Stuart Moore has been a Bobcat man since 1983. EEM finds out what has kept him loyal to the brand, and how his most recent purchase – a T76 track loader – is helping him carry on his family’s earthmoving legacy.
Moore’s Earthmoving is based in Elderslie, in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley region. The continuation of a family earthmoving legacy, the business is the one-man show of industry veteran Stuart Moore.
“It’s just me, myself, and I,” Stuart says with an understated pride. “It’s been that way since about 1995.”
The Moore’s Earthmoving business originated with Stuart’s father, who was tragically lost in a plane accident while Stuart was still at school. His mother kept the business going for a few years, before deciding to sell up and move on.
After completing his schooling and trying his hand at another trade, Stuart soon found himself following his late father’s footsteps into earthmoving, dabbling in landscaping along the way.
“My brother also came on board, and we ended up separating out the landscaping and earthmoving parts of the business,” Stuart says. “He kept the landscaping side, and I took the couple of earthmoving machines we had and went out on my own.”
Those machines were Bobcats – a brand he swears by to this day.
“I’m currently running a Bobcat E55 excavator and Bobcat T76 track loader, as well as a few different attachments, including a Bobcat grader attachment,” Stuart says.
Drawing from decades of experience, Moore’s Earthmoving is equipped to deliver everything from rural civil works to vineyard drainage jobs – whatever the locals require.
“For the past 10 or so years, I’ve been contracting to the local Singleton Council, doing heavy patching work,” Stuart says. “If any of the local rural roads have defects in them, I come in and use the excavator to dig them out, use the track loader to push the material back in, then hook up the grader attachment to cut them off nice and level so the council can seal them.”
Nine lives
Stuart has maintained a preference for Bobcat equipment for his whole life. Since purchasing his first Bobcat machine back in 1983, he has never found a reason to look elsewhere.
“I worked out the other day that I’m probably nearing 80,000 hours worked on Bobcats,” Stuart says. “I’ve always been very happy with them, and always impressed by their reliability. Plus, they’ve been around the longest, and they just keep bringing good gear out all the time.”
Stuart’s most recent Bobcat purchase is his T76 track loader – a class of machines that has become synonymous with the Bobcat name. Part of Bobcat’s revamped R-series, the 5.2-tonne machine features a range of updated features to maximise performance, visibility, and operator comfort.
Delivering 74hp, the T76 also features an inline engine and direct-drive system. Its low ground pressure track system has been designed to help operators push through soft, muddy terrain with ease, and deliver a smooth ride in the process.
For Stuart, the comfort element represents the biggest change he’s seen as Bobcat equipment has evolved over the years.
“Thinking back to my first machines, we had no air conditioning in the cabs – you just had to put up with the dust and all the other elements,” he says.
“You’d be blowing dirt out of your nose and eyes every day – you really suffered back then! But nowadays, you get out of the cab at the end of the day pretty much as fresh as you got in.”
Stuart says things have also evolved dramatically in the machinery sales game.
“Back in the day, equipment salesmen just couldn’t care less,” he says. “I remember buying two machines off a dealer at one point, and to this day, they’ve never called back to follow up.
“But the salesmen they’ve got these days are top-notch. They’ll be in touch every few months to ask how I’m going, how the machines are going, and if there’s anything I need – couldn’t ask for any better.”
For anyone seeking a pearl of wisdom from an industry veteran, Stuart has one simple message: “You definitely get what you pay for,” he says.
“There’s a young fellow down the road from me who was recently looking at a Bobcat excavator, but he ended buying a cheap budget machine instead. Sure, he might have saved a few thousand dollars, but I think he’ll end up losing money on it in the end.”