Category Archives: construction equipment

Worried that your heavy equipment may get stolen – install cameras

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It is natural for us to care for the expensive item that we possess. There is always a fear that those expensive items might get stolen if we do not take proper care to keep it in a place that we consider as safe. Therefore we take every possible measure to keep it hidden and away from the eyes of any miscreant. This is possible as far as the expensive item is small in size but what about those items that is big enough to be hidden or even if you try to hide them there is someone or the other who will get to know about it and can then make every attempt to steal it. You buy an expensive car and you may stay a bit worried that someone might steal that and therefore you keep that in your garage completely locked. But you can’t do the same for your heavy equipment which are left open in the construction site. If you have a lot of heavy equipment that are working on the construction site, it will be next to impossible to lock it in some garage. You have to think of something else to keep it safe.

Well in such a situation, the best that you can do is install cameras around the jobsite and appoint some security personnel who will keep a close watch on the screen to check if anybody is trying to be become smarter and making his way to steal either of your machines. There is a chance that the robbers may come with their faces masked and try to first break off the camera. Well, if this is what they do first the security guys sitting inside the control room will get to know about it as they will find the screen has gone blank which will suggest that someone has ended up breaking the cameras. They can then go to that direction to nab the culprits.

The price of the cameras are hardly few dollars and definitely far lesser than the price of the heavy equipment. So one should buy them without thinking twice and secure all the machines from getting stolen. You also have cameras that rotate 180 degrees which means that you do not have to install more cameras on the jobsite. If the jobsite covers few acres of land, you may have to invest a bit on cameras or else a couple of them should be fine. Either ways it will be a win-win situation for you and you can sleep without having any worries or fear of your machines getting stolen.

While hiring the security guys, you should ensure that they have some experience in guarding things. They should know how to monitor things on the switch between multiple monitors. The existence of cameras will have no importance if you have recruited incompetent workforce to guard your belongings and will eventually lose it. However, if you have the guys trained there is negligible chance for someone to have the opportunity to steal the heavy machines.

How to operate a grader

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Landscape in the construction sector has gained prominence over the years. This means the construction equipment required to do landscaping work is in much demand and also the people who know to operator it. When we talk about landscapes or leveling land, the heavy equipment that comes in our mind in the first stance is a grader. Grader plays immense role when it comes to leveling the land and making a path for the workers to move. We can imagine how crooked the paths are on a jobsite and therefore how difficult it must be for the workers to move on it. If not leveled at the right time, the soil gets hardened and then it becomes a problem to get it removed. Same is the case with creating landscapes. We have to get the work done at the right time or else the effort that we have to put to get the work done just multiplies.

To know all the functions of a grader is crucial:-

One can become an efficient operator only when he/she is aware of the various functions that are available in a grader. Jumping in inside the cabin and driving/operating the machine can be part of the basic function but if you find yourself in a difficult situation and you do not know all the functions then you are at a greater risk. The operator is expected to know all the functions in a grader and if you fail to do so then you will be jeopardizing the prospect of the project and also to a larger extent your career in the industry. If you are a trainee, it is important that you sit along with your mentor and check how he/she is operating the machine. Learn from him the functions that he uses and ask to show stuffs that are important for you to know.

Learn the signals properly:-

A grader throws lot of signals to the operator and every signal has a different meaning attached to it. If the clutches are not functioning properly then it may throw a certain type of signal or for that matter if there is some issue with the engine or parts related to the engine it will indicate through means of a signal. Now it is for you to comprehend and understand them so that you do not overlook the signal and continue your work as usual. Unable to comprehend signals can have catastrophic effect on the machine and also at times to the life of the people on the jobsite.

Do some basic checks on your own:-

Conducting certain basic checks like ensuring the brakes are in order and when applied it stops the machine from moving, the clutches, gears, levers are all in place and are working absolutely fine is very crucial. You should not have problem to stop the machine from moving when you are working on a steep land or to your amazement you find out the machine is not moving as it should as there are issues with its clutches. These should be examined well in advance.

Earthquake damage clean-up services with heavy equipment!

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Earthquakes can be disastrous and destroy a large area within just a few seconds. As the Richter scale strikes high, the consequences are so severe that it takes months or sometimes years to repair the damages and losses. However, what needs to be done almost as an emergency resort is to clean the debris and rubble that is caused by the earthquake. But, it is not the job of the humans to clean the rubble and debris manually. What helps in this task is the heavy equipment.

There are special earthquake management and clean-up heavy equipment that are used in this task. They are designed to do a number of tasks in order to manage the earthquake damages.

Removing the rubble:

Rubble of stones, concrete and bricks that are scattered everywhere on the roads from the demolished buildings as a consequence of earthquake, needs to be cleaned at once. This is very important as surviving creatures; humans might get trapped underneath the rubble.

There are excavators and loaders that help in removing the rubble. These come in different types. Some have tongs in the front that help in lifting and picking up the huge pieces of rubble, so that the task is done faster.

Sorting out the rubble:

After an earthquake, the rubble and debris that is deposited, contains different kinds of elements. These include wood, electronic devices like television sets, computer, refrigerator, air conditioners and so many such things. There are also the kitchen appliances that need to be separated. The concrete, stones and bricks need to be separated from the electronic devices. In fact, the wooden furniture, doors and window frames etc. should be separated as well.

The reason behind this is recycling. Such huge amounts of the rubble that is cleared up from the zone, cannot be dumped together anywhere. Hence, recycling is a must. There are equipment that help in sorting out the rubble.

