We did our first video on Kubota's new SSV series of skid loaders about a year and a half ago when they first came out. We're going to take a couple minutes of your time today to go around and tell you a little bit of our experience with this model over the last year or so, tell you some of the strong points and weak points that we've seen in this machine, and hopefully educate you a little bit more about Kubota's line of skid loaders.
Since Kubota came out with this machine about two years ago, they've done very well for us. We have, at this point, about 150 of them out in the field. In 2016, we were actually the number one Kubota skid loader dealer in the country and 2017 is looking to shape up much the same way. You're probably not going to find anybody out there that has a whole lot more experience with this machine than what we do.
If we look at that 150 or so machines that are out in the field, and we dive back into the service side of things -- Before coming out here today I had a conversation with our service manager up here, and did some digging through the computer system to look at the kind of issues that we were encountering, and about 80% of the machines that we put out we have not touched for anything at all. Machine went out the door, out to the customer, and we haven't been out for any kind of maintenance, repairs, or any of that kind of stuff one the machine at all.
That other 20% or so that we were out to work on, literally for the most part only minor issues. We had a handful of machines where we had some items missing, an assembly o-ring missing or something like that and a hydraulic line that caused a leak that we went out and fixed, but literally of all those machines, only one major problem. We did have one machine that we had to replace an engine in, but other than that, very very reliable.
Remember, when we're talking about this, this is a first generation product for Kubota. This isn't a an iterative change to another product that's been out before, it's a brand new series, front to back new engineering. Really impressive to see that Kubota's delivered a quality product that doesn't have a lot of those first generation glitches that you can expect from a new machine.
One of the things that we pride ourselves in here at Messick's is that we do very well at servicing a lot of customers in a lot of different industries, so the foundation of our company is in agriculture, we are an AG equipment dealer first, but we also have a lot of customers in construction in other industries. We have sold, at this point, these machines into both of those areas and they've been very well accepted in both. In our area dairy is really big, so we have them in dairy operations, we have guys loading- moving bales with them, general farm maintenance and those kinds of things and the machine has performed well.
On the construction side, we got a lot of guys digging holes, a lot of homebuilding going on in our area so we have not a lot of those applications and those guys have seemed to accept the machine very well, as well. You will see a fair amount of those customers in both industries moving towards track loaders, but there are still applications where you do want a wheeled machine.
They are overall less expensive to begin with and we have a lot of contractors and landscapers and stuff to do snow removal, and in snow removal application a wheeled machine is typically preferable to one that's on track, so place for both in the industry, but definitely a lot of guys that have just been really happy with the machine that we've delivered at this point.
Kubota machines are typically not loaded with a lot of features that should be standard equipment. When you're looking at one of these your SSV65 or SSV75 two speed is standard equipment on all of them, your real only real options are whether you get a hydraulic coupler or not or ride control on the boom, or high flow. The two-speed is something that we have had some mixed reviews about, we're trying to get some of the pros and cons of this machine.
It is fast, it travels quickly, but when you click that two speed on it clicks hard, it's not a soft move into it, so might be something you want to keep in mind if you hop in one of these to drive it for the first time, when you pop that two speed button. Do be ready because when you hit it the machine really takes off and goes. So in summary, that's been our impression of Kubota's SSV series here being about two years into it.
A lot of machines in the field, a lot of very very happy customers, absolutely outstanding quality out of the gate, have to give Kubota that, and the the bugaboo things that we've run into have been really rather minor things. As long as you're ready for a little bit of bump out of the two-speed there's not a whole lot else that we can say about this machine that we've encountered is a negative. So if you're in the market for a skid loader we can help you give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 and online at messicks.com.
Here with the very first of our Kubota SSV skid steers. We're really excited to show these to you here today. This is probably for us one of the biggest Kubota product launches we have ever had. The demand and excitement among our customers and our staff here is probably a new record among products that we've had through here before.
Today we're going to go over some service and maintenance practices on an SSV75, this is a brand new machine, pilot control. We're going to go over how to tilt the cab. How to change the oil, where all the filters are, fuel tank and all of that good stuff.
