Bobcat Co. Caterpillar compact loaders
The use of compact equipment in the landscape industry has become so ubiquitous that it’s easy to convince yourself that these crucial tools have been around forever. case excavator
But perceptions don’t always match realities, and that’s certainly the case when it comes to the fleets of skid-steers, track loaders, mini excavators and the like that are commonplace on many job sites.
The first pieces of compact equipment — born from their relatives in the heavy equipment world — didn’t come into being until the middle of the 20th century, and those debuts were almost exclusively outside of North America. It wasn’t until the late 1950s that these smaller, more maneuverable machines began to appear stateside, with customers in industries such as agriculture and mining first in line to put them through their paces; landscape operators would get in on the fun later.
“I remember using some of the older Bobcat machines with the foot pedals when I first started out. I don’t think they make them any more … but I thought they were pretty nice at the time,” says Greg Kuykendall, the design/build manager with Seiler’s Landscaping in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he’s worked for nearly 25 years. “They made a lot of the stuff we used to do by hand much easier, so we appreciated that.”
Fast forward to today, and those early, bare-bones pieces of equipment are mainly a distant memory. Most major manufacturers now offer full, feature-laden product lines, and many landscape companies — especially those with significant design/build workloads — have fleets of their own that they use in a variety of applications, proof of compact equipment’s popularity and the staying power of the flexibility and versatility they can offer.
And when you talk to product experts from all corners of the industry, they almost universally will tell you the best is yet to come in the compact equipment sector. Whether it’s improved options for alternative power sources, GPS integration, increased remote control choices or the possible integration of autonomous technology, it’s clear the compact equipment space has never offered more to end-users in the landscape industry.
“We’re obviously always open to anything that makes our jobs easier and makes the work more efficient,” says Kuykendall. “Any kind of new technology, new attachments, lighter and more maneuverable machines … that kind of stuff is always going to be attractive.”
It’s probably not much of a surprise that the early iterations of compact equipment— many of which remain in use in landscaping today — were simply smaller, sometimes more basic versions of their ancestors in the heavy equipment sector. Mini excavators, for example, mainly dug holes and trenches. Skid-steers mainly hauled materials.
And truth be told, early advances that eventually became staples in heavy equipment didn’t always trickle down into compact equipment. “The question became whether it was cost-effective and scalable,” says Greg Worley, global marketing professional in Caterpillar’s mini excavator division. “What made sense for larger construction equipment and what customers were looking for there didn’t always make sense for smaller pieces of equipment and those customers.”
That eventually changed, though, mainly because of the natural evolution of the product category and its broader acceptance among end-users.
“The need for technological advances tends to bleed into all (green industry segments) because we — suppliers and manufacturers — are all trying to help alleviate the pain points landscape contractors are experiencing,” says Lee Padgett, a product manager for Takeuchi.
Now the compact equipment sector offers many of the same features and improvements as those found in the heavy equipment that inspired them. A rich menu of attachment options that can assist with a wide variety of design/build tasks are available for skid-steers and mini excavators alike. All feature a full slate of safety options such as rearview cameras. There are numerous options focused on the ease of operation and the comfort of the operator, including features like improved control options and air-conditioned cabs.
“Like a lot of companies, we started off with a good base machine, a good framework to start with, and then have been able to add on and to adjust the machine and really engineer it more for a North American customer and tailor it to their needs,” says Justin Moe, a product manager with Kioti.
End-users like landscape contractors can take much of the credit for many of the advances that have found homes in the compact equipment space. Every manufacturer Landscape Management contacted for this story made a point to emphasize the key role that feedback from customers has played and will continue to play in product development.
As Caterpillar’s Worley put it, “Our marketing tagline is, ‘Inspired by you.’ But for us, that’s a true statement. We want to design and build products that the customer actually wants. You can’t do that if you don’t ask them.”
That mindset was particularly notable in the development of the Cat Next-Gen line of mini excavators — the 301.5 and 301.7 CR and the larger 303.5 CR, 305 CR and 307 CR — Worley notes.
“(With that line), we spent two years traveling the world, talking to customers, talking to dealers, anybody who’s ever … had an opinion about a mini excavator, whether it be an end-user customer or a dealer,” he says. “We asked them … if it all cost the same, why would they buy what they’d buy? What would it do? And if it was a competitive machine — and we went to as many competitors as we went to Caterpillar customers — what does it do differently or better than our machine or what do you need it to do that it doesn’t do today?
“We did two years of market research before we went to our engineers and said, ‘OK, this is the voice of the customer. This is the voice of the dealer. This is what you need to design and build.’”
A similar approach was central to Kioti’s relatively recent move into the world of compact equipment. The company has been a fixture in North America for more than three decades with an extensive lineup of tractors, utility vehicles and zero-turn mowers, but its compact loaders have only been on the market since the end of 2023.
In preparation for that launch and in the years that follow, Moe says input from customers — and prospective customers — played a key role in developing a baseline for those loaders and how they’ve been enhanced ever since.
“We spent a lot of time talking to our dealers, talking to landscapers and people in ag to see how they actually use these machines on a daily basis,” he says. “We wanted to know if that aligned with our expectations of how they’d use the machines or if they were using them in a different way from what we expected. From there, we’ve been able to readjust, go back and reengineer things to make sure what we were delivering was meeting needs.”
