Category Archives: construction equipment

Construction Heavy Equipment

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Construction in this era is a booming sector and so are the sectors that are closely associated with it. For instance, the cement industry, steel industry and more importantly the heavy equipment industry also see themselves growing. Due to their close association with the construction industry, they have all been able to set their foot tight on the ground and are now making good money. The heavy equipment manufacturing industry is perhaps one of the most profitable industries as it is much believed that the entire construction sector depends largely on the heavy equipment industry and vice versa.

We will be talking about some crucial heavy equipment without which it is almost unimaginable for the construction sector to sustain.

Crawler Dozers:-

When we talk about moving loads of dirt, we can’t think of any machine other than a Crawler Dozer. They are big powerful machines that are meant for the purpose of carrying huge loads of dirt in the bucket that is positioned on the front of the equipment. The operator drags the bucket on the ground and the dirt gets absorbed in the bucket. It thus carries all the dirt and dumps it on a dump truck. These machines are used predominantly in a mining site or in a road construction site.

We can also see these machines in a jobsite that is working on a very big project where it has to cover a lot of ground and get the dirt out. The smaller version of this machine is also used as grading tractors. Al most every heavy equipment manufacturing company produced crawler dozers. So one has to check the specification and match it with his requirements to come to a decision on the brand he should be going for.

 Excavators:-

This is very common heavy equipment that one will come across on any construction of mining jobsite. Every construction project needs to dig the earth and for this they need machines no less than an excavator to do the job for them. There are various types of excavators available and each one with some superior features in it comes at a high cost. The new construction companies or small contractors often do not go for expensive excavators. They limit themselves with lower genre of machines or basically buy small version. It may not be as effective as the larger ones but is still doable.

Road rollers:-

No road work can be done without the use of road rollers. They are quite instrumental in giving a shape to the surface of the road. It easily presses the asphalt and other ingredients sprayed on the surface and give a good outcome. Road rollers have a huge drum located at the front of the machine and the operator simply rolls it on the surface thus making it smooth. Some rollers have a drum in the front and 2 heavy rollers at that rear of the machine thus giving good impact on the road. Overall, when it comes to road construction rollers are a must.

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How to recruit competent operators

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Day in and day out we are witnessing a lot of changes in the way heavy equipment are being operated. It is primarily because of the ever increasing want of the consumer to make operating heavy equipment simpler and also because they want their work to be completed in comparatively lesser time so that they can concentrate on new projects. This has certainly given rise to the want of advanced heavy equipment and also simultaneously has given rise to the requirement of competent operators. Good operators have become a very rare commodity and are not easily found.

If you own a big construction house, you will not more than 6-7 operators who are highly experienced and know their job well. The other lot will always be a factor of worry for you. It has therefore become a skill to recruit competent operators for your company and we will discuss what exactly should be done to recognize their talent and make them a part of your organization.

Check how much they know about their work:-

It is important to check how knowledgeable the operator is as far as his work is concerned and how much he knows about heavy equipment. Check which all machines has he operated in the last 2 years and if there are any cases of accidents reported against him. Competencies do come with experience but that is certainly not the only criteria to become a competent operator. Therefore, you can also look for guys who do not have much experience but are still good with machines. You can ask them several questions pertaining to the equipment they have operated and check how correct they are while answering them. This will give you a hint on what kind of operator you are hiring.

Trial check is necessary to check their competency:-

In order to know how good they are in operating the heavy equipment, you can ask them to operate a machine and tell them what they need to do. Your instructions should be crystal clear so that they can perform the task without any confusion. Now if they complete the task without any error, you have the right guy for the job. This method of checking the competency of the operator is performed by many construction companies who are able to recruit ace operators.

