Excavators – buyers’ guide

An overview of the most popular excavators on the market, including: reviews of excavators, news about excavators, link to websites selling secondhand excavators, links to manufacturers of excavators, plus links to directories of excavators suppliers.

Different types of excavators

Excavators account for around 40% of all sales of construction equipment, making them the most popular piece of machinery on construction sites. The main types of excavators are:

Micro excavators. Generally under 1t, these machines are becoming increasingly popular due to changing safety legislation.
Mini excavators or compact excavators. These are 1t to 5t operating weight.
General and tracked excavators. These are usually over 6t operating weight depending on the manufacturer’s classification.
Wheeled excavators. Usually up to about 22t, these are popular Continental Europe as they can be driven from depot to the site. In the UK, they are less popular, but often converted to work on and off railway lines.
Mining shovels. These monster excavators can top 700t.

In recent years, excavators have been used for jobs far beyond conventional excavation tasks. The advent of the quick hitch has turned excavators from pure diggers into tool carriers capable of using a variety of attachments to carry out jobs from breaking and crushing to screening and compaction.

Manufacturers of excavators

There are many manufacturers in this market with Komatsu being the world’s biggest producer of excavators, followed by Hitachi and Caterpillar. In the UK, Hitachi, JCB and Komatsu vie for market leadership.

The main manufacturers of excavators, and the types of excavators they specialise in, are as follows: