The rollout of the Next Generation Cat D5 Dozer has well and truly begun, with customers in Wales setting the pace. Plant hire and construction firms including Gravelle Plant Hire, Locke Brothers, Hywel Llewellyn Plant Hire and Alun Griffiths (part of the CRH Group) took deliveries from Finning UK & Ireland and quickly put their new machines to work.
It’s been just over a year since Caterpillar launched the all new D5 Dozer, the successor to the popular Cat D6N, and the benefits are already clear to businesses across the UK. The new machine offers superior performance, backed by a broad choice of technology features, so operators can really get the most from their bulldozer.
With harness added weight and horsepower of 170, it is equipped to take on a wide range of dozing and grading tasks. Improvements to the steering, transmission and balance make it easier than ever for operators to perform high quality work more quickly.
One happy customer is Locke Brothers, which bought a new D5 after being impressed with the technology offered as standard and has successfully put it to work. Having purchased its first D4 from Finning in 2004, the D5 marked its first investment in a brand new Dozer. After hiring the machine for a week from Gravelle Plant Hire, who were the first company to purchase the D5 in Wales, Locke Brothers took the plunge and purchased a machine for itself.
“The technology blew competitor models out of the water,” said Keith Locke, Director at Locke Brothers. “The value add from Caterpillar and Finning including the five year, 5000-hour warranty, VisionLink connectivity and a Customer Value Agreement that included five services, sealed the deal. We’ve fallen in love with the D5, it has supported us through extremely busy periods of agriculture work.”
“We’ve chosen Cat Dozers since 1978 when my late father founded the company — and we still love them today,” said Peter Gravelle, Director of Gravelle Plant Hire, the company that took the first D5 delivery in Wales. “We’ve had great driver feedback on the D5, with operators preferring the larger cab and benefitting from the increased power. We’ve found it is excellent on fuel consumption too.”
“The D5 brings all the advantages of the D6N, and then some,” said Iwan Jenkins, Territory Account Manager for the Wales Region at Finning UK & Ireland. “It offers incredible technology, better performance and more durability and uptime, so operators can do more work in less time. It is exciting to watch the D5’s domination of the market taking off in Wales and see how beneficial our Customer Value Agreements are.”
The Cat Dozer range is gradually being renamed from smallest to largest — D1 to D11 — so that there is one model per class size.