 

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Make customized heavy equipment straight from the workshop

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We all have some specific requirements and in order to fulfill those requirements we need special tools. Similarly, when we talk about the construction segment we would like to have heavy equipment that suit our needs. Heavy equipment makers take lot of care to produce machines that matches our needs but that may sound pretty expensive and the heavy equipment produced by them are bought by big construction and mining companies. Small contractors and sub-contractors form a major part of the construction business and frankly they can’t afford to buy machines that are tailor made. They ideally made some amendments to the heavy equipment they are using like adding some attachments and try to do their job. However it is not an impossible task to use customized heavy equipment. All they have to do is give the existing equipment to the mechanic who has a workshop and who not only fixes construction machines but also modifies them. They only have to be a bit specific about their requirements and consider the job as done.

Not all mechanics modify heavy equipment:-

You got to do a fair deal of research before you land up to one such workshop and also remember that not all mechanics modify heavy equipment. They may have a workshop where they repair your machines but they do not participate in modification works. Either they do not have the expertise or they want to keep their business simple. Some mechanics know to modify machines but still stick to the repairing business. It is definitely not an easy job. When you modify a machine you got to take care of many other things that are connected with it. If you want something to be changed, you may have to forcibly change some other component as it may not be compatible with the changed item. This is why there are special workshops which have trained men/women for the job and you need to take the equipment to them for any kind of modification.

Can also buy customized heavy equipment:-

If you are looking to buy heavy equipment that will serve some special needs for your business you can again look up to mechanics that makes heavy equipment considering your needs. These heavy equipment will be way too inexpensive as compared to the one manufactured by heavy equipment companies. It will not hurt your budget and you have a machine that serves your purpose. However, it is important that you prepare the specifications of the heavy equipment along with the operator. He will be the guy who will eventually work on it and therefore he can mention well about what all he needs in it.

Compare the price before you give an order:-

Before you go with ordering customized heavy equipment, it is imperative that you check the quotation from different mechanics. You got to be wise enough to choose the best. Try to get reviews from people who have got similar work done from them. If at all you get recommendations from someone in your business circle, you can give that special consideration but try to analyze the situation well and then place yo

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Selling attachments to construction companies will give huge profits

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The construction and mining industry is perhaps one of the most booming industries till now. Though both the industries have seen few ups and downs and do take that as part and parcel of this game, they have still managed to be the most successful industries of all. Someone who is unable to make it big in the construction domain but still want to stick to the same domain can try their luck by selling heavy equipment or parts and attachments of heavy equipment to different construction companies. This is a highly profitable business and many who were not able to make it big in the construction domain were able to do well in the ancillary domain. Though it is connected to the same industry people who know nothing but heavy equipment can make a career out of it. It is just not a business but a big time career for many who like to remain associated with this domain.

Construction companies are quite reluctant to buy heavy equipment or their parts from a non-branded company which is why if you try to manufacture a machine in your workshop and try to market it, you will find it extremely difficult to sell it across to buyers. So the most viable solution for you is to sell branded stuffs to companies. The modus operandi would be to buy old machines, refurbish it and then sell it back to the construction companies. You should just not play around with the brand logo. Not all construction company will buy that from you but there are many small companies who can’t afford to buy branded ones will go for your product.

Same goes with attachments of heavy equipment. Attachments are equally expensive and any newbie will not want to spend his money into buying a brand new attachment when he has the option to buy it from a company that deals with seconds. This is a big business and is spread across many countries and not just in US alone. You got to deal with attachments of every branded company and need to have a thorough knowledge about which attachment is used for what purpose. This job is said to be more appropriate for operators who after retiring from their job opens up a business of their own. This business can’t be limited to guys who have worked on heavy equipment and can be taken up by anybody who has sound knowledge about machines.

Other than knowing about heavy equipment and their parts, you also should have a reasonable idea about their cost in the market. Just to earn profits you can’t quote an amount that sounds equal to a new attachment. You have to quote a price that is lower to the value of new items. Therefore a thorough study of the market is also important. A person who has lived all his life working on heavy equipment will rather find it simple to figure out which one costs what and thereby will do well in this form of a business.

