What brand of telehandler will be best for our farm?

Theswede

Member
Location
Sweden
Like you would imagine from the topic me and my brother have started thinking about buying a telehandler. In Sweden telehandlers are very few and far between, instead the Volvo wheel loaders are common and can be found on almost every farm. This means we have very little input when starting to consider different makes and models of telehandlers. Today we run two 11 ton wheel loaders on the farm, it is basically one primary machine which clocks around 1200 h each year, and then there is a secondary machine which clocks around 5-600 hours every year. Since my brother is getting into his fifties he is starting to get tired of jumping up and down the big wheel loader when mixing silage and doing all small works around the farm. This means we might be looking to trade our primary machine for a telehandler instead. We have been thinking about this for a long time, but we have never gone through with our thoughts because it seems like the telehandlers cant deal with a massive amount of hours compared to the wheel loaders? Am I right or is it just that I don't know enough about the telehandlers? Our L60E is now up on 15000 hours and our L70C is up on 23000 hours, both seem to have ALOT of hours left in them. Are there any telehandlers around with this kind of quality?

The makes we would prefer due to service and availability is Claas, JCB and Case/NH. Are there any other brands that are really good, that we acutally cannot afford to miss? We got a demo of a Case Farmlift 742 coming out in a couple of months, and hopefully we can get a demo of a Claas and JCB as well. What kind of models do you think would suit us? Apart from picking out silage from pits, and doing all round job around the yard it will also be a bit of grain- and onionloading as well as balehandling, both collecting and stacking. I do not think we need more than 7 m boom by the way.

Okay, this was quite a text... I hope you guys can help me out pointing me in the right direction of both brand and models!

Many thanks

//Mattias
 

nick...

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
south norfolk
Jcb are market leaders in most countries so that probably tells you what you want to know.a telehandler will never ever be aswell built as your volvo shovels and certainly won’t do the sort of hours you mention.try them all and buy what you like the most.im sure there is nothing wrong with any brand.
Nick...
 

aidan

Member
Location
Ireland
Like you would imagine from the topic me and my brother have started thinking about buying a telehandler. In Sweden telehandlers are very few and far between, instead the Volvo wheel loaders are common and can be found on almost every farm. This means we have very little input when starting to consider different makes and models of telehandlers. Today we run two 11 ton wheel loaders on the farm, it is basically one primary machine which clocks around 1200 h each year, and then there is a secondary machine which clocks around 5-600 hours every year. Since my brother is getting into his fifties he is starting to get tired of jumping up and down the big wheel loader when mixing silage and doing all small works around the farm. This means we might be looking to trade our primary machine for a telehandler instead. We have been thinking about this for a long time, but we have never gone through with our thoughts because it seems like the telehandlers cant deal with a massive amount of hours compared to the wheel loaders? Am I right or is it just that I don't know enough about the telehandlers? Our L60E is now up on 15000 hours and our L70C is up on 23000 hours, both seem to have ALOT of hours left in them. Are there any telehandlers around with this kind of quality?

The makes we would prefer due to service and availability is Claas, JCB and Case/NH. Are there any other brands that are really good, that we acutally cannot afford to miss? We got a demo of a Case Farmlift 742 coming out in a couple of months, and hopefully we can get a demo of a Claas and JCB as well. What kind of models do you think would suit us? Apart from picking out silage from pits, and doing all round job around the yard it will also be a bit of grain- and onionloading as well as balehandling, both collecting and stacking. I do not think we need more than 7 m boom by the way.

Okay, this was quite a text... I hope you guys can help me out pointing me in the right direction of both brand and models!

Many thanks

//Mattias


From the above there should be some nice Volvo loaders knocking around in Sweden ? Any links to such machines ?
 

Briar

Member
I bought a Kramer 18 months ago to replace two telehandlers. Asked several farmers and service engineers and the then Class scorpions (made by Kramer) were rated highly. Not having gears and the shuttle on the joystick took a bit of getting used to but like it a lot.
 

D14

Member
Like you would imagine from the topic me and my brother have started thinking about buying a telehandler. In Sweden telehandlers are very few and far between, instead the Volvo wheel loaders are common and can be found on almost every farm. This means we have very little input when starting to consider different makes and models of telehandlers. Today we run two 11 ton wheel loaders on the farm, it is basically one primary machine which clocks around 1200 h each year, and then there is a secondary machine which clocks around 5-600 hours every year. Since my brother is getting into his fifties he is starting to get tired of jumping up and down the big wheel loader when mixing silage and doing all small works around the farm. This means we might be looking to trade our primary machine for a telehandler instead. We have been thinking about this for a long time, but we have never gone through with our thoughts because it seems like the telehandlers cant deal with a massive amount of hours compared to the wheel loaders? Am I right or is it just that I don't know enough about the telehandlers? Our L60E is now up on 15000 hours and our L70C is up on 23000 hours, both seem to have ALOT of hours left in them. Are there any telehandlers around with this kind of quality?

