Toolcat 5600 Makes Life Easier for City Employees
Harold Jones, Public Works operations manager (left) and Kris Thomas, landscape director, like the versatility of the Toolcat 5600.
In Dalton, Georgia, the carpet capital of the world, Public Works employees have rolled out the red carpet for a new, one-of-a-kind, worksaving machine.
“Once we saw the Toolcat™ 5600 utility work machine from Bobcat Company we knew we wanted one, ” says Harold Jones, Public Works operations manager. “It replaced a common type of utility vehicle that we used for years. The 5600, with its attachment options, has so much more versatility, plus it can carry more material and does a much better job working in soft-ground conditions. The Toolcat unit is so far ahead of what we had been operating.”
Adds Kris Thomas, landscape director for this north Georgia city of 32,000: “The Toolcat 5600 has made life a lot easier for everyone involved in landscaping and grounds maintenance work. This is one very expandable, very outstanding machine.”
Double Duty for Attachments
Attachment versatility is one feature that caught the attention of Jones and Thomas. The city has a Bobcat® skid-steer loader with a dozen attachments. “The fact that we can use many of the same attachments on the Toolcat 5600 is very important,” says Jones. “We don’t need a set of attachments for each piece of equipment.”
Thomas’ crews have used many of the attachments and report outstanding results.
“I am really pleased with the applications this machine allows us to do and do well,” says Thomas. “For example, we often take pallet forks and a bucket to a landscaping site. We use the pallet forks to off-load trees—including large rootballs—and pallets of sod and then carry these items to the planting site. The bucket does a great job of grading in confined locations. We used to do this work with rakes and shovels. Now our crew can work on the fine details around curbing, water hydrants and flower and shrub beds. The Toolcat 5600 does the finish grading so our men just have to do the touch-up work.”
The Public Works Department regularly uses the 5600 in the 100-acre municipal cemetery to backfill around graves. Previously they used a utility vehicle that would often leave 12- to 14-in.-wide depressions in the grass. “We spent a lot of time going back and filling in our own tracks,” says Thomas. “That’s no longer a problem because the weight distribution on the Toolcat 5600 is so well-centered that we don’t damage turf or leave tire tracks. Plus, the allwheel steer feature allows us to easily maneuver between large headstones and monuments. The terrain in the cemetery is very uneven so we previously had to do a lot of work by hand; other equipment didn’t function very well in this situation.”
All Day, Every Day
The Toolcat 5600 is used about 50 hours a week working in the 400 acres of park and city land maintained by the Public Works Department. “It’s everything we dreamed it would be and more,” notes Thomas. “We are finding more and more uses for the machine every day.
“We actually drive it to many jobsites,” he continues. “With a speed of 18 mph the 5600 does just fine in traffic. The airport, located 12 miles from the center of town, is the only site that we have to trailer the unit. Because it has two seats and an ample sized cargo box, we actually have another truck at our disposal.”
Operators really like the Toolcat 5600, says Jones. “It’s extremely userfriendly. The controls are very handy and we have seen no operator fatigue, even when driving several miles through traffic in town. The favorite feature of our operators is the enclosed cab with heat and air conditioning. It’s the place to be on a hot summer day.”
When the city first looked at the Toolcat unit not everyone was impressed, according to Thomas. There were skeptics who wondered if the machine was heavy enough and if it would stand up to the rigors of the city’s work.
“Bobcat of Chattanooga brought it down for a demo and we put it through several tests,” says Thomas. “For example, we filled the bucket with soil and lifted it as high as we could to fill a dump truck. The loading ability of the machine is outstanding. We were sold.
“Once we started using the Toolcat 5600 on jobs it quickly gained acceptance,” continues Thomas. “Now it’s a high-demand unit. Everyone in our department can attest to its usefulness for municipal tasks. It combines the best features of a skid-steer loader and a small truck. That’s why it is so ideal.”