July 2006

Deere’s Newest Loader
 Earns Operator Affinity
The John Deere 844J 7-yard loader handles quarry operations,
 but also gets to flex its muscles on big jobs.

by  Contributing Editor

At the initial press conference, held in 2005 and attended by Aggregates Manager editors, the machine proved to be a smooth-running, easy-to-operate loader with the highest breakout force rating in the category.

Because of its potential impact on competition for aggregates market loader sales, we followed up our initial press conference coverage by interviewing Casella Construction, one of the first users of the machine to see how it is performing in the field.

Measuring up to expectations
Big machines need to be able to take on big tasks or they end up being nothing but big problems. For Casella, the new wheel loader is measuring up just fine.

When it’s not working on a big job, like a recent landfill and power line project in Southbridge, Mass., you’ll find this newest addition to the Casella wheel loader fleet working in the pits in Clarendon, Vt., loading trucks and feeding crushers.

“Stability is one thing all the operators are talking about with the machine,” Doug Casella, owner and president of Casella Construction, tells Aggregates Manager. “Fuel consumption is very good. Visibility is great — you can really see the work.”

And Casella (the person) knows his wheel loaders. The construction company owns about 20 machines, and its affiliated waste services business owns another 30 wheel loaders.

Packing in performance features
“Dollar for dollar, I think it’s one of the best machines we own,” Casella says. Although he says “it’s still early” because, at press time, the company had only been running the machine for a few months, “we like what we see and what we get.”

What Casella says he sees and gets is a machine that is very accessible and runs well. “Accessibility is very good on the things you need to get to every day,” he says. “The hydraulics and on-board computers are fantastic. It has unbelievable break-out force.”

One feature that Casella is particularly fond of is how the wheel loader responds to speed. He says the faster the machine goes, the better it reacts. “It’s very smooth with none of the jerking and speeding up you sometimes get when a loader with a bucket full hits rough spots,” Casella points out.

He expects the machine to continue to work on some big jobs when it’s not doing bread-and-butter quarry duty, like an upcoming ‘big cut’ job — 800,000 to 900,000 cubic yards — where it will work alongside an excavator to load trucks.

“I don’t have any trouble finding an operator for this loader,” Casella says. “That tells you as much about the way the machine works as I can tell you.”

Arnie Consdorf has spent more than 35 years in business publishing, a good deal of that time writing about construction and construction equipment. He has been a contributor to Better Roads for several years and more recently to Aggregates Manager.

Reprinted from Aggregates Manager Magazine
July 2006