The makes we would prefer due to service and availability is Claas, JCB and Case/NH. Are there any other brands that are really good, that we acutally cannot afford to miss? We got a demo of a Case Farmlift 742 coming out in a couple of months, and hopefully we can get a demo of a Claas and JCB as well. What kind of models do you think would suit us? Apart from picking out silage from pits, and doing all round job around the yard it will also be a bit of grain- and onionloading as well as balehandling, both collecting and stacking. I do not think we need more than 7 m boom by the way.

Okay, this was quite a text... I hope you guys can help me out pointing me in the right direction of both brand and models!

Many thanks

//Mattias

To be honest I've never come across a telehandler that will do the hours you want. We do 1000 hours per year and change them when warranty is running out now because whenever we've taken them past warranty they end up costing us a lot. We've had Manitou, JCB, Merlo over the years and they have all had problems past 5000 hours. We have also hired a Kramer over a 12 month period and again same as the others, problems. We have also run a loading shovel for 3 years so have a good comparison.

A telehandler is not made like a loading shovel. Forget the engine and look at the pivot points, bushes, pins, strength in the chassis, axles etc. High houred telehandlers over here are generally retired to a few hours a year, not a 1000 hours. If you buy one after 5 years or so I think you will be disappointed.

The only one recently that looks more heavier built is the new JCB 420 pivot steer but running one to 15,000 hours is a scary thought.
 

Sparkplug

Member
Claas have such a chequered history when it comes to TH, and the latest Liebher manufactured machine has only been in the market a short time, so no history to fall back on. JCB are market leaders in the UK although that does not mean they are the best TH! The reliability of their products is very poor overall when compared to the machines they built in the mid 2000's. If you decide to buy a JCB TH, buy with a long a warranty as you can, and change it as the warranty runs out. With regard to the Case and Claas demos, they would be bottom of the list in the UK, as both suffer low sales volume and poor residual values, New Holland TH or the Case Equivalent have never been very popular in the uk. Whichever TH you buy you will be disappointed compared to the sheer strength and "Grunt" associated with LS, but if you are looking for a more compact easy to enter the cab perhaps a TH maybe acceptable but you will hate the driving position, coming from a central position unless you go to Pivot Steer models - best of luck
 
Like you would imagine from the topic me and my brother have started thinking about buying a telehandler. In Sweden telehandlers are very few and far between, instead the Volvo wheel loaders are common and can be found on almost every farm. This means we have very little input when starting to consider different makes and models of telehandlers. Today we run two 11 ton wheel loaders on the farm, it is basically one primary machine which clocks around 1200 h each year, and then there is a secondary machine which clocks around 5-600 hours every year. Since my brother is getting into his fifties he is starting to get tired of jumping up and down the big wheel loader when mixing silage and doing all small works around the farm. This means we might be looking to trade our primary machine for a telehandler instead. We have been thinking about this for a long time, but we have never gone through with our thoughts because it seems like the telehandlers cant deal with a massive amount of hours compared to the wheel loaders? Am I right or is it just that I don't know enough about the telehandlers? Our L60E is now up on 15000 hours and our L70C is up on 23000 hours, both seem to have ALOT of hours left in them. Are there any telehandlers around with this kind of quality?

The makes we would prefer due to service and availability is Claas, JCB and Case/NH. Are there any other brands that are really good, that we acutally cannot afford to miss? We got a demo of a Case Farmlift 742 coming out in a couple of months, and hopefully we can get a demo of a Claas and JCB as well. What kind of models do you think would suit us? Apart from picking out silage from pits, and doing all round job around the yard it will also be a bit of grain- and onionloading as well as balehandling, both collecting and stacking. I do not think we need more than 7 m boom by the way.

Okay, this was quite a text... I hope you guys can help me out pointing me in the right direction of both brand and models!

Many thanks

//Mattias
I say Claas but the krama version the leibrough is a bit new to market had one on demo preferred the Kramer version which we have had jcb 536/60 and Claas Kramer beats it all the way it was 2007 modal though I’m sure leibrogh and Claas will get there but it could be a couple of years
 

essexpete

Member
Location
Essex
If you are a loading shovel person I imagine most telehandlers will seem poor for real hard loading. The telehandler is a useful piece of kit for multi tasking. I wonder if you could source a straight under 4k hours fairly mainstream marque for half new money and see how you get on?
 

Theswede

Member
Location
Sweden

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