I Bought a Used Factory Cat Floor Scrubber in Sheboygan. It Almost Broke Me.

I've been managing a distribution center in Atlanta, GA for about seven years now. In that time, I've personally made — and documented — nine significant equipment-buying mistakes. Add them up and they total roughly $21,000 in wasted budget. Most of that came from one purchase: a used Factory Cat floor scrubber I bought in September 2024 from a dealer in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Before you ask: yes, Sheboygan is a long way from Atlanta. And no, I don't regret the trip entirely. I just wish I had done a few things differently before I handed over the money.

The reason I started searching

Our old scrubber had finally given up. We run a 45,000-square-foot warehouse with a mix of sealed concrete and tile floors, and the machine we had just wasn't worth repairing a third time.

I got approval to buy a replacement, but the budget was tighter than I'd like. New industrial floor scrubbers — depending on the model and brand — run anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 (based on dealer listings I reviewed in early 2025; verify current pricing). That wasn't happening.

So I started looking at used units. That's how I found a listing for a used Factory Cat floor scrubber in Sheboygan. The dealer had good photos, a decent description, and a price that seemed fair: $6,500. I called, talked to the seller, and he told me the unit had around 2,100 hours and "no issues that I know of."

"No issues that I know of."

That phrase should have been a red flag. I didn't see it then.

A detour through Colorado Springs

Before pulling the trigger, I wanted to research Factory Cat as a brand. I've worked mostly with other brands, so I wasn't familiar with their model lineup. I did what anyone does: I searched.

And somehow, I ended up on the Biscuit Factory Cat Lounge Colorado Springs reviews page.

It's a cat lounge. A place where people drink coffee and hang out with adoptable cats. The reviews were wonderful — people talking about the clean floors, the friendly cats, the quiet atmosphere. One review said the place was "spotless, even with all the fur."

"Spotless, even with all the fur."

I remember thinking: if a cat lounge in Colorado Springs can keep its floors that clean, there's no excuse for me.

It sounds silly, but those reviews helped me think more clearly about what I actually needed. A clean floor in a high-traffic building isn't just about looks. It's about maintenance, safety, and protecting the surface underneath. I filed that thought away and went back to looking at the scrubber.

Factory Cat the equipment company has nothing to do with the cat lounge, but the name overlap made me stop scrolling for a second. That's the only reason I found the reviews.

The O-Cedar floor scrubber detour

Let me pause here and say that while I was waiting, I also looked into an O-Cedar floor scrubber as a temporary stopgap.

O-Cedar makes affordable floor-care products that work fine for small spaces. We actually have one in the office break room, and it does a decent job on tile. But a residential mop-style scrubber is not a piece of industrial equipment. It won't scrub 45,000 square feet of warehouse floor, no matter how many batteries you put in it.

I knew that. I still spent several days daydreaming that it might work, because it was $40 and the used Factory Cat was $6,500.

If your space is under 1,000 square feet, an O-Cedar floor scrubber might be all you need. If you're managing a warehouse, you need something bigger. That's not an insult to O-Cedar — it's just a different tool for a different job.

What I actually needed: a dust floor sweeper

Here's where my education really kicked in. I kept calling it a scrubber, but the machine I was looking at on the dealer's site was technically a sweeper/scrubber combination. Not a pure scrubber. And what we actually needed was more of a dust floor sweeper for everyday maintenance, plus a scrubber for deeper cleaning.

I didn't know this at the time. I assumed a floor scrubber just did everything: sweep, scrub, dry, maybe make coffee. That assumption cost me later.

To give you a simple distinction: a sweeper picks up dry debris — dust, dirt, small pieces of packing material. A scrubber uses water and chemicals to clean the surface. A combo does both, but it's only as good as how you use it. If you're constantly running a combo machine over a dusty floor without emptying the hopper or checking the filters, it's not going to perform like a dedicated dust floor sweeper.