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Loan to buy heavy equipment

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Loans have become a part of life for almost every citizen of this country. The day you begin to earn, you also apply for credit cards and start buying things on credit. This is also one form of loan where you intend to pay the creditor on or before the due date. Catering to our needs, there are different segments of loans that financial institutions have come up with. You can go for home loan, personal loan, auto loan etc. People who need money to start their business can also apply for business loan and they shall get it at affordable interest rates. Though not all banks offer loans at affordable interest rates, one needs to check which bank they should go with for easy payments of installments. So for people who have just stepped in the construction business and require loan to buy heavy equipment can shop for banks who can offer money at reasonable interest rates.

Before you start shopping for banks to apply for loans, it is imperative that you check the need to buy heavy equipment for your business. You can fulfill your requirement by taking it on rent where you do not own the equipment but can use it for a year or so and then give it back to the owner. You only have to pay an amount that has been agreed upon by both the parties at the beginning or at the end of every month.

However, if you feel that renting heavy equipment is not the solution to the problem and buying one is the need of the hour then you should begin to hunt for a bank. We all want to borrow money at affordable interest rates but an application has to go through a lot of screening in order to qualify for that. It has been seen that not many people qualify for loans at lower interest rates.

Pay a fee to get loans at lower interest rates:-

At times you may not qualify to get loan at a lower interest rate. Either you credit rating is not up to the mark or there may be some reason or the other that fails you to qualify for a lower interest rate. Some banks may still qualify you provided you have to pay them a fee to get that done. However, not all banks follow this as their guideline to bring down the interest rates and it completely depends upon what the banks need to lower your interest rate. To buy heavy equipment you need to have lot of money. The ideal situation would be to use an amount that is part of your savings and the balance should be taken as loan. In this way, even if the interest rate is high you would be able to manage it well.

Improve your credit rating:-

Your credit rating plays an important role in qualifying for the bank loan. So you should ensure that you keep it clean by paying your dues in time. Likewise once you buy the machine ensure that you pay the monthly installments on time without defaulting for even a month. This will keep help you to keep a healthy credit rating.

What happens to heavy equipment whose payments are defaulted

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Not every person who has borrowed money from a financial institution pays it off on time. There are few borrowers who for some reason or the other turn defaulters. It is not that they do not want to pay their debts off but the circumstances somehow do not allow them to pay the debts. Many people who take up their career in the construction industry take incorrect decisions that have a hard hitting impact on their finances and eventually it leads to non-payment of monthly dues. There are handful of borrowers who simply lack the intention to pay-off the debts but these kinds of people are quite rare as people are aware that any default in payment can have a strong impact on their credit rating which they do not want to see tainted. Now the heavy equipment whose payments are defaulted are usually repossessed by the banks.

Banks do not want to incur losses when they realize that the borrower is unable to make any further monthly payments and therefore they give the work to repossess the heavy equipment to a third party who specializes in towing the heavy equipment from the borrower’s place to the bank’s garage. Now the work of the repo guys is tougher as it is not easy to tow the machine without the approval of the borrower. It is quite likely that the borrower will not approve the repo guys to just take away the heavy equipment. They may cause problems for them and the job of the repo guys is to tow the machine without creating a furor on the spot.

The financial institution has to pay decent amount to these repo guys for their hard work. Other than that, every other repo agent has different charges based upon their experience and their ability to repossess heavy equipment. So once the machines are handed over to the bank, the bank has to arrange to auction the heavy equipment and sell it at a price so that it can cover up the principal amount. Now the question that comes up is does the bank get any buyers for these used heavy equipment. Well, as a matter of fact, the banks get lot of buyers because the deal they will get during the auction, they can’t expect it anywhere else. Such auctions are just the thing any buyer would want to have.

However, the irony is they have to take what they get in the auction. They may not find the equipment they wanted for their business. For instance, if the bank decides to auction few equipment which are basically dozers and graders and people who are in need of an excavator may find the auction worthless. So it does not serve the purpose of everybody who is present in the auction. But for people who want to buy heavy equipment at lower price so that they can then rent it out, for them it is a fair deal. They have to pay the amount in cash and take away the heavy equipment.

