Product Details on the Kubota M62

This tractor occupies a unique space in Kubota's lineup. Let's take a quick walk around here and take a look at some of the new features.

The M62 falls in the Kubota's compact tractor loader backhoe line along with the B26, L47, and LM62. This tractor replaces what would have been the M59. The M59 was a Tier Four interim machine and this guy is Tier Four Final. The big thing that you'll notice in this line is an extremely overbuilt quality. These are machines that are really targeted towards landscapers, construction companies, rental yards, and downright abusive environments.

If you look at the bulk around the loader post and the subframe back around the backhoe, there's a lot of extra steel in these machines to put them into those abusive environments where guys are just going to beat them. Kubota is really the only player in this space. As years have gone by, John Deere used to have a model 110 which they've since discontinued. They do not play in this space anymore. Other than some small, crude tractor loader backhoes that are really targeted towards inexpensive machines for rental yards there is no other machine like this. No vendor makes a heavy duty, overbuilt tractor loader backhoe like these machines.

They really occupy a really unique niche place in the tractor market. When we talk about the machine being overbuilt this is a great example right here. The size of this tube going back into the housing right here is easily over a half an inch thick, by my eyes probably about 5/8 or so. If you go back into here you have really large bolts bolting the loader to the subframe. This loader will lift right about 3,000 pounds and break out over 6,000 with the bucket. It's the most capable loader we've ever seen on a compact tractor like this.

That's really geared towards landscapers who are unloading skids of sod and stuff off of trailers where they really need that high capacity loader in order to get those heavy loads off the back of a trailer safely.

Another place this machine took a spec bump is in the digging depth of the backhoe. Kubota pretty proudly is pointing up here that this is a 14-foot hoe where the old one was 12. That extra two feet will give you not only an extra two feet of depth digging down but also two feet of reach which is arguably more valuable. With that extra reach, you have to reposition less often, helping you to be more efficient while you're digging.

If you look at the specifications as far as the breakout force and the actual power of the hoe itself, it is about the same as what the M59 was so when they added that extra reach they would have bumped up the size and capacity of the hydraulic cylinders as well to keep that backhoe operating about like the old machine did.

When you order your backhoe you have the option of either pin-one or a quick coupler buckets. One of the nice things now is that this quick coupler is officially compatible back into the range of excavator quick coupler buckets, so if you have a KXO40, KX121, KX91, any of them that use the K78 coupler, K78, 74 coupler, these buckets will couple right into the M62 as well.

That was possible on the M59 as well using an unapproved solution. There was a coupler that fit the excavators that would also fit the M59, but in this case, this is a price book configuration now that's an off-the-shelf system.

When you look at the breakout forces for these backhoes, one thing that you want to watch is where the pivot point is when a quick coupler is put on. Typically in most manufacturers quick couplers, the backhoe will be spec'd with a pin-on coupler. That's because the pin-on coupler- it keeps the bucket as close as possible to the pivot point of the backhoe.

Most of the time when you add a quick coupler where a pin-on is usually used, that quick coupler will add some distance between the pivot point and the bucket itself, reducing your breakout force. Kubota uses a really unique coupler where the coupler fits in exactly the same position as what the pin-on buckets do. In a Kubota spec sheet, your breakout force is the same if you use a pin-on or a quick coupler bucket where that is not the case with just about any other manufacturer you'll find.

This machine has come through without backhoe hydraulics on it but if you look up here you'll see that there's already points in place for wet lines to be run out the boom for a thumb or the rest of the attachments that exists on the excavator series. You officially have buckets up to 36 inches as well as tilt bucket options, grading bucket options and everything that comes right out of the excavator series.

You'll see our machine here does have piping out the front loader in order to put front hydraulics on. We're seeing more and more guys using tractors as tool carriers much like you would with a skid loader.

