[derikl]

I am going to be going on my own in the spring and i am thinking of a mini skid steer. I am currently a foreman for a landscaping company and we run a dingo 322. I saw a vermeer last winter at a show and it seemed to be a nice unit. I was wondering if anyone had any feedback.

Thanks
Derik

[Dale Wiley]

We own a Vermeer S600, and I highly reccomend the unit.

We tried the Toro,TX, Ditch Witch, . Mostly from rentals on construction projects. I like wheels better than tracks, the Toro TX constantly came off. Ditch Witch was a pain to run, and my guys like walking better.

Vemeer sales and service have been great. Toro did not return our calls, and the Mustang had some engineering problems, I felt.

We have 2 buckets, tiller, trencher, leveler, forks and backhoe for our unit. It was about $ 31K for all that. It was the best thing I could have purchased in the last 5 years. Much better than having seperate powered untis for everything and a lot cheaper that way also.

[derikl]

Dale,
The vermeer seems to be a stronger more well built machine. I have no complaints with the dingo i run, but the vermeer has a higher lift height and capacity. How does the backhoe work out, I read an article in TURF about the dingo and it said the backhoe attachment wasn't very good.

[Dale Wiley]

Most of the attatchments for the Vermeer are made by Woods, and in the case of the backhoe, Bradley. In can be a pain to put on the machine, but my guys have it figured out, as I see it is set on blocks and leaning a certain way, so it is easier to hook up. It has more than enough break out power and digs everything we want it to, which beats anybody digging by hand. The seat kill switch set up is not very well thought out, and the dealers are left to their own devices to retrofit it. They did it to ours, and I see it came into our shop about a month ago, and our foreperson / mechanic re did it to their liking, and it still functions as a seat kill switch.

Having every attatchment makes us a lot more efficent, and we don't have nearly as much capital tied up in individual pieces.

I worked for a Toro distributor for 7 years, and tested prototype equipment for the commercial division for Toro, for 5 of those years. Toro has great commercial products, and the site works series is not a bad product. It was orginally imported as the Dingo by Roger Braswell in NC about 10 years ago, Toro saw its potential and bought Roger out.

They have made some improvements to the machine with things brought over from the commercial lines, but Toro is still primarily a turf equipment company, and they have missed a few things in improving the Dingo units.

My background is in agricultural engineering, so I understand equipment and how it works, and how it is meant to work. Vermeer just set the product up better as far as outfitting it, they have a much deeper and better understanding of the construction business than does Toro, and I am totally pleased with our unit.

I had to go back in and correct my spelling errors, I should stay off the computer at the end of the day.