Running strong after 40-plus years

90-year-old Florida resident still operates his M600 daily

The year was 1966. The Beatles were rocking on the radio. Martin Luther King was leading the civil rights movement across the United States. “Star Trek” made its television debut. The Baltimore Orioles beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. 1966 was also the year the first Melroe Bobcat® loaders made it to the state of Florida.

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M600 owner Billy Barwald.

Now a citrus tree nursery owner in Jacksonville, Fla., Billy Barwald says he was told he was the first Melroe Bobcat customer in the state. Barwald worked in the landscaping business for 50 years before retiring and starting his citrus tree nursery. It was at the Jacksonville Airport in 1966 where he first learned about the Melroe loaders while he and his crew of eight were installing a new landscape.

The Melroe representative who met Barwald that day at the airport instructed him to go to Pilot Equipment Company to see about renting one.

Barwald went to Pilot Equipment Company to learn more about the M600 loader and eventually entered into a rental agreement with the dealership owner.

“Mr. Gulliford agreed to rent it to me for $600 a month,” Barwald says. “After about a week, I got the feel of it. After the second week, I really began to like it. By the end of the month, I was in love with it.

“Eventually I bought the M600 with a backhoe attachment, bucket and pallet fork for under $10,000, and I paid for all of it in a year.”

Barwald mechanized more and more of his landscaping projects, and with the help of his M600, he reduced his labor staff from eight to three men.

Still running four decades later

After 42 years of service, the M600 that Barwald purchased is still running today at the Flying Dragon Citrus Nursery where it is operated on a daily basis.

The 8-acre property contains 2 acres with about a thousand citrus trees that are available to homeowners and landscape contractors.

“I’ve driven the machine myself since 1966,” he says. “It’s been a wonderful piece of equipment. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed using it and what a pleasure it is to have it.”

The M600 unloads citrus trees from trucks when they arrive at the nursery. It can quickly move mulch and dirt with a bucket, and the machine picks up trash with a grapple.

“This is still an extremely versatile piece of equipment,” he says. “I can dig trenches with the backhoe to bury citrus trees, and it handles the trees quite nicely with the pallet fork.

In the 42 years since the M600 was introduced, no one has benefitted more than Billy Barwald, as a professional landscaper and citrus tree producer. The longevity of the M600 demonstrates the Bobcat record for producing the most durable compact equipment in the industry.