Unfortunately, you still don't have quite enough hydraulic flow in order to run implements that need hydraulic motors like snow blowers and that kind of stuff, but really commonly anymore we're putting on grapples, we're putting on hydraulic angle snow blades and having that coupler system out the front here makes it really easy to do that. The only thing you have to do yet is take these caps off and put your quick couplers on here and hydraulic angle snow plows and all those things will snap right onto the front of the tractor.

The operator's platform of an M62 is almost exactly the same as what the older M59 was. You really only have the addition of the power up button over here on the loader stick to raise your engine RPMs when you push into a pile of dirt and some small changes of the creeper control down here on the side to move the tractor front and back.

While this is a construction oriented machine, well over half of them are actually sold into residential applications and a large part for that reason is the fact that this is a swivel seat backhoe. On most other compact tractors where we add the backhoe to the machine, you have to get off the tractor and then get back on to a seat back on the backhoe.

On the M62 and the other tractors in the TLB line, you can swivel the seat around and move to the backhoe position without getting off the machine and remounting again. When you want to go from working forward to working in reverse and repositioning the tractor, it's a lot more convenient just to swivel the seat around and go back to your working position. The backhoe for the M62 is unique in compact backhoes. On any compact tractor generally, when you add a backhoe to the machine you're feeding that backhoe with one hydraulic line. The M47 and the M62 backhoe is fed by two separate hydraulic pumps. Each of the sticks here on the backhoe is fed by its own pump.

Your repetitive motion of swinging the backhoe to the side and taking the bucket in and out to dump your spoils is not fed by the same pump. Generally, with a single pump system, those two functions that you do over and over will fight for flow and so because you have a single flow coming in being run two different directions, it's going to slow down when you start having that extra demand for oil.

On the M62 and L47, you have two feed lines down here and one return. Each of those feed lines are driven by a separate pump each going to its own stick to keep the backhoe functioning effectively when it has those multiple demands, making it a more productive backhoe.

I'm going to show here exactly why that matters. When you take your bucket and you swing it to the left or the right, you're using the left-hand stick here in order to accomplish that. As you're taking the spoils out of your trench, you're going over to the side, you're swinging your boom out and curling your bucket out in order to dump.

Now these two functions right here, curling the bucket back and forth and taking the dipper in and out are all fed off of the right-hand stick, while swinging the backhoe here is fed off of the left-hand stick. This repetitive function of going out to the side and swinging out to dump your spoils are fed by two separate hydraulic circuits.

You can see the backhoe speed of me taking this dipper in and out doesn't change when I swing to the side. My performance is exactly the same, making the backhoe a lot more predictable and productive.

A common question that often comes up with this tractor is who is the customer and why do people choose to buy it? When you go and you look at the price point for this machine it is not an inexpensive piece of equipment. You've got a backhoe costing several thousand dollars, a unique machine with not a huge sales volume. It is not a cheap tractor. It is encroaching really upon the price points of almost a big, full-sized construction TLB like a Case 580 or some JCB TLBs.

There is still a really important customer niche for this machine though. You're getting nearly the capacity of those machines but at a much lower trailering weight. Machine like a Case 580 weighs around 17,000 pounds.

This guy right here will have a spec weight on the spec sheet of around 8,800 or so, reality till you have buckets and fluids and that kind of stuff when you're up in the 9,500 pounds but still several thousand pounds less than what a full-sized TLB is.

In a landscape application where you don't want that weight to be trailering it around or we don't want that weight tracking up people's turf, this is a great, very high capacity machine but in a weight that's actually manageable in a landscape application.

One thing that is sadly missing from this tractor is right here. All of us in the Northeast have been asking for a cab for this machine, just like we have for many other tractors for years and years and years. A proper cab with heat and air conditioning. While you can go to companies like Curtis or other aftermarket vendors to get enclosures for these machines, they just do not match to the quality of a good factory cab. Please Kubota, if you're watching this video, give us the cab that we've been asking for for so long. You can see an application for a machine like this for yourself. Give us a call here at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at Messicks.com.