Rugged 2200 Utility Vehicle Makes Many Jobs Easier

2200 utility vehicle

A simple to operate fourwheel drive system. High torque at any travel speed. Coil-over-shock fourwheel suspension. Total vehicle rated at half-a-ton or more. A choice of gas or diesel engine.

These are just some of the reasons why the two-seat Bobcat® 2200 4x4 outperforms all other utility vehicles in its class. As satisfied 2200 owners report, it’s the kind of performance that can pay off when transporting people, supplies and materials in a wide variety of off-road work and recreational activities.

More play and less work

Long-time Bobcat equipment owner and property developer Roger Maier, Belton, Mo., bought his 2200, which is powered by a 20 hp Honda gasoline engine, to replace a six-wheel all-terrain vehicle. He reports the 2200 rides well and is more maneuverable. “I needed a lot of room to turn the ATV,” he says. “My 2200 has a good, short turning radius and it has a higher ground clearance.” Maier also likes the 2200’s industry-leading leg room. He uses it at his lakeside vacation home for carrying life vests and water skis to the boat dock, pulling personal watercraft out of the water, and hauling other materials when doing chores around the property.

The 2200 features the IntelliTrak™ drive system—the industry’s first fully-automatic on-demand 4x4 drive. “It’s easy for my wife to drive,” Maier says. “You just move one lever on the dashboard to go forward or reverse, press the accelerator and go.” At the same time, the 4x4 differential lock engages and disengages automatically on the go.

“My 2200 has a good, short turning radius and it has a higher ground clearance.”

“I’m really satisfied with the machine,” he says.

Maier, who develops residential and commercial properties, is also quite satisfied with his other work-saving Bobcat machine—a Toolcat™ 5600 utility work machine. It combines the best features of a loader, pickup truck and attachment carrier. He uses the machine with various Bobcat attachments. They include a 72-in. rotary mower for cutting grass, an auger for digging postholes, pallet forks for carrying building materials and loading a flatbed trailer and a snow blade for use on commercial properties.

Beginning with the first Bobcat skid-steer loader he bought more than 20 years ago from his dealer, KC Bobcat, Maier has owned a number of different Bobcat loaders. That experience, plus the service provided by his dealer played a key role in his decision to buy both the 2200 utility vehicle and the 5600 work machine.

“If you have a dealer who has qualified people that provide good service, like I do, you don’t do much shopping around,” concludes Maier.

Farm-size tanker

Rick Even’s Bobcat 2200 utility vehicle may not qualify as a tank truck, but it sure works like one. His farming business, Even’s Northfork Farms, Inc., Elkton, S.D., has about 300 head of young dairy calves, which are individually housed in rows of huts. With a plastic bulk tank mounted in the cargo bed to hold milk replacer or water and a gasoline powered pump, the 2200 makes the twice-a-day job of feeding the calves go faster and easier.

Traveling from one hut to the next, the milk is pumped into bottles, which are fed to the calves. Once that is done, the 2200 makes another trip, this time filling the empty bottles with water. “It saves us about an hour or two a day, compared to feeding with buckets,” Even says.

At one time, Even’s crew used a sixwheel all-terrain vehicle for this chore. However, after trying out the 2200, they preferred the Bobcat utility vehicle.

With a top travel speed of 25 mph, the 2200 is a quick way of traveling around the farm and it offers plenty of leg room, Even reports.

Fitting in on campus

The compact, easy-to-operate Bobcat 2200 utility vehicle is a fast, convenient way to travel around school campuses.

For example, at the University of California at Davis, a 2200 is used as an alternative to pickup trucks for transporting people and materials between the main campus and nearby agricultural teaching and research plots. It is put to work on jobs ranging from surveying land and touring work sites to hauling livestock feed and bedding through narrow alleyways and barns.

“The 2200 can get through gates and into confined areas where a pickup truck won’t fit and it’s more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists,” says Dave Klippert, who manages the campus’ fleet of construction, material handling and agricultural equipment. “Also, it provides much better visibility of the surrounding area than a pickup truck.”

The 2200, equipped with a diesel engine and optional windshield and roof, is also used as a rental machine by various campus departments. Its automatic, on-demand four-wheel drive fits that application, too. “We try to offer machines that are simple to use,” Klippert says. “With this unit, you don’t have to shift the transmission or engage the four-wheel drive to operate it.”

