Skid steer or compact track loader: the honest trade-off for contractors

Ask ten contractors whether a Bobcat compact track loader is worth the extra money over a wheeled skid steer and you will get a reflex answer: tracks are better. Ask them to price replacement undercarriage parts at hour 1,400 and the conversation slows down. The honest decision is not about which machine is "better" — it is about where you work and how the math lands. This guide walks through that math with numbers from Bobcat, Kubota, Caterpillar and the trade press, anchored to a direct comparison between the Bobcat S650 and the Bobcat T595.

The fundamental difference: rubber tires vs rubber tracks

A skid steer loader, or SSL, rides on four rubber tires and steers by skidding the wheels on one side against the other. A compact track loader, or CTL, replaces those tires with a rubber-tracked undercarriage of rollers, idlers, sprockets and a drive motor per side. Bobcat's buyer's guide frames the choice as traction, flotation, and surface sensitivity rather than raw horsepower. Everything downstream flows from wheels versus tracks.

Ground pressure: the 30 psi question

The number most often cited, and most often misunderstood, is ground pressure. A typical wheeled skid steer in the S650 class exerts roughly 30 to 35 psi through its four contact patches. A comparable CTL like the T595 drops that to roughly 4 to 6 psi because the load spreads across two long track footprints. Equipment World and Compact Equipment have both published the same rough split, and Caterpillar's CTL literature lands in the same range. A loaded CTL sinks into wet turf about as far as a person in work boots; a loaded SSL sinks like a shopping cart pushed across a lawn after a week of rain.

That gap is why tracked machines dominate landscape install, site prep on clay, and any job where the boss does not want to explain tire ruts to the homeowner.

The price premium: 20 to 35 percent, before you buy a track

Caterpillar, Deere, Kubota and Bobcat all price tracked compact loaders above their wheeled equivalents. Pricing guides in ForConstructionPros and Construction Equipment Guide put the CTL premium at 20 to 35 percent over a comparable SSL. A new S650 and a T595 with similar rated operating capacity will show that spread on the dealer quote, and the used market carries the premium forward. Marketplaces aggregating used inventory, including bobcatforsaleonline.com, reflect the same pattern.

That premium is the sticker, not the bill. The bill keeps going once the tracks start logging hours.

Speed: the Kubota data point most buyers miss

Wheeled skid steers are faster across open ground. Kubota's side-by-side travel data for its SSV75 against the SVL75 track loader shows the wheeled machine running roughly 60 percent faster at top-end travel. Operators on skidsteerforum.com and tractorbynet.com report the same day to day: on a long haul from stockpile to pad, the wheeled machine makes more trips per hour. For driveway grading, gravel-pile loading, or paved-yard cycles, that speed compounds into real productivity.

Rubber track lifespan: the 1,200 to 1,600 hour reality

This is the number most CTL buyers find out the hard way. Published averages from Global Track Warehouse, Final Drive Parts shop talk, and Caterpillar's used-equipment advisories put typical rubber track life at 1,200 to 1,600 hours, with up to about 3,000 hours possible only with careful operation, clean undercarriage work, and soft-ground use. Replacement track sets for a T595-class machine commonly run $1,500 to $2,500 per pair, and a full undercarriage refresh including rollers, idlers, and sprockets can push $4,000 to $7,000. A wheeled machine's tires last several thousand hours and swap for a few hundred dollars each.

Translated to cost per hour, a CTL often carries an extra $2 to $4 per operating hour in undercarriage wear alone.

Turf damage: when tracks do tear up a lawn

The "tracks are gentler" pitch is true on straight-line travel across moist but firm ground. It falls apart in three situations that dirtmag.com and compactequip.com both flag:

• Pivot turns on established turf — rubber lugs scrub the crown off the grass.
• Bone-dry hardpan in summer, where lug edges shear grass like a dull mower.
• Saturated, soupy ground where flotation no longer matters because tracks still dig ruts.

Wheeled machines, by comparison, tear turf almost any time they turn under load. The honest line is not "tracks don't damage grass" but "tracks give you a wider working window, if the operator uses three-point turns instead of spin turns."

S650 vs T595: the direct Bobcat comparison

Bobcat's spec sheets pair well here because both machines target similar rated operating capacity in the roughly 2,000 lb class. The S650 is the wheeled workhorse: faster travel, lower purchase price, cheaper wear parts, best suited to concrete work, hardscape, demolition cleanup, and paved yards. The T595 is the tracked alternative in the same capacity band: better flotation, better pushing power in loose material, better traction on slopes, and a premium on both purchase and lifetime ownership cost.

On a concrete pour the S650 wins; on a wet landscape install the T595 wins. Forced to pick one machine for mixed work, most contractors on skidsteerforum.com end up on whichever surface covers more than 60 percent of their hours.

Productivity in soft ground: the 50 percent swing

The flip side of the speed gap is soft-ground productivity. Equipment World has reported CTL productivity gains of up to 50 percent over a comparable SSL in wet or loose conditions, because the wheeled machine bogs down or spins tires. In those conditions, the tracked machine's higher hourly cost is more than offset by the material it keeps moving while the wheeled machine sits.

A job-type decision framework

Sort your actual work into four buckets:

1. Concrete, asphalt, and hardscape: wheels win. Faster cycles, cheaper wear, no track abrasion on pavement.
2. Dry dirt, gravel yards, demolition cleanup: wheels win on cost, tracks win on traction. Most owners pick wheels.
3. Wet ground, landscape install, final grading over turf: tracks win. Flotation and turf window justify the premium.
4. Slopes, forestry mulching, heavy pushing in loose material: tracks win decisively.

If your book splits 70/30 toward the first two buckets, a wheeled S650 is the rational purchase. If it splits the other way, a T595 pays for itself.

Total cost of ownership per hour

Rolling the numbers on a five-year, 1,500-hour-per-year plan produces a rough picture that Construction Equipment Guide's ownership articles echo. An S650-class wheeled machine typically lands in the $28 to $38 per hour range all-in, while a T595-class tracked machine lands in the $34 to $48 per hour range, driven by the higher purchase price and the undercarriage wear cycle. The gap narrows in soft-ground work because the tracked machine completes more billable work per hour.

The bottom line

A compact track loader is not automatically worth the extra cost. It is worth it when your jobs punish a wheeled machine, when soft ground or turf sensitivity is the binding constraint, or when the productivity swing in loose material pays back the premium. A wheeled skid steer is the right machine more often than social media suggests, especially for contractors whose work lives on pavement, gravel, or dry dirt.

For used buyers, marketplaces such as bobcatforsaleonline.com list S650 and T595 examples with hour meters and undercarriage condition disclosed — the single most important data point when pricing a tracked machine. Whichever way the math lands, start by matching the undercarriage to the dirt.