TimAllenEquipment: Where in Wisconsin were we?

In an interesting twist, we’re just getting back from Northwoods Wisconsin. The Case Equipment Tomahawk Customer Center to be exact.

https://www.casece.com/northamerica/en-us/inside-case/customer-centers/tomahawk-customer-center/experience

Staying current, watching trends, and learning more about the equipment we rent to you is an ongoing concern. When an opportunity presents itself to learn more, we go there. This trip was pretty epic.

Did you know a 109,000# excavator won’t dig through permanent-frost? Well I guess it kind of can with one shark fin looking tooth, but forget using a bucket.

I was pretty stunned to see just how much the Case equipment has changed in just 10-15 years. More and more electronically controlled automatic controls (my favorite being “load control” that eases bouncing over obstacles when you are shuttling loads across rough terrain or things like curbs and speed bumps. It allows the hydraulics to absorb the impact instead of holding stiff.

The bull dozer we are considering is way more user friendly to operate than the previous version. A 15 speed transmission that you can shift on the fly with a button is one example. The joystick style 6 way blade control is another. This is more like pilot controls than the levers you might be used to pulling and pushing, which means way less effort, over a long day I can see this saving you a lot of energy and wear and tear on your body.

Some things on the horizon (already being used in the professional operator environment, but not quite rental ready yet) is GPS blade positioning for grading with a bull dozer, and 2D grading for excavators digging trenches. This takes the guess work out and eliminates needing another body to check grade, or you getting on and off the machine to check grade.

Most changes seem to revolve around making you more productive.

Currently the Case equipment we have in our fleet is 2 of the 580M extend-a-hoe, and the 14,000# bull dozer. Look for that to both update and grow over the course of the next year or so.

One last note.

Working in 0-20deg. temps isn’t fun, we’ve got it pretty good in our area in my opinion.

-Tim-