Reading the capacity numbers

Rated operating capacity is not what a loader can lift. It is a safety fraction of tipping load — the weight at which the back wheels or tracks leave the ground. For wheeled skid steers the convention is settled at half of tipping load, and all 55 wheeled machines here follow it. For track loaders it is not settled: 73 of the 90 here are rated at 35 per cent of tipping load and 17 at 50 per cent.

That is not a rounding difference. A machine quoted at 50 per cent is claiming a number its 35-per-cent rival would print as roughly a third lower on identical hardware, so two track loaders advertising the same rated capacity can be a full class apart. Makers rarely put the fraction anywhere near the number. Both figures are drawn on every machine page for that reason — the bright bar is rated capacity, the grey run past it is the rest of the tipping load.

Every machine records its lift path, because it constrains the work more than horsepower does. A radial arm swings through an arc and reaches furthest at mid-height, which suits digging, grading and backfilling. A vertical path keeps the load close and reaches highest at full extension, which is what loading a high-sided truck or stacking pallets needs. Buying the wrong one is a mistake no amount of engine specification fixes, and it is why the filter sits on the main list rather than three pages deep.

126 of the 145 machines offer or include a high-flow circuit. Cold planers, mulching heads and large brush cutters will bolt onto a standard-flow machine and then run badly or not at all, which is the most expensive surprise in this category, since the attachment often costs as much as a down payment. Auxiliary flow rate and flow type are recorded for every machine for that reason, alongside the engine figures that get more attention and settle less.

Until September 2026 every machine on this site carried a star rating and a review count. They were not aggregated from anything. They were estimates written to look consistent with how well-regarded a machine seemed, and the page presented them as "reviews across equipment listings", which was not true. All 145 of them have been removed.

Nothing replaced them, because nothing honest could. Skid steers are dealer-quoted capital equipment, not a retail product with a public review page, and there is no rating source in this category worth aggregating. Every list that used to sort by stars now sorts on a published figure and says at the top which one — rated capacity, capacity per dollar, engine power, auxiliary flow, or operating weight. You can check the order against the specs on the same page, which you could never do with a star.

Rated operating capacity, tipping load, engine power, hydraulic flow, operating weight and lift height are taken from manufacturer specification sheets and product brochures. Where a manufacturer publishes no figure for a field, it stays empty rather than being estimated from a machine of similar size.

Tipping load is the one exception, and it is marked wherever it applies. Some makers publish the advertised capacity and the fraction it represents but not the tipping load itself, in which case dividing one by the other recovers it exactly. That is a re-expression of two published numbers rather than an estimate, but it is not a measurement either, so 32 machines say so on their own page and beside their load bar.

Every price is an approximate list price for a typical configuration, and heavy equipment is dealer-quoted. An enclosed cab with air conditioning, high-flow hydraulics, two-speed travel or a self-levelling bucket can move the total by five figures, and regional dealers price the same machine differently. A few makers now publish a starting price; most do not, and for those the figure here is read off dealer listings. Either way a price here marks a tier. The real number arrives with a dealer's signature on it.

There is no yard here, no machine on a trailer, and nothing has been run by us. What owners like and complain about on each machine page is summarised from public owner and operator discussion — contractors and owner-operators writing about equipment they run daily, and long-term ownership reports — and is labelled as owner reporting rather than as testing.

Something reaches the complaints list by recurring from people with no connection to each other: a cab that is cramped for a tall operator, a final drive with a known service life, a dealer network that is thin in half the country. Deciding what recurs often enough to print is a judgement made here, and it is the softest thing on the site.

This catalog is maintained by two people, neither of whom runs a loader for a living. No office, no yard, nobody on a payroll. No manufacturer or dealer pays for a listing or a position, and none gets an advance look at a page. Shortlists rank on the published figure each one names, so a machine's position follows from its own spec sheet rather than from anyone's preference.

Equipment lineups move slowly — a model can run for a decade with a mid-life engine update — but dealer pricing does not, and an interim emissions change can quietly replace a machine without changing its name. Models get added, prices re-checked, and retired machines cleared as they are noticed. A specification that disagrees with the brochure in front of you is a gap in our maintenance, not something a dealer arranged.