Bobcat E220 and E245: The Biggest Excavators Bobcat Has Ever Built

For most of its history, Bobcat built its name on machines you could trailer behind a pickup truck. Skid steers, compact track loaders, mini excavators under six tons - that was the company's whole identity, and it built that identity well. So when Bobcat rolled out the E220 and E245 large excavators, it wasn't a minor lineup update. It was Bobcat formally entering a weight class it had never competed in before: the 23-to-25-ton excavator bracket where CAT, Komatsu, and Hyundai have operated for decades.

We've covered Bobcat's earlier move into this territory with the E165, the machine that first pushed the brand past compact and into genuinely full-size iron. The E220 and E245 go further still. These aren't trim updates to the E165 - they're new, larger platforms built from the ground up to compete directly with the machines that handle mass excavation, deep utility work, and heavy site development. If you run crews that outgrew compact equipment years ago, this is the first time Bobcat has had a real answer for you.

What Bobcat Actually Built

The E220 is the 23-ton model. It runs a 174-horsepower Bobcat diesel, digs to 21 feet 7 inches, and moves 111.2 gallons per minute through its hydraulic system. The E245 steps up to 25 tons, a 189-horsepower engine, a dig depth of 21 feet 11 inches, and 117 gpm of hydraulic flow. Both share an identical bucket digging force of 35,464 pound-feet, meaning the extra horsepower and displacement in the E245 goes toward cycle speed and lift capacity rather than raw breakout force.

Both engines meet Tier 4 Final emissions standards without a diesel particulate filter. That's worth pausing on, because DPF regeneration cycles are one of the more irritating maintenance realities on a lot of modern diesel equipment - idle time burned waiting for a forced regen, the risk of soot loading on a machine that spends all day at low RPM digging a trench. Bobcat's engineering choice here means one less maintenance variable and one less way for an operator to accidentally derate a machine mid-shift.

The One Real Engineering Difference Between Them

Here's where the E220 and E245 actually diverge, and it's not horsepower. The E220 runs a conventional tail swing, where the counterweight extends past the tracks on a full rotation, same as most excavators in this class. The E245 runs a reduced tail swing instead, keeping the counterweight tucked closer to the tracks through the full swing arc.

That one choice determines which jobsite each machine actually belongs on. A conventional-swing E220 gives you a lower center of gravity and generally better lift stability for pure mass excavation on open sites - pond digging, large pad grading, borrow pit work where nothing's within swing radius anyway. The reduced-swing E245 trades a bit of that stability for the ability to work close to a retaining wall, a fence line, or parked equipment without a spotter watching the counterweight every single pass.

For utility contractors working in occupied rights-of-way, or site-development subs working tight urban lots, that difference isn't cosmetic - it changes whether you need a second person on the ground every time you swing. The logic mirrors a tradeoff we've written about in the mid-size class too: reduced swing costs you a little stability math, and buys back real jobsite flexibility, whichever manufacturer builds the machine.

Key Specs at a Glance

• E220: 23-ton class, 174 hp, 21'7" dig depth, conventional tail swing, 111.2 gpm hydraulic flow

• E245: 25-ton class, 189 hp, 21'11" dig depth, reduced tail swing, 117 gpm hydraulic flow

• Shared bucket digging force: 35,464 lbf on both models

• Both meet Tier 4 Final emissions without a diesel particulate filter

• Three-year/5,000-hour full coverage warranty on both machines

• Available through select North American Bobcat dealers

What This Means for the Broader Excavator Market

For decades, Bobcat and full-size excavator simply didn't belong in the same sentence. The brand owned the compact end of the market so thoroughly that contractors running mixed fleets usually bought their skid steers and mini excavators from Bobcat, then crossed the lot to a CAT, Komatsu, or Hyundai dealer for anything over ten tons. The E220 and E245 close that gap for the first time, and they do it with a genuinely competitive machine rather than a token entry built to check a box.

That matters most for contractors who already run Bobcat compact equipment and have built relationships with a Bobcat dealer's parts counter and service techs. Bobcat backs its North American lineup with a network described as more than 660 independently owned dealer enterprises - a real, built-out service footprint, not a handful of flagship stores. Extending a fleet into the E220 or E245 means staying inside a parts and warranty relationship you already trust, instead of starting from zero with an unfamiliar brand just to get the tonnage you need.

It also puts real pressure on the incumbents. CAT's 320 and Komatsu's PC210-class machines have owned the mid-size excavator conversation for years because, frankly, there wasn't a credible alternative outside that circle. Bobcat showing up with a genuinely new, Tier 4 Final, DPF-free platform at a competitive weight class gives contractors a real third option to cross-shop, and competition in that bracket tends to be good for buyers on price, financing terms, and dealer support alike.

Who Actually Needs a Machine This Size

This isn't a replacement for a compact excavator, and Bobcat isn't positioning it that way. The E220 and E245 exist for the contractors who've been renting a 23-ton-class machine from a national rental house every time a job called for real mass excavation - site development subs clearing and grading multi-acre pads, utility contractors installing large-diameter storm and sanitary lines, demolition contractors loading out foundation and footing debris that a compact machine simply can't move fast enough.

If that describes your business and you're still renting that size of machine two or three times a year, the math has probably already flipped against you. A rented 23-ton excavator runs real money every week it's on your lot, with none of it building toward ownership, and the rental yard's availability becomes your project's bottleneck the moment two customers want the same machine on the same Monday.

The three-year, 5,000-hour full coverage warranty on both machines is worth factoring into that calculation too. A financed machine that's still under full factory coverage through most of its early productive life is a lower-risk asset from a lender's perspective and a lower-risk purchase from yours - unplanned major component failures in year one or two, the kind that can wreck a tight cash flow plan, are largely Bobcat's problem rather than your shop's problem during that window.

Getting Approved for a Machine in This Class

A 23-to-25-ton excavator is a meaningfully bigger ticket than the compact equipment most contractors finance first, and that can make business owners nervous about qualifying, especially if the company is still young or credit has a few dings on it. In practice, lenders in this space look harder at the contract backlog and job pipeline behind the purchase than at a flawless credit file - a demolition contractor with signed work lined up is a different underwriting conversation than a speculative purchase with no job attached.

The economics get more lopsided as the machine gets bigger, not less. A larger excavator commands a higher daily or weekly rental rate, and the utilization threshold where ownership starts winning drops lower than most contractors assume - often well under half the working year. Equipment financing on a machine in this class spreads the cost over the asset's productive life instead of handing that value to a rental company every time you need it, and once it's paid down, it still has resale and trade-in value a rental invoice never will.

There's also a scheduling argument that gets overlooked. Owning the machine means it's on your lot the morning a job starts, not whenever the rental yard's fleet frees up. For a subcontractor bidding competitively on time-sensitive site work, that certainty is worth real money on its own, separate from the straight financing math.

Contractors scaling past a single large excavator run into a different problem: reapplying for a new loan every time the second or third machine gets added to the fleet. A master lease line of credit, the kind we've detailed for growing excavator fleets built around machines like the CAT 320, solves that by pre-approving a facility you draw against as the fleet grows, rather than starting the underwriting conversation over from scratch each time.

BFC works with construction companies, utility contractors, and demolition subs moving into this exact equipment class every week, for startups and established businesses alike, with good or bad credit, nationwide. If the E220 or E245, or any large excavator in this bracket, is the next step for your crew, our team structures financing around your actual job pipeline rather than a one-size-fits-all approval.

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