“I’ve received a lot of good comments about the 2200s from the people who operate them.”

A versatile choice for water works

A trio of Bobcat 2200 utility vehicles is making a variety of jobs easier for the Water Resources Department of the Spartanburg Water System in South Carolina.

One unit is based at a water treatment plant and two are used by wardens at two of the system’s reservoirs. Reliability is a key feature of the 2200 based at the 30-acre water treatment facility, which operates 24 hours a day. There the machine is used to transport sand and dirt used in landscaping and grounds maintenance jobs, coal filter material, drums and other equipment used in water treatment operations.

“The 2200 is very useful in this application,” says Ken Tuck, who manages the department. “Traveling around the facility in the 2200 is a lot easier than using a pickup truck. Also, it replaces a lot of manual labor in moving things from place to place where a pickup truck won’t fit.”

Currently, the other two 2200s are being used for transporting people and cargo during a construction project to increase the capacity of one of the reservoirs. That job required draining the lake, which had 42 miles of shoreline. Security during construction is one of the roles of the 2200s. “A big project like this attracts people who want to drive their off-road vehicles around the lake bed,” says Tuck. “The four-wheel drive machines allow the wardens to patrol the large area to keep trespassers out. They also travel well through some real muddy conditions. In addition, they’re used to carry engineers, consultants and inspectors around the area to inspect construction progress with minimal disturbance to the land.

“The 2200 can get through gates and into confined areas where a pickup truck won’t fit.”

Tuck bought the 2200s after considering various other makes of utility vehicles.

“We demoed the different machines and our operators and wardens were impressed with how the Bobcat units performed,” he says. “The quality in the design and construction of the 2200 was obvious.”

Safety features, such as the certified four-point Roll-Over Protective Structure (ROPS), retractable seat belts, hydraulic disc brakes on all four wheels were also important buying considerations, he notes. So was the ease of operation, comfortable ride, enclosed cab and heater.

“I’ve received a lot of good comments about the 2200s from the people who operate them,” says Tuck.

Sprucing up roadsides

When Do-All Enterprises, Ltd., Okotoks, Alberta, won the contract to maintain the grass along about 8 miles of highways and boulevards in its hometown, Lorne Virtue went shopping for a machine to make the job easier.

He and his wife, Tracie, own the company, which handles a wide range of property maintenance jobs, from mowing grass at shopping malls to removing snow from parking lots. In this case, they needed a fast, easy way to travel along the shoulders of the roads and streets when trimming grass from around numerous sign posts.

A pickup truck was not only more vehicle than they needed for the stopand-go work, it would also block traffic at each stop. At the suggestion of their Bobcat dealer, Bobcat of Calgary, they tried out a 2200 utility vehicle. That demo persuaded them to buy the machine.

As Lorne points out, it’s proven to be an ideal choice. Aperson can easily step out of the machine to trim around the posts with a grass trimmer to make quick, simple work of the job. The cargo box provides room to carry the grass trimmer, a walk-behind mower, fuel and litter bags. It’s also proved handy for hauling and dumping bark mulch.

Lorne likes the strong, durable construction of the 2200. That includes the box tube aluminum frame. As he points out, it won’t rust when working in tall, wet grass. “The 2200 is built to be a lot more rugged than a fourwheel all-terrain vehicle I’ve used in the past,” he says.

He also enjoys the 2200’s simple, comfortable operation. “All the controls are located where you can easily see and operate them,” Lorne says. “I can drive the machine around parks and not worry about tearing up grass and lawns and, with the automatic four-wheel drive, I don’t have to engage the differential when I need extra traction.”

The machine is powered by a Honda 20 hp gasoline engine. “The fuel savings alone beats a truck any day,” he says. “Also, because it’s an industrial class machine, getting insurance for this is much easier than for an all-terrain-vehicle.”

The Bobcat name was another important buying consideration for the Virtues, who also own a Bobcat 773 for snow removal work. “Bobcat equipment has a higher resale value than other brands,” Lorne says. “That’s another reason we purchased the 2200.”

The 2200’s efficiency promises to give Do-All Enterprises a competitive edge to help grow the business. “It’s doing really well for us,” he says. “By keeping our costs down, it will help us keep one step ahead of competitors who use pickup trucks. The 2200 is the vehicle we need.”

Visit your participating Bobcat dealer to test drive the 2200. Or get more details at www.bobcat. com/WS2005.