Bobcat S86-2

Bobcat's wheeled flagship is what you buy when the work is on pavement, gravel and packed ground and you still want flagship hydraulics. 115 hp, 3,500 lb rated, twelve feet of lift to a 144-inch hinge pin, and the same three flow tiers as the tracked T86-2 including Super Flow at 42 GPM and 4,061 psi. Nothing else wheeled at this power level offers that hydraulic spread, and the -2 refresh raises it from the 105 hp, 3,400 lb machine that came before.

The number to get right before comparing this against anything tracked is the rating basis. Wheeled skid steers are rated at 50% of tipping load, so 3,500 lb here is half of 7,000 lb. Track loaders quote 35%, so a tracked machine rated at a similar number is carrying far more reserve. Read the headline figures side by side and you will badly flatter the wheeled machine. Beyond that, the honest reporting on this frame concerns air and dust: owners of the 86-frame machines found the cab under vacuum rather than pressurised after Bobcat reversed the engine cooling airflow without relocating the fan, and the one who chased it to root cause makes a point of telling S86 and S76 buyers to test for it. The engine keeps a particulate filter at this power level, so idling matters. And the absence of flotation is not a detail: this machine ruts soft ground and that ends the day.

Paved and hard-surface work is where it belongs - snow, rental fleet duty and anywhere the undercarriage bill on a track loader is the thing eating your margin. It is the wrong one if your sites are wet. Long-run owner reporting on the -2 specifically is still thin, because it is new, so the evidence above is drawn from the R-Series 86-frame machines it is based on; ask your dealer what changed and what the current service bulletins say. Test the cab pressure with a bag over a cracked window before you sign, weigh your trailer with a second attachment on it, and price the tracked machine too, because the ground you work on decides this more than the spec sheet does.