The Kubota R40 series is a small evolution of the prior 30 Series. Walk you around this machine here and show you a couple of places that improvements were made. We've ended up doing a lot of videos on wheel loaders here over the last couple of years. And that's really because it's become the machine of choice for us here at our stores in our yards, where in years gone by, we would've run skid steers and track loaders for a lot of our loading and unloading of trucks and maintenance around our facilities. We've found that for us, wheel loaders are a better solution. Because of their articulation, our tire wear is much, much lower. Our operating cost for these machines are a lot less money than what traditional wheels and tracks have been. And so it's a machine that around our properties gets a lot of use. And so you see me using them a lot, whether it's out clearing snow or talking about product changes and that kind of stuff, these things get quite a bit of seat time around here and accumulate some hours.
This addition here now is going to be an incremental improvement over Kubota's prior series. So when Kubota went from the 20 Series, the R420, into the 30 Series, that was a dramatic redesign. The 20 had been in the product line for over a decade I would say for sure. Going to the 30 came out with so much needed product improvements, air conditioned cabs, which didn't even exist before, if you can imagine that, some additional models and that kind of thing. And now here just a couple years later, another incremental improvement is being made here for the 40 Series.
This is not a wildly different machine than the 30. It's going to share most of the same mechanicals. So you have the same engine, the same transmission, but I've got some agronomic changes here to show you and then also some geometry changes out here on the boom. If you look here by the window, you can see probably one of the biggest, most significant redesigns would've been moving around some of the controls. Here on the right hand side of the machine, I've got glass wrapping around the entire corner here. The prior model to this would've had a dash that really wrapped around the right hand side of the machine. And while it was very cool, putting all those controls in an arc and everything out in front of you, it didn't do you any favors when it came to forward visibility. You couldn't see through this glass because the controller was right across here blocking your view. This model moves all the controls back onto the right-hand side, opening up a whole lot more glass on the front, making this an easier machine to see out of, which would be great for us when it comes to loading and unloading of all those trucks.
Operationally, the biggest change that happens on both of these machines, both the R540 and the R640, is a small bump to their specifications. Kubota's raising the lift capacity and the bucket breakout numbers for this machine by 400 pounds on both of those models. That's due to some geometry changes in the boom that Kubota refers to as the Delta linkage. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but when I went through the spec sheets for these machines and looked at changes in hydraulic flow and pressures and cycle times and everything, I saw most everything staying the same, but that a little bit of extra bump in capacity is going to be coming from just geometry changes out here in the front. So you get a small bump, about 10% or so in the capacity of these machines in their latest generation.
Have three points of just simple modernization that have happened here over the years. As new machines come out, some of the things that we've been adding on the side or new features that have come out in other areas are making their way into the wheel loader here now, too. Up here in the front, you'll notice that these now have LED lights. The prior models and even a lot of the new models that continue to come out today, still are sporting halogens on a lot of different machines. But this now is moving to a nice bright LED from the factory out in front of the machine.
You'll notice here on my right-hand side, I have a full right hand door. Now I've got a bar down here to keep me from jumping out this side. I don't really have enough room to wiggle through this direction, but again, going back to that prior model here where the controls wrapped around the front, you really only had a window up here. So this gives you much larger opening if you're working out here on a hot day like today. Really brought you over here, though, to show you this stick. So the prior model had two different variations of this drive stick, the one in the R630 being the nicer of them, a little bit more agronomic, had more buttons and stuff on it. That stick now becomes standard equipment across the product line. So if you're buying the 540, you're now getting the nicer control sticks. That simplifies the offering a little bit.
Customers who run this type of machine usually have a little bit different requirements than most. And one thing that we have heard a lot from guys who run commercial fleets or are doing loading operations and that kind of thing, or the need for additional machine diagnostics, Kubota's offered telematics now in several different machines. So giving you the myKubota app that shows you things like the location of your machine and operating hours, giving you theft prevention, additional diagnostic capabilities about fault codes, the ability to be able to see fluid levels and that kind of stuff across the machine, telematics could do a lot of cool things for you if you're running this kind of stuff on a commercial basis and can have additional value to your business by simply having more information about your machines. Telematics is now available for the wheel loaders as well. It is not standard equipment like it is on the SVL97. It's installed onto the machine with a simple wiring, harness and modem in order to give you all that additional information on your phone.
