[throwaway0a5e]

That's great if you have a diesel engine. Prior to the 80s and depending on application tons of stuff came equipped with gas engines. Those machines are fuel hogs compared to diesel stuff. If you have a diesel from prior to the era when everything grew turbochargers there's another fuel economy cliff but it's not as drastic.

Engines aren't really a problem as long as you don't let Washington bureaucrats tell you what to put on them (emissions components are a long term consumable on modern diesel engines).

There's all sorts of incremental improvements to things that just make the machines easier to operate and faster at what they do. More and more equipment (or functions on said equipment) has been going hydraulic over time and machines have been adding more and more auxiliary circuits to support that. If you're moving a lot of stuff not on pallets a pair of forks that has hydraulic width adjustment is a huge upgrade over manual. Joystick style controls are a lot smoother and faster to operate than lever style controls. New mostly glass cabs have amazing visibility compared to the mostly sheet metal cabs of old. Having a cab at all greatly improves your ability to work in the elements. A 10yr difference in equipment isn't much but for a given HP you'll start seeing a big difference in productivity at 20-30yr as all the little stuff adds up.