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My old loader had a lever for everything and a young operator asked me why I don't trust the new joystick
I was sitting in the cab of my 1985 Cat 950B last Tuesday when this kid, maybe 22, who runs a new Volvo for a site down the road, asked why I still run a machine with three levers and a clutch. He said his joystick does everything with one hand and he can't picture going back. I told him my loader has 14,000 hours on it and I know exactly what every lever feels like through my gloves, even when the hydraulics get warm and mushy. He laughed and said his screen tells him when something's wrong before it breaks. I get that, but last month my tilt cylinder started weeping and I felt it in the lever two days before any light would have come on. I'm not saying new iron is bad, but there's something about knowing a machine by feel that a screen can't give you. Any of you older guys still running mechanical controls, or have you fully made the jump to joystick and never looked back?
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susan_ward29d ago
Man, I feel you on this one. I run an old Deere with two sticks and no screen in sight, and I can tell when a hose is getting soft just by how the bucket drifts a little. That kid will learn someday that a screen can't feel a warm hydraulic or hear a pump start to whine.
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