Combines Cat service

Their service trucks look like brinks truck, because thats about how much the bill is when they get done. lOl

Amusing, but a tad inaccurate. The way I see it, you may spend about as much on a Cat walker as on a John Deere walker over the life of the machine. The difference is that you'll spend some every year on a Deere, whereas you could get 5 years out of the Cat before spending anything for major repairs that you already did on the Deere in the first 5 years. The Cat has the longevity, there is no doubt, but the 1000-1500 hour repairs may be more costly than those on the Deere at that time. But you also didn't have all the small things that end up costing big $$$ every year on the JD. Here, Cat service is better and cheaper than service from JD. And with a better combine, the choice is pretty clear.

Are you talking from personal experiance sirIJ

Were your bills highIJ

Haven't actually kept records on the two in a 5 year period to compare, no, but that would prove very revealing. Just my impression of the two. I run a small combine repair business in ND and get to work on all colors, and the JD's seem to need things with greater frequency. Not that they break down, they're quite reliable machines, largely. But when it comes to the longevity of major components, they are worse than most. Some other colors, like the Cat, can go several seasons before needing repairs beyond routine maintenance. Here we run corn, soybeans, edible beans, canola, wheat, and some barley, so machines tend to wear out faster and sooner than in a pure corn or corn_soy operation. So no, I don't have purely empirical data, just experience.