Road construction machines

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For the development of the economy of any country, good well maintained roads play quite a vital role. If you have good roads it becomes easy to transport goods from one place to another. Right from agricultural sector to manufacturing industry, all of them highly depend on good constructed roads. One can easily understand how important it is to ferry agricultural products to the main market from where it gets further distributed to the wholesaler and then finally to the retailer. Similarly, raw materials are transported day in and day out so that the manufacturing and other industries can function without any hindrance. It becomes very important to ensure that the roads are well maintained and whatever heavy equipment are required to keep the quality of the roads in place are done without any compromise. Unlike in a construction sector, only few sets of heavy equipment are needed to construct roads and also to maintain them.

As far as the road construction work goes, usage of heavy equipment depends on the kind of work that is needed to be done. It ideally varies from constructing a new road or just working on few repairs on the existing one.

Motor grader:-

Before placing asphalt on the road, it is important to flatten the surface. This can be done with the help of a motor grader. The ones that are used to flatten the surface have 3 axles with the cab on the top of the rear axle and the third axle is located at the very front of the machine. It also has a very long blade in the center of the axles.

Road roller machine:-

A road roller is a common type of heavy equipment that one will find in a road construction area. It is used to press the layer of asphalt that has been laid on the ground. Ideally, 2 to 3 layers of asphalt are laid and thereafter the roller machine is rolled on the road and presses the asphalt to make the road smooth. There are several types of rollers that one can find on road construction projects. The type of rollers is often selected keeping into consideration the kind of road being constructed. There are rubber tire rollers or double drum asphalt rollers or rollers that are combination of both of the rollers. As stated, the kind of construction of roads actually suggests the type of rollers to be used for the project.

Excavator:-

Excavators are machines that are used to dig earth and rocks. They are used in road construction projects where there is a need to excavate a portion of land that will help to bring the road to a level. They are also used to break an uneven structure with the help of the boom or the bucket and collect all the dirt and load it on the dump truck.

Wheel Loader:-

A wheel loader is considered to be vital heavy equipment when it comes to construction of roads. It is used to gather all the dirt from the earth and dump it on a dump truck. Due to the big size of the bucket, it can pile up loads of dirt and dump it at a given point of time.

Heavy equipment rollers

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A flat land surface is crucial for people to walk around. For instance, a construction site needs to have flat land as that will enable the workers to walk easily. At the same time it will also allow the heavy equipment to move without many hurdles. It has witnessed that an uneven land often cause enormous problems to people moving over it. It also becomes the reason of many accidents happening in that spot. The logic is pretty simple. If you are not able to move easily, you tend to fall down quite often and being in a construction site you can’t afford to fall every now and then due to uneven surface. That is just not acceptable and which is why the need of rollers to flatten the land is pretty much needed. A construction company can’t afford too many accidents or injuries happening on his site just for a lame reason like uneven roads/paths.

It is quite interesting to know that there are different types of heavy equipment used to roll the roads to make it smooth. At the same time such equipment are not as expensive as other construction machines are. However, if you consider equipment that are used for major road construction projects the requirement of such machines may differ and the need to execute more advanced ones may arise.

There are different types of rollers used to roll the land. Not the quality of every road is the same and therefore it needs different types of rollers on it. Equipment like Rammers are used where the compact on the soil is less and it can be operated by hand or by machine. Rammers are small equipment and therefore need not be fitted in machines. Many people do it using their hand and avoid fitting it in some machine. There are few Rammers which are large in size and may weigh in tons. It is basically those Rammers that are fitted in machines to operate.

Speaking about smooth wheeled rollers, they are ideally of 2 types. The first one is static and the second is vibrating smooth wheeled rollers. These rollers are used in soil which has high proportion of sand, asphalt, gravel or crushed rock. They are worked on soil that does not need more compaction and are used for giving a finishing layer to the upper surface of the land. Its performance is widely dependent on the kind of drum that is attached to it. Heavier the drum the more impact it has on the soil. This roller has one drum at the front and 2 tires at the rear. The weight of the drums can be increased or decreased as per the requirement.

