As both an owner and operator I have been a keen supporter of an extremely popular orange brand of machine for many years, but I have now gone down the red and grey route and purchased my first new Takeuchi, a TB235 model which has been supplied by the Saltash branch of CBL Plant Sales Ltd. It had been a considerable wait, but the new Takeuchi TB235 finally arrived home last Friday and from my first impressions it’s been a wait well worth it. Having kept a keen eye on the machines progress with the photos sent to me from the factory in Nagano, it was nice to eventually get in the seat for a bit of stick time over the weekend. The handover was conducted by CBL’s Area Salesman Mark Crocker who also gave me an in-depth introduction to the new mount which is all part of the service provided to customers receiving new machines from CBL Plant Sales. The machine had a number of additional items fitted for me by CBL including a new Whites Totalock 2 hydraulic quick hitch, a Grip Talon from Digbits, additional LED lighting package, free flow return line to the hydraulic tank and to top it all off my Diga-Bara was colour coded to match the Takeuchi. I hope to report in more detail on my experience with the new machine in a future edition of Earthmovers Magazine, but in the meantime I would like to thank the whole team down at CBL for their outstanding customer service with this machine delivery. Now I just need to find a bit of work for it locally to get it paid for!