First Green Industries is a manufacturer of all-electric, zero-emission loaders that has found dealer and customer input vital as its products have made headway in industries such as agriculture and mining, with a growing footprint in the landscape space, especially for its MiniZ line of compact loaders.
Marcus Suess, the company’s chief operating officer, noted one instance where a suggestion from a customer had an almost immediate effect on the product development and improvement process.
“We make our machines to be as quiet as possible, but we had a customer who said our equipment was almost too quiet,” Suess says. “They said other operators working around the equipment wouldn’t know when the machine was coming up behind them. Of course, with our equipment in reverse, we have a standard alert beacon … but they asked if there could be an option to turn that on regardless of the direction the machine goes. “We were able to get a beta version of that feature to them within a few weeks where they just clicked on the hard mount display to turn that feature on or off. They liked it … and just a few weeks after that we had a worldwide update available for that option.”
So, what kind of advances and technological improvements should landscape contractors and lawn care professionals expect to see when they’re shopping for a new piece of compact equipment or simply browsing the trade show floor at an event like Equip Exposition?
Most industry experts seem to agree that the same popular technological advances that have made their way into other segments of society — think electric vehicles, GPS capabilities on your phone or the ability to remotely check on your home from thousands of miles away — are also front and center in the compact equipment space.
For example, most manufacturers have their own proprietary telemetry systems that track machine location and performance. At Takeuchi, they call it Takeuchi Fleet Management (TFM), a system that provides technical information on machine health and condition, run time (hours) and machine location, as well as remote diagnostics, scheduled maintenance reminders and customizable alert settings. TFM can also geofence machines to protect them from possible theft.
“Owners don’t have to manually track when maintenance needs to happen, and they can have the peace of mind knowing their machines are exactly where they should be,” says Takeuchi’s Padgett.
Caterpillar takes a big-picture approach to technological advances in their machines.
“Basically, customers want a machine with the maximum number of capabilities to meet their requirements in the smallest package possible,” Worley says. “That becomes the challenge our engineers take on to meet those expectations.”
In the Cat Next-Gen mini excavators, that’s manifested itself in advances such as adjustable dig speeds, improved joystick controls and cruise control features. Similar features can be found all along the company’s deep product line that also includes compact track and skid-steer loaders.
But the advances at Caterpillar don’t end with all the modern technologies operators would expect. Worley says the company’s engineers have paid special attention to matters of safety and operator comfort as well, and those changes can pay dividends outside of the cab.
“Safety, comfort and ease of use are as much about employee retention and attracting new workers as anything,” he says. “If you want to attract and retain good employees, you need to give them a machine they feel comfortable in. We can’t expect customers to pay what these machines cost and then expect them to sit on a brick while operating it. We’ve really paid attention to these areas, and I know customers can tell that every day they use the machine.”
What’s next for compact equipment over the coming 10 to 15 years? Takeuchi’s Padgett predicts continued innovations and variety in attachments available for compact equipment. He also says improved machine controls will become the rule and not the exception.
“Machine controls help operators quickly, easily and accurately position their machines, check grade, automate equipment functions and collect data,” Padgett says.
Kioti’s Moe echoes Padgett on increased integration of machine controls into the compact equipment sector. “Things such as automatic grade and things like that are becoming more common within the industry and have come from the larger equipment space,” he says.
Padgett is also bullish on more old-school advancements when it comes to cab design.
“Takeuchi’s machines often have cabs with automotive-style interiors that keep operators comfortable behind the controls longer, increasing productivity,” he says. “These tricked-out cabs have been put into use on larger heavy equipment for a while, and they are now becoming must-haves on compact machines as well.”
At First Green, Suess says the focus will be on advances in both battery technology and increased options for charging those batteries, including solar.
“Battery technology is moving at light speed,” he says. “You’re seeing more battery density fitting into the same packs. I also think you’ll see more solar charging, so operators will be able to outfit a truck or trailer with a solar charger that will be cheaper and way more efficient.”
And while Worley predicts improved technologies and alternative power sources will be top of mind for the Caterpillar team, they won’t let that distract them from making sure the bottom-line effectiveness of their compact equipment products remains the priority.
“I think what we will see is that grade-accuracy technology become more of a standard on the machines,” Worley says. “I believe there will be alternative fuel sources. Can’t tell you what that’s going to be, but I believe there will be carbon neutral solutions of one kind or the other, or even improved power technology that meets all the goals of sustainability and customer expectations.”
“At the end of the day, though, I think this equipment will still do what it’s always done,” he says. “They’ll still have a boom stick and a bucket. It’ll still have a track. It will still dig holes. That’s what customers will expect.”
Scott Hollister is the editor-in-chief of Landscape Management magazine. Hollister, a graduate of Baker University, previously spent 26 years as the editor-in-chief of Golf Course Management (GCM) magazine, a publication of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA). Prior to his career at GCSAA, he was the sports editor for the Olathe Daily News. Scott is also a past president of the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association (TOCA), and himself has won numerous TOCA awards over the years. He also serves as a stringer for Major League Baseball and is a member of the Golf Writers Association of America.
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