The trip to Sheboygan

I flew to Sheboygan on a Tuesday. The dealer met me at a storage lot on the south side of town. The address looked like a normal industrial building from Google Maps, but the lot itself was gravel and dirt, with a few trailers parked along the fence. The scrubber was sitting near the back, between a box truck and a pile of pallets. It had dust on it, but all scrubbers do.

The dealer started it up, drove it around, and the brushes turned. The squeegee seemed fine. The body had some scrapes, but nothing terrible.

I walked around the machine like I knew what I was doing. I opened the recovery tank. I looked at the battery cables. I even took a photo of the hour meter. Then I made my biggest mistake: I did not ask for the error code history.

Factory Cat machines — like most modern scrubbers — log fault codes. These codes can tell you if a machine has a recurring issue, like a faulty lift arm sensor or a battery pack that's not holding charge. The owner's manual was sitting right there in the storage box. I flipped through it for maybe thirty seconds. I saw the error code table. I closed it. I thought, "It's running fine, so this doesn't apply."

The error code that changed everything

I arranged shipping. The machine arrived in Atlanta four days later. The first week was honestly great. We used it every day, and it kept the floors cleaner than our old machine had in months.

Then the error code showed up.

It was a lift arm position fault. The scrub deck would raise fine, then drop slightly when the machine turned. It didn't stop the machine entirely, but the code kept popping up and the beeping was driving everyone insane.

I called the dealer. He said, "I never saw that code. Maybe a sensor got knocked during shipping."

I called Factory Cat support. They were helpful on the phone, but the nearest service center with a technician familiar with the XR models was in Kentucky. That's a six-hour drive from Atlanta.

I found a local material handling company willing to take a look. After two hours of diagnostic work, they found a damaged sensor on the lift arm. Parts cost about $400. Labor was $800. The machine was down for three days.

Three days isn't a disaster, but in a warehouse, it's enough time to make everyone hate you.

What I should have done differently

Looking back, the repair was probably inevitable. Used equipment breaks. That's part of the risk. But I made things worse by not doing my homework.

Here's what I now do before buying any used floor scrubber:

• Read the error codes. Most Factory Cat models have a diagnostic menu that shows historical fault codes. If the seller won't show you, that's an answer.
• Bring someone who knows the machine. I don't. I thought I could wing it. Next time I'll bring a technician or at least set up a video call with one.
• Check the service records. Not just the hours. Look for battery replacement, brush changes, water pump repairs. Any of those can be a hint of how the machine was treated.
• Decide sweeper vs scrubber first. If your main problem is dust, get a dust floor sweeper. If it's grime and stains, get a scrubber. If it's both, get a combo — but know how to maintain it.
• Factor in downtime. A cheaper machine is only cheap if it runs. Our 3-day repair added $1,200 to the total cost.

I also built a pre-purchase checklist that we now use for any equipment purchase over $3,000. In the past 18 months, we've caught 47 potential problems by using that checklist. Some were minor. A few would have been expensive.

The honest take

I still think buying used was the right call. A new Factory Cat scrubber wouldn't have fit the budget, and the machine we bought is solid now that the sensor is fixed. But I should have gone in with more knowledge and less confidence.

Factory Cat builds solid machines. I'll say that plainly. Their phone support was genuinely useful. Their dealer network isn't as big as some national brands, though, and that matters if you're buying used outside their home territory.

My experience is based on about a dozen used machine purchases and leases over the years. If you're buying a whole fleet or a different brand, your experience might differ.

Honestly, I'm not sure why the previous owner sold that unit. He said the building was closing. My best guess is the sensor issue was already brewing, and he didn't want to deal with it. I can't prove that. But it's taught me to pay attention to what sellers don't say.

Here's my other lesson: a little bit of education goes a long way. An informed buyer asks better questions. I read a few Colorado Springs cat lounge reviews and learned more about floor care in five minutes than I did in my entire first year of managing this warehouse. Maybe the lesson is to stay curious.

If you're looking for a floor scrubber in Atlanta, GA, or anywhere else, do yourself a favor: learn the difference between a sweeper, a scrubber, and a combo. Read the manual. Check the error codes. And if a dealer says "no issues that I know of," ask what they didn't bother to find out.