Last week I had the good fortune to travel to Bismarck, North Dakota to visit the folks at Bobcat and to take a close look at a herd of fine new machines. The event was designed to showcase the company’s new M-Series loaders and excavators – I will discuss those in future posts, but today I want to report on my test drive of the company’s new Toolcat 5610, which I first saw at the National Farm Machinery Show last winter. The Toolcat 5610 is a truly revolutionary machine that is part tractor, part utility vehicle and part loader. The only thing that comes close to the Toolcat 5610 in versatility is the Mercedes (Case, Freightliner, etc.) Unimog but it is in a completely different price and size class.

I will admit to being somewhat skeptical that the Toolcat 5610 would be capable of doing all of its tasks well, so you can imagine my glee when I learned that the machine would be available for operation at the Bismarck event. Let me say from the get go that I was blown away by the Toolcat 5610. The machine is not your average UTV, it is an incredibly heavy-duty tool – it weighs nearly 6000 pounds when fitted out. As such, the 5610 is an excellent platform for front and rear mounted attachments. Even though the 5610 is equipped with four-wheel independent suspension (and 4-wheel steering), it has been designed in such a way as to provide tractor-like rigidity (and stability) with a bucketful of gravel on the front lift arm. Yes, you can actually use the Toolcat 5610 as a front-end loader.

Perhaps even more impressive than the unique suspension system is the Toolcat 5610’s capacity to do farm and land maintenance work of all kinds. The rear Cat. 1 three-point hitch and 540 RPM PTO allow operators to hitch up to any of hundreds of implements from mowers to scrapers to seeders to snow blowers. From the seat, in the 5610’s comfy climate-controlled cab, I found it easier to watch the rear attachment than from the seat of many tractors. The Toolcat 5610 is fully capable of pulling and powering ground-engaging tools – it had no problem with the 6-foot rotary tiller at full depth in the Missouri River silt at the site. And I did the tilling with a solid stand seeder mounted on the front lift arm. I also experimented with a hydraulically-driven mower on the front lift arm. Impressive is about all I can think of to say.

The Toolcat 5610 may well be the perfect single machine for small farmers, acreage owners and folks who have several acres to maintain. You get a tractor, utility vehicle, loader and recreational vehicle all rolled into a single all-terrain, diesel-powered package. The Toolcat 5610 does each of its tasks well, but if you have scores of acres of hay to make or need a loader 8 hours a day most days, then you would want to make the investment in several pieces of more specialized machinery. If you are in the market for a true working partner around your place, then head on over to your local Bobcat dealer and see about arranging a weekend with the Toolcat 5610, I know you will be impressed.

Bobcat recently released its latest and greatest utility-vehicle/tractor/loader and it drew quite a crowd at the 2009 National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville last week. This diesel-powered machine features four-wheel steering, four-wheel independent suspension and a smart fulltime all wheel drive system that sends power to the wheel(s) with traction. The more I learn about utility vehicles and Toolcats in general, the more I have come to believe that they have a place on the farm.

This Toolcat comes with a front-end loader that’s capable of handling more than 40 Bobcat attachments and many more from other manufacturers. Optional equipment includes a high-flow auxiliary hydraulic system, rear 540-rpm PTO, rear category 1 three-point hitch and much more. With the rear PTO, three-point hitch and the front lift arm, you can use two different attachments on the Toolcat 5610 simultaneously as long as one of the attachments is non-hydraulic. For example, a hydraulic soil conditioner can be mounted on the front while a non-hydraulic hitch-mounted seeder is used on the rear of the machine.

Missing from this highly-capable utility vehicle is a rear cargo box. In its place, the Toolcat 5610 has a pair of  rear compartments capable of carrying up to 50 pounds of load each … located on either side of the engine compartments ventilation grate. Available operator amenities include cab with CD player, heat and air conditioning as well as keyless start and tilt steering wheel.

The Toolcat 5610 was designed for heavy-duty applications around the farm, acreage or jobsite. When equipped with the rear 3-point hitch and PTO, you can expect this workhorse to list at right around $50,000. Intimidating as that sounds, this machine will do most of the work you can accomplish with a small skid loader, compact tractor and utility vehicle.

Test drive the Toolcat 5610 at a Bobcat dealer near you.