Neil from Messick's here to walk through two Kubota excavators with you, the U25 and the U27. This is the older model, this is the new one. We're going to talk through some of the changes that Kubota rolled out with this new model, and some of the interesting history that's happened with this machine over the last couple of years. If you pay attention to the annual release cycles for equipment, you're going to know that this is not a new model for 2022. In fact, this actually came out about two or three years ago, and there's been a little bit of an interesting history to how this machine was introduced. Kubota has several factories around the world. We think that most Kubota equipment comes out of Japan, that's not actually the case, only about half of it does. They actually have a factory in Germany. The U27 behind me is made in that factory, while the U25, the prior model, came out of the factory in Osaka, Japan.
Years ago, they replaced the U25 with the U27, but shortly after, we started running into tariffs, and global supply chains, and all the things that have changed in the global economy out of the last couple of years, and they actually reintroduced the U25 again, and started shipping the prior model. We're back to the point that the 25 is finally phasing out permanently, and the 27 is starting to ship again. We're reintroducing this model here, at this point, even though you may have seen them floating around before.
This machine would fall in about the lower 25% of Kubota's excavators, if you line them up by weight class. This is going to come in a little bit under 7,000 pounds. It's going to vary, depending on whether you have it equipped with a cab, or your exact configurations of buckets, couplers, and thumbs. Usually, we're selling this to somebody who's targeting the 10,000 pound weight class trailer, and giving themselves a little bit of margin. In the right configurations, it's possible to sneak the next model up, the KX033, or the U35, into some of those 10,000 pound configurations. This one is a popular option for somebody leaving a little bit more buffer room, or wanting a little bit smaller machine, to work in more of a landscape, residential-type environment.
When we work through the spec sheets for these two machines, you're going to find far more similarities than differences. There's not worlds of change between these two models in their specification, even though you're going to find there's a lot of changes in terms of agronomics, design, and comfort. There is one significant place that the specification sheet did change. If you look at the dipper here, this one is about six inches shorter than what the older machine was, and it gives up about that six inches worth of dig depth, if you look at the max depth that you're able to dig with a machine. While you've given up that six inches, you have gained about 25% of power in the dipper stick. The dipper dig strength is now quite a bit stronger than what the older model was. I don't know about you, but I would give up six inches for 25% more power any day. I think that's a really nice improvement.
There are some significant improvements on this boom, in terms of serviceability. The new one here comes through with a light on the bottom side, with a metal bracket, in order to guard it, that's nice. The older one did not have that as standard equipment. There's a difference here in the hoses. You're going to notice here that the lines running out of the boom on this new model run up through the inside of the boom, where the older model used a lot of hard lines on the outside of the boom. The big benefit to that is, while you're taking your boom and you're digging through your trench, any rocks, or roots, or anything that might be hanging out the sides aren't constantly grabbing at the little bits of hose hanging off the side of your boom. Everything on this is nicely contained on the inside, keeping things much more protected. It's a much cleaner boom than what the old model was.
The one thing I'm not totally nuts about is that the older one did a really good job of keeping most of the grease zerks all on one side of the boom. It made it a really nice and easy machine to go around and do your daily greasing on. This one seems to have a lot more of those zerks at odd places, say at the sides of the cylinders. They're not as consistently on the ends as what they used to be. You notice this black manifold down here, at the end? This is a mechanical diverter. If you want to go through and toggle your hydraulic functions here on the end of the boom, you simply put a wrench on here, and twist this to one side or the other. That's going to allow you to install a thumb onto the machine, and plum it into your one port. If you happen to go own a hammer, or rent a hammer somewhere, you can put it on the end of your machine, plug into a coupler up here, and mechanically switch this from one side to the other. You're going to find the larger excavators are going to come through with multiple wet ports down here at the end, and not be done mechanically, but this is a really cost effective way to make this a flexible machine, simply by adding that little valve.
When you come around the back of the machine here, you'll see a couple of differences. I like, for one, the paint process that's now used on these counterweights. This has a little bit of texture to it, compared to the old one. It doesn't have the same glossy sheen to it, and we find that it wears a little bit better. These things always get scraped up and scuffed up as they go, and this one doesn't seem to show the wear quite as much as the older paint process did. I like that. You could see here, if you look at how close the top of the machine comes to the back of the counterweight, there's not this large gap at the back, that the old U25 did. When you get around to the cab area here, you're going to notice how much more room that gives you in the cab. It's completely different on that end, but you can see how the top end of the machine has moved further towards the back, with some re-engineering on the inside. I think that's pretty cool.
Down on the lower side of the machine, you'll notice that there's a big chain hook on the back side of the house, and two hooks down on the track frame. The U27 has many more options for chaining this down than what the older machine did, which is always a nice thing to see, starting to become more conscious of the operators, and the people that have to move these things around. When you have these two machines side by side, and can go from the cab of the old model compared to the cab of the new model, this all almost feels like an entirely larger group of excavator than what the smaller machine did. The amount of additional leg room here in the front, the much larger opening here to get back in behind the control panel, a much larger, nicer seat, it feels like a completely different machine. It's very obvious that Kubota was able to find more space up here somehow, but it is a vastly more spacious cockpit than what the older machine did.
Like I said, I could feel that down here in my feet, it's obvious in the entrance. Your armrests are a much nicer, more plush set up, they're a little padded, not just a piece of plastic here, where your hands set on the controls. You have proportional control on the sticks now, over top of your front hydraulic flow, as opposed to a toggle button on the old machine. That's going to give you much better control over those front attachments. The pod up here in the front that has your fuel gauge, your temp, your auxiliary settings, is much more modern, sitting up here in front of you off the right hand side of the machine, where the older one buried some controls back around the side. Really, worthy of a new generation of excavator. There are significant changes up here in the operator's platform.
Those are some of the changes between the older U25 and the newer U27 excavator. It's really impressive, the amount of things that they were able to find going around these machines, and making all of these iterative changes. You wouldn't think the changes to excavators could be so dramatic, but it is totally impressive, the many ways that they found to update this new machine. I think it's going to make a significant difference in the amount of them that we sell, because it really modernizes this thing in a significant way.
Today we have a customer setting up his excavator using a pin grabber coupler. I'm going to show you the pin grabber, exactly how it works and also the traditional mechanical coupler as well. And show you some of the two pros and cons of the different coupler systems that you can have between your buckets and your excavators. So the coupler that you'll typically find on most excavators is a traditional mechanical coupler.
This model here replaces the prior model which we're lucky enough to have side by side, the KX91. Join me here as we walk around and we’ll point out a couple of new differences on this updated model. The KX91 has been a really popular model for us. We stock quite a few of them both for customers and for our own rental fleet. One of the things that’s made this machine so popular is that this is the heaviest Kubota excavator that we can sell that can fit onto a 10,000 pound trailer.