The one cool thing that we've found here for wheel loaders, like I said earlier, is as a alternative to a skid steer and a track loader, if you look at the equipment industry as a whole, skid steers and track loaders are a product that's really only found in the United States. It's not something that has real worldwide usage. Particularly when you go into European countries and that kind of thing, you'll find that wheel loaders like this are a far more common piece of equipment. So these machines are generally not engineered with our market in mind. They're made for the intent to be in European countries. So we continue to see more and more of an uptick in the use of these machines here domestically. And I think it's because people are opened their eyes a little bit to the different applications that these can be used in for dig and haul and move type things where you don't have some of the height limitations and stuff that we have from skid steers and track loaders. These travel quick, the articulation really helps a lot in your operational cost. You get a lot less tire and track wear. Their capacities are really strong. It's a very capable machine. So it has a lot going for it.
Now that's not necessarily going to mean it's less expensive. You've got more iron here. So it is a little bit more costly machine, but not dramatically so. I like it a lot. And I find them very comfortable to operate too, especially compared to a skid steer, when you get all the bucking back and forth that you do when you're manipulating and turning yourself around on asphalt and stuff, it's just a lot more comfortable to run. If I had any complaint about these, this one in particular it's ground speed is a little low for my liking. When I run up and down the driveway here, even in high range at full tilt, it could be a little quicker than what it is. They feel very stable. You just get the sense that more speed would be possible. Oftentimes that might be at the expense of your pushing power when you're going into a pile or something, you have to change that gearing as these are hydrostatic driven with a limited number of ranges.
From an agronomic perspective, everything here is really conveniently located around my right-hand side here. I have all the switches for my auxiliaries and my self-leveling and my work lights and beacons. I have my multifunction control stick here that has my high and low range selectors at the top. The R640 version of this is going to have five ranges where this one only has two. The buttons and the controls are already the same. It's just you push it more times to cycle through more of those buttons. The other benefit too, that you get in the 640 as well is a decoupling of the machine's hydraulic system from the transmission, from the RPM. So I can go take it at 640, run the revs the entire way up in order to get all of my hydraulic flow, but still moderate my ground speed with the pedal separately from that. That allows you to run some hydraulic front attachments. If you wanted to run, say a broom or something like that with this, you'll want this 600 version for that feature alone, that much greater flexibility of your hydraulic system in that model.
It's also going to be a little bit more capable, has a little bit more horsepower, that kind of thing, but there's a significant functional difference there in the way that auxiliary hydraulic system works on the larger model compared to this smaller one.
From a noise perspective, this is wide open, and I can talk to you comfortably, which in some machines I can't do. So it is fairly quiet. I don't have a DV meter in here at all. There are machines when I'm driving around in the cab, I feel like I need to have hearing protection. This is not one of them. So it's a nice and quiet machine to operate.
You noticed the one that I'm driving around here still has the stickers in the windows and no bucket and stuff on the front. We continue to have the availability issue here where basically most of these machines that are coming into the store are already spoken here for here for a while. So this one's headed out to a customer. It's already got their name on this side. So I'm likely going to see this thing go out so quickly again, that I'm not going to get a chance to make videos with it. So I jumped on the opportunity here to jump in this seat and run one around before our shop has even taken the time to prep it.
We have all of our tie-ins out there in the front for the hydraulic quick coupler. And then generally on this machine, a three quarter yard bucket for the 540 or a one yard for the 640, we'd be pitting out there in the front most of the time. Oftentimes the set of pallet forks, too, landscape yards and stuff is one of the most common places for these. It's a utilization much like what we do here, where you're switching between pallet forks and a bucket. If you're out loading mulch or you're going to do a stack of pavers or something, the switch is in here to have a hydraulic quick coupler out on your boom to quickly switch attachments back and forth are really handy.
Operationally. This thing couldn't be easier to run. So not something that I would be afraid of sticking more of a novice operator into. Visibility is fantastic. The controls are easy to use. Whoa, there, dude. Doesn't mean that the people driving cars around the parking lot are equally as adept at driving their vehicles.
The one thing that I do wrong when I jump into one of these things is the where you would think of a shuttle on the tractor up on the steering column, right up here in the front. I always grab that thinking I'm going to change directions and it's actually your turn signals. Your direction changing is done up here on your multifunction control, the black rocker switch on the left hand side, which makes sense. If you're going in and out of a mulch pile or something, you're keeping your hand on the loader stick and just toggling that front or back when you want to do movements, as opposed to taking your hand off the steering wheel over here to shuttle, but that's where your brain goes when you think about changing directions, you're pre-programmed to go ahead and start grabbing that shuttle, that stalk, that sticks out over here. That's not what it does. So even today, when I got out here to do this, I'm sitting here with one of my turn signals on when I think I'm driving front and back.
