If you’re considering adding a wheeled machine to your farm fleet, you may be stuck on what size or what type of equipment is best for your operation. There are several differences, and many similarities, between skid steers and compact wheel loaders. Here are a few questions to help you make the right equipment decisions for your farm.

Bucket shapes are different for skid steer loaders and compact wheel loaders because they’re optimized for each machine’s capability. If you compare the bucket capacity on a skid steer to a compact wheel loader, in general you'll find that you can increase your load carrying capacity by up to 70% with a compact wheel loader. 

Another thing to consider with material type is safety. On the farm, your tasks can get slippery and even unpleasant. When you step out of a machine, what are you potentially stepping into? Think about your preferences for safely entering and exiting a piece of equipment every day.

Remember to take lift height into consideration if you’ll be loading materials frequently. Feed bags, fertilizer, mixing feed, loading hoppers, even clearing snow around the barns – what are the heights and bucket capacities you estimate you’ll need for these tasks? A compact wheel loader will have an advantage on lift height as well as visibility. The higher seating position of a compact wheel loader gives you a different perspective than the enclosed cab of a skid steer loader. 

The great news is that maintenance costs for skid steers and compact wheel loaders are about the same. Both are typically utility based machine. Cat® skid steer and compact wheel loaders run the same engine and have the same oil change intervals.

At Caterpillar, we focus on service access, long life coolant, and long life hydraulic oil to give our customers the lowest maintenance cost and longest service intervals possible, because we know you have work to get done – day in and day out.

Once you work through these questions and considerations, contact your local Cat dealer to see each piece of equipment up close and put them to the test with a demo. Either way you go, you’ll end up with unmatched dealer support and a machine that’s built for the work you do on the farm.