Letter to the Editor
Letter to the Editor:
As a long time subscriber of you publication, Compact Equipment, I have found the information quite informative and balanced. When I opened your latest issue that covered basic specs on skid steer loaders, compact track loaders and mini excavators, I saw a glaring error with the specs on both types of Bobcat loaders. One of the specs said it was covering the height to hinge pin of our loaders, but instead of using that spec, it looks like you are using the number for our dump clearance. I am sure that you know the difference but please let me go over it.
The height to hinge pin is the distance from the ground level to the center of the bucket pivot pin at full height. This measurement comes into play when you are trying to gauge what size machine you need to purchase to load over the side of your dump trucks, load hay bales in your barn and so on. The dump clearance is the distance from ground level to the cutting edge of the bucket at full lift height and at full bucket roll out. This is also important when evaluating machines for loading into dump trucks but is used less often.
An example of this is that you show our Bobcat T870, the largest track loader in the industry, as having a height to hinge pin of only 9 ft, 4 in. which would be too short to load any but the smallest single axle dump trucks when in fact it has a height to hinge of 12 ft. This is as high or higher than many full size wheel loaders and is able to load into any dump truck. According to your publication some of our models would barely load a wheelbarrow.
As your publication is seen as one of best sources for information in our industry, having accurate information is very important to our customer base when they look to make their buying decisions. With the current information, a number of prospective customers may rule out the Bobcat loaders because they may falsely believe that they will not work in their application. I would greatly appreciate it if you could correct this information in an upcoming edition. I know it is a great inconvenience to you, but it would be the right thing to do. Thanks in advance for your help.
Mike Allen
Bobcat of St. Louis/Bobcat of Nashville
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mike, thanks for the letter. It’s greatly appreciated when our readers let us know when something has slipped through the cracks. Bobcat Co. provided the spec information you saw in our June issue, but we should have noticed something was wrong and double checked ourselves. Thanks for the letter and below are the revised spec tables.