These kinds of machines are also low on maintenance but may have high fuel consumption. It all depends upon the kind of activity it is conducting. The vibrating wheeled rollers have wheels that vibrate when it begins to roll. These rollers are used where the compaction required is more and can reach to greater depths. The performance of this roller is far more than that of the conventional ones.

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How to build a lake with a dozer

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We all have this thought that dozers are meant for mowing down huge structures and ramming down anything and everything that comes in its way but hardly do we know that it can also be used for building a lake. Though the need of other heavy equipment cannot be ruled out but if the work of building a lake is assigned to a contractor and he does not have any other heavy equipment apart from a dozer, he can still get the work done through it. He does not have to start hunting for an excavator or something that specializes in excavating work. However, one also needs to understand that this will take long for the work to complete and also the need of an experienced operator plays quite a crucial role.

So when you are digging the ground with the intention to build a lake with a dozer, you should first check the kind of dozer you may need for the purpose. Just because you are building a lake does not mean you should be using big dozers. At times small dozers can do the trick which big dozers can’t and therefore selection of dozers in this case is of utmost importance.

The crux of the heavy equipment comes while working in different forms of land. Not every kind of heavy equipment can stand in a sloppy land. The operator might find it very difficult to balance the position of the machine. The dozers may be a slow one but they can provide power, stability and have good traction which is perhaps the most required feature for building lakes. In order to dig deep, you can make use of some special blades that are designed for the purpose of making a hole in the ground. Well, these blades have some 6 movements. They can move right, left, up, down and can tilt from right to left and vice-versa. This position is specifically used to dig deep in the ground. You can also make use of rippers to break down a hard piece of land or any rock that you hit in the earth.

Using a ripper makes more sense because it has the potential to tear apart hard materials like rock and can thus help the dozer to dig deep without much hassle.

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The beginners should be backed by the veterans

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You be a part of any industry and you need some guidance when you are new to that form of business. You seek guidance from the tenured guys who has been working for that company or have being a part of that industry for years and you believe that if at all you come across a problem, you have people to bail you out. You depend a lot on them. Simultaneously, it also becomes the responsibility of the experienced men to take the onus and give proper advice to the newbie so that they can steer away from any issues and learn to deal with problems. The need of such veterans is needed a lot when it comes to selling heavy equipment. Sales in itself is a difficult job and not many are able to find this to be their cup of tea and there are many who after striving for a while generally give it up.

Not quite good with product knowledge:-

One of the major problems that has been seen amongst the newbie is that they find it tough to understand heavy equipment and therefore when they approach a client, they are not confident enough to pitch in the product and subsequently unable to sell the stuff. They lack good product knowledge and are most of the time confused as to what they should learn from this vast topic. Heavy equipment is undoubtedly a vast topic with so much to understand and one can only grasp it completely with time. So, we can’t expect a newbie to learn everything just after he is done with his training. A veteran can step in here and advise him on the areas that he should concentrate. He may not have to learn everything but just few important things that are relevant to sales.

Not all days are good days:-

In the daily life of a salesperson, he has to go through a lot of ordeal. In order to make one sale, he probably has to work hard for the entire month and heavy equipment being an expensive item; it certainly takes time for a contractor to make the decision to buy the machine. On the other hand, he should also be ready to take up insults at times which can be very embarrassing. There are times when the client do not buy the stuff but is also not rude to you but such clients are few in numbers and you get mostly people who for some reason turn out to be a bit rude when they deal with sales guys. This needs to be addressed by the experienced lots and they can always comfort the beginners by saying that this is a part and parcel of the business and one has to go through this in order to grow.

Sales trick are important to be shared:-

Every form of business has a trick that helps to complete the job faster. The veteran salespersons should share those tricks with the new guys. Do some role play with them where they will act as client and the beginners will be salesperson? In this way they can sharpen the skills of the beginners and generate a new confidence in them.

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