A300 Helps Save Soil and Toil

Jim Verkuilen and Josh Sage

The Boone County Conservation District had a good reason to buy an all-wheel steer (AWS) loader—to minimize ground disturbance when turning. The fact that the Bobcat® A300 could work circles around the tractor-loader unit that it replaced, while offering a lot more comfort, were valuable bonuses.

“We demo’d the A300 for a week and it was awesome,” says Jim Verkuilen, the district’s maintenance field supervisor based in Belvidere, Ill.

The A300 is used for a wide variety of work in each of the district’s 14 parks (total acreage is 2,700 acres). “We do a lot of brush removal in our Native Prairie Restoration projects, and using a piece of equipment that will not disturb the soil is a must,” says Josh Sage, Habitat Restoration technician. “When you disturb the soil you promote the growth of weeds, and that’s something we don’t want. You can turn the A300 without cutting the ground. In fact, we use all-wheel steer about 90 percent of the time. But, if we’re working in areas where we’re not concerned with damaging the ground, we switch to the skid-steer mode for quicker maneuvering.”

The ability to choose between steering modes isn’t the only feature Verkuilen likes about the A300. “It does the work of ten guys,” he reports. Using a variety of attachments—angle broom, auger, combination bucket, industrial grapple and pallet forks—the crews can work much faster and more efficiently on jobs ranging from dozing, digging, leveling and loading to removing brush, cleaning trails and drilling holes for fence posts and trees.

Verkuilen notes another A300 advantage: “It’s very user-friendly,” he says.

The inching mode for maintaining high torque at low speeds is one example. “It allows us to work with more finesse when we’re handling pallets in areas where there’s little room to maneuver,” he says. “In those cases, the slower you go, the better.”

Other features that make the A300 ideal for Verkuilen and his crews include low-effort joysticks for steering, travel speed and lift, tilt and float control, an enclosed cab with heating and air conditioning and the keyless start system.

“The AWS loader does everything we want it to do,” concludes Verkuilen.