydro70guy · Mar 28, 2018

Just figure how many dollars we have in the field when combining for someone. Combine, tractor and auger wagon plus 2 semis and a service truck with fuel trailer. Thats pushing over a $1,000,000 and thats just a 3 person outfit.

john in la · Mar 28, 2018

And 650,000 of it was because it has CAT on the hood. LOL!!!!

Think they are expensive.
Consider a large crane in the 1000+ ton range. The one in the picture is a 2500 ton unit.
It goes on a job; takes days to set up; makes 1 or 2 big lifts; and takes days to take apart.
Now think of the price in a per lift bases.
Place I worked for had a crane in this size range that took over 100 trucks just to haul the entire set up down the road.

Billy NY · Mar 28, 2018

And that one is small compared to the one that was in Elizabeth NJ in '99-'00 at the refinery. The counter weight was like a 10 story building, all giant concrete blocks. Took 8 months to set up for one pick. I believe it was a Lampson crane.
If anyone has ever seen the opening credits for the Soprano's, when "Tony" is on his way home from Manhattan, they shot footage from the NJ TPKE and you can see the horizontal cable for miles. Thing is, that is not the way to where he was supposed to live in that series,but it was my commute home for years. I was able to get close to it one day, and I thought a mobile 500 ton hydraulic crane was a big crane, think again LOL !
Lampson Big Blue

flying belgian · Mar 28, 2018

That's a heck of a price for sure. Tools of the trade. Think about the income potential for each of them machines compared to our farm equip though. Every hour that machine is running it is making money. Last 4 yrs. my farm equip is making $0/hour when running.

Billy NY · Mar 28, 2018

Place I worked at in the 90's had mostly caterpillar equipment, some of it 30 years old, like the 627 scrapers, open station, 30 cu yard bowls in them. The 637's are noticeably larger, but beyond that model, quarry or mass excavation size. They certainly did not want to buy new even then. Company made decent money on their jobs with most of the iron being paid off. I've run, hauled over the road, and push loaded 627's. I've also run Terex TS-14's or older Euclids with detroit engines. The green ones were fine, but the 627's will out produce them from what I could tell. Worst thing is when you get operators that don't have much experience and do not know how to load the bowl by taking small cuts over longer distances, instead gouging out the cut deep in short distances.

john in la · Mar 28, 2018

The crane in the picture stands over 600 feet tall and has a counter weight of 4,000,000 pounds.
It has the ability to pick up something; boom up to get the load closer; drop the counter weight; swing around in a confined space; and pick up a different counter weight so it can boom down and set the load.

Tom OConnor · Mar 28, 2018

JD,

To get real serious about spending money the marine and aircraft companies are right up there. If you have more money to spend they have more boat and airplane to sell you.
They always say about airplanes that it is no more than a tube that goes through the air and sucks up cash and the bigger the tube and the faster it goes the more cash you will need.

Dean · Mar 28, 2018

Wow!

I did not think that anyone was using scrapers these days.

I thought that everyone was using track hoes and dump trucks, except in rare circumstances.

That said, I have fond memories of watching pans help build the interstate highways when I was small.

Dean

Dean · Mar 28, 2018

Quite an operation, John.

In one of my previous lives in the mid 1990s, I was at the construction site of a new mini (steel) mill.

Plant was built from the ground up in ground once used to grow tobacco. Great experience.

Two large Matiwok (SP?) track cranes were brought in to lift and set the 240,000 Lb. trolley for the 350 ton melt shop gantry crane. The lift required preparation of the site, lifting the structure about 95' vertical, displacing 20' or so, and setting the load onto the tracks of the already completed structure.

I'm an engineer and spent years in computer and automotive design, but watching those men set-up and perform that lift was fascinating. Watching other crews haul, move and place the much more heavy electrical transformers even more so. Those men knew what they were doing.

Dean

Billy NY · Mar 28, 2018

Amazing what they can do with these, I had never seen anything like it before, was something to see one of these up close.

Hoenes · Mar 28, 2018

Big blue was the crane that was making the pick at Brewer Stadium when things went horribly wrong. Roof section weighing around 900,000. Wasn't the crane's fault, just several bad "judgement calls."

oldtanker · Mar 28, 2018

(quoted from post at 19:19:47 03/28/18) Big blue was the crane that was making the pick at Brewer Stadium when things went horribly wrong. Roof section weighing around 900,000. Wasn't the crane's fault, just several bad "judgement calls."

The word I got from a guy who was on site at the Brewer Stadium was that a construction superintendent bullied the operator into making the lift when at best conditions marginal.

Just watched something about one of the heavy lift track cranes costing 20,000 a day just sitting there. Things sure add up in a hurry.

One of Cats biggest loaders is near 5 million new. They have one on machinery trader for 2.5 million, 2012 model with 20, 000 plus hours on the clock :shock: !

Rick

AN we think new farm equipemnt is costly!!!!

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