Bobcat Banter

If you grew up as I did in a rural community, the coolest big machines you probably remember were for farming and construction. My next-door neighbor had a quarter-section farm, and I could watch him driving tractors, combine harvesters, and the like quite frequently. I had Tonka trucks from back when they were made with metal. I had Matchbox and Ertl tractors. It wasn't an obsession, but it was a pervasive part of playtime most days of my childhood.

I never built a career in agriculture myself. I had a seasonal job and a few one-off things here and there, so I have a little experience with tractors. I can say I much prefer modern hobby farm tractors over an ancient 1970s machine with a stiff clutch and ornery manual transmission I briefly drove when I worked for a greenhouse. "They don't make 'em like they used to" is sometimes a very good thing indeed.

One machine I have never driven, but which fascinated me when I first saw it as an excitable lad of 6 or 7, was the Bobcat skid-steer loader. These machines were cool. It looks like wheels and a seat surrounded by hydraulics, machinery distilled to its basics. Its big trick is turning without any steering wheel, more like a caterpillar track machine than a tractor.

As a student of mechanical design, the linkage system is also a remarkable feat as the hydraulics move the arm so the bucket lifts most vertically, and thus without significantly changing the center of gravity from front to . You can doubtless see why safety cages quickly became standard, though. These little machines can do some crazy stuff.

Now, if you are ever looking for implements for small machines, the bobcat quick attachment system has become a de facto standard for many other tractor and construction machine companies. The very term "bobcat" has become a generic term referring to skid-steer loaders from any manufacturer.

Today, I learned the machine cam to be only when some Minnesotan brothers whose experience with machines and welding combined with a turkey farmer's need to muck out a barn to spark the invention that changed small equipment. Check out this short documentary from Prairie Public Broadcasting for more in this story:

Have you used any of these machines, whether Bobcat brand or otherwise? What about tractors or other equipment which did (or notably didn't) use their quick-attach system? Comment below!