Digger

How many of us operators have had that sliding feeling when you are loading a tracked excavator onto a low loader/lowboy trailer. Picture the scene, its cold, muddy and wet the trailer bed is all metal and it is parked on a slight camber, you make it up the ramps and then she just starts sliding off the side!

This happened to me once on an old Hymac 580D and I must say it was a very frightening experience indeed. So just imagine if it was to happen with a massive mining sized excavator like a Komatsu PC5500 for instance?

Well we have received this batch of photos from two of our friends down under which show a machine slip which happened recently.

Continue reading "It just slipped off boss!" »

Also on static display at the recent New Holland Grand Prix was one of a number of New Holland E215B excavators that the Italian fire service has recently taken delivery of following a series of tenders won by the Fiat Group's yellow brand.

This machine looked superb in its red fire service livery and certainly attracted a lot of attention from operators and the public who were attending the grand prix.

Continue reading "Italian fire service choose New Holland excavators " »

The latest round of New Hollands Grand Prix event took place last weekend in the beautiful city of Turin in Italy and Digger was there to capture the competition.

The tests were held in front of the Torino Esposizioni building which is on the margins of Parco del Valentino, near the Polytechnic's School of Architecture - an evocative location for an event that has garnered increasing success year after year. Five teams of operators took part this year representing Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Continue reading "New Holland Grand Prix 2009 (Turin)" »

This big dozer video is currently doing the rounds on the machinery forum circuit and features a Caterpillar D11R and an ageing Fiat-Allis FD50 that are working together in a coal mine in America.

The Fiat-Allis FD50 is quite a rare beast these days having been introduced in the early 1980's as a replacement for the 70 ton, 524hp 41B.

It's great to see old dozers like this still hard at work earning their keep alongside the more modern kit.

Talking of machinery from Italy look out for my review of the New Holland Grand Prix 2009 (Turin) coming to the pages of Digger this weekend!

In further response to Bob Rockers request for more big dozer shots here at Digger regular Construction Space forum contributor David Wylie has sent in some impressive shots he took during a recent visit to the Scottish coal mine operation at Broken Cross in South Lanarkshire in the UK.

The Caterpillar D9T dozers are generally used for tip & haul road formation and maintenance, however this photo captures one of 4 Cat D9's on site performing coal stockpiling duties.

Continue reading "More big dozer action shots " »

A fleet of these big trucks are in the process of being assembled & delivered to a new mine near Ulan in NSW.

These large trucks from Komatsu are powered by komatsu's own SDA16V160 engine which develops 1865kw @1900rpm.

The 830E's unladen weight is 164,200kg and has a payload capacity of 221,648kg;
They have a heaped capacity of 147 cubic metres.

Continue reading "New Komatsu 830E's down under" »

Essex based C A Blackwell (Contracts) Ltd has invested around £1.1m in a deal to replace part of its medium sized excavator fleet with eight new Volvo EC210C and three new EC290C excavators.

This package of eleven machines coincided with the company's four year change out policy and the start of a major road construction project taking place on the A1M in North Yorkshire. "We settled on our choice of product quite simply because of our long standing relationship and the overall package offered to us by Volvo," commented managing director Steve Clarke. "Furthermore our own experiences of running Volvo equipment, specifically their excavator models for the last 10 years in terms of productivity and reliability and the after sales support when needed, were strong influencing factors in our purchasing decision."

Continue reading "C A Blackwell invests in more medium sized excavators from Volvo" »

Mike Bullock sent in this amazing series of photos from Russia where hundreds of heavy dumptrucks from top manufacturers Caterpillar and Komatsu just seem to have been abandoned and left to the ravages of the wind,rain and snow.

So who can afford to just let these earthmoving monsters rot away like this? Well apparently these old trucks are owned by a massive diamond mining company for whom money appears to be no object. When these trucks have reached a certain age they simply park them up and buy a whole new fleet!

Continue reading "Cat and Komatsu dumptruck graveyard" »

This amazing video footage of the "Super Pit" was taken by fellow machinery forum member Allistair Cooke during his recent year long working holiday in Australia

This renowned Kalgoorlie-Boulder landmark is currently 3.5 km long, 1.5 km wide and 360 m deep, and will eventually stretch 3.9 km long, 1.6 km wide and reach a depth exceeding 500 m. Since 1893, when Irish-man Paddy Hannan first made his famous discovery, more than 50 million ounces (1,550 t) of gold have been mined from the Golden Mile.

When you think how big those excavators and mining trucks are when you are close to them and yet in this film they just look like little Tonka toys!

A truly awesome sight and one that I would love to visit one day.

Next Friday three of the UK's top operators fly out to Turin in Italy to take part in the New Holland Grand Prix 2009 along with your blogger Nick Drew and Graham Black from Earthmovers who will both be representing the UK press/media.

The participants will take part in a series of challenges like the one shown in this photo from one last years UK regional heats.

This European competition dedicated to construction equipment operators will be held at the evocative location of Parco del Valentino, symbol of the city of Turin, for the 2009 edition.

Continue reading "Digger heads for New Holland event " »

Here is another mishap this time from our good friend down under Gary Steen.

Someone didn't really think of the consequences of slewing a Caterpillar 345D LME excavator over the side when it's not got it's boom fitted!

It is hardly surprising that this happened when you consider that the counterweight on a 345D LME weighs somewhere in the region of 19,180 lb and the overall operating weight of a fully assembled machine would be around 100,040 lb

Aimed at filling the gap between Caterpillar's 428E and 432E Premium, the new UK built CAT 432E Utility Plus model is a value based proposition for customers wanting to reduce costs, without compromising on the Cat 432E machine performance.

With a 95 horse power engine, replacing the 101 horse power unit traditionally used in the CAT 432E, the new Utility Plus model offers customers a 5% fuel saving with minimal impact to productivity.

Continue reading "New Cat 432E Utility Plus Backhoe Loader " »

These photos were recently posted on to our Friends of the Digger blog page on Facebook by Bugsy Cwalinski.

They were taken near Chester at a settlement lagoon where silt is allowed to settle and seperate from the river water before being cleaned for drinking. A local company had been contracted to empty it but quickly got into trouble with the Case excavator becoming stuck not once but twice!

Continue reading "Case CX130 gets that sinking feeling" »

Following a request from Digger blog reader Bob Rocker for more big dozer shots our good friend Gary Steen from Australia has stepped in to help with these shots of a Komatsu D475A-5 in action during very hard ripping duties.

These shots were taken by Gary when he was working for Komatsu before moving on to work for the Abi Group.The cell being ripped was for a new landfill in Western Sydney.

Gary said "The D11's wouldn't even look at the stuff and the big Komatsu really knew she was working, that V12 Komatsu engine sounds fantastic under load"

Continue reading "Komatsu rips it up!" »

Whilst watching Britain does the funniest things on Saturday night tv, I saw the video that I featured here on the Digger blog where the guy falls off the Takeuchi TB008 into the trench and It got me thinking about some of the accident shots I have in my collection which feature mini diggers which as we know can be lethal in the wrong hands!

At no 5. This unidentified Kubota has come to grief on a demolition job.

At no 4. This machine posibly an IHI has just had that slipped into the trench feeling!

Continue reading "Mini excavator mishaps top five" »