Metal cutters:

Metal cutters are very important in the cleaning process after an earthquake, the aluminium, steel and iron sheets that are used in various structures and constructions, need to be cut in order to remove them. It might not be possible to move them as it is. The heavy equipment that helps in cutting the metal should be used in that case.

However, one thing that needs special mention here is that the heavy equipment that helps in the task of removing the debris and cleaning up the area that has been struck by an earthquake or some such other natural disaster might not be available to everyone. It is therefore important that you buy or hire them from a dealer.

The dealers always have these types of heavy equipment available. You can also choose the used equipment as they are available for an affordable price, regardless to mention the heavy equipment is not cheap. But of course, if you are a service company that offers earthquake or storm damage clean-up services, owning the heavy equipment is a must. It will help you to provide fast services, which is a must in these cases.

 

Renting a backhoe loader

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If you have an asset which you are not using and that can be rented should be let-out without giving much thought. The reason is if you just keep the asset with you and do not use it, with the passage of time it will wear out. This means that you do not gain anything from it and you are slowly losing out on an asset. This makes absolutely no sense. In the construction business there are many small construction companies as well as contractors who are in hunt of heavy equipment and are ready to give a good rental price if they get something worthy. So for instance, if you own a machine and you do not see any use of it in your business for the next many years then it just does not make any sense to keep it with you. You end up paying a good price to maintain the machine which you will not use for many years.

Backhoe loader is one such heavy equipment that is known for its sheer quality and high class performance. Therefore renting a backhoe loader can always assure you good returns. All that you need to ensure is that you keep the loader in good state. Keep the machine well maintained till the time it is there with you and you have put it to some use. Also before you list the machine for rent, make sure that it is up and running. Try to take some help of a mechanic. He can fix the loader if at all it has any issues. Moreover, you should paint the machine and make it look new. We all want to acquire new things in our lives. So what if the next guy will own it for few months, it will still prefer to take it once it is painted and it looks new.

Use online platforms:-

Listing the backhoe loader on an online platform is perhaps one of the best options you can use. There are number of websites that deals with selling and renting machinery online. Right from an air condition to a car, you can find everything online. You have to first become a member of one such website. Take some pictures of the loader and post it on the website. Give a brief description of the machine like since how long you hold the machine, if it has gone through any minor or major accidents or have you recently changed any of its parts and things thereon. This information will be handy for the viewer and will help them to decide if they should go for your stuff.

Do not quote a high price for an old loader:-

You should be very careful while you quote the price of the backhoe loader. If at all the machine is old and has been repaired several times, you should quote a lesser price for the item. The taker should not feel cheated or else it can lead to further complications. It will be a waste of time to get into such unwanted situations.

Expert opinions matters a lot when it comes to safety of heavy equipment

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When you are dealing with an important thing that can make or break your business, you should depend on the advices of the experts. When it comes to heavy equipment, you got to be all the more cautious while dealing with it. Heavy equipment are highly expensive items and you need to be double sure before you do anything that you have not tried afore. It is always advisable that you take the opinions of an expert for everything that you are not sure of. The real problem is how we know a person is an expert in the field of heavy equipment. We can’t really determine that but there are few things that we can follow.

Take advice from experienced people:-

People who are dealing with heavy equipment for the last many years will be in a position to understand your issue and may give you a valuable suggestion. They may have seen several instances and have found a way to get pass through those issues. These experiences of theirs really counts and it will be prudent to put your queries to them. In case, if they do not know the answer, they will at least not misguide you by giving incorrect details. On the other hand, they will check about the particular scenario from someone else and then will get back to you. Alternatively, if you have a mentor in the construction industry or a person who is an expert mechanic can also come handy.

Post your question on the net:-

This is another option you can avail to get your answer on heavy equipment. Here you will get multiple suggestions and opinions of people belonging to this industry for years. All you have to do is put your question on your site (if you have one) and then wait for people to comment on it. You can also ask people to register on your site so that they can often come to your site and give their say on a new topic. In case you do not have your website, you can become a member on someone else’s website and post your question there. The effect will be the same. People who know about the subject will speak on it and shall also provide a link of a website for you to go through. This will save your time to browse the net and search for the topic of your interest. You directly can go to the site and get your queries answered.

Operators can be a big help:-

In case you are having an issue with your equipment and you do not know whom to reach for help, you can take help from the operator of your machine. Operators are the one who work all the time on your machine and therefore can offer you a piece of their mind. Simultaneously, one should also upgrade his knowledge on heavy equipment if they have to regularly deal with it. Nevertheless, an expert opinion always matter in keeping the heavy equipment hearty and healthy.

How do I find an Equipment Appraisal Service?

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Before you buy a used item you want to be sure about the price of the item that is being quoted by the seller. You just can’t pay any price for an item that is not even new. So how do you come to the point where you know the approximate price of the item? Well it is the appraisal company who does an appraisal on the item where they go through a lot of things in order to ensure that the price of the item that they appraise is correct. For every high priced item that has a sales value, we need an appraisal to be done on that commodity. Real estate is one such commodity. Before you sell a property it needs to be appraised.

It is the law that each one has to follow. Simultaneously when it comes to heavy equipment you need to get the appraisal done and once the appraisal agent determines an approximate price of the item, the seller needs to quote a price that revolves around the appraised price and sellers prefer to keep the price of the machine mostly below the appraised price. So the crux for the seller of heavy equipment is to locate an appraisal service agent who appraises the value of heavy equipment. In other words, you can’t go to an appraiser who is into appraising the value of real estate and ask him to do an appraisal of your construction machines.

Check on internet:-

To find an appraisal agent is not at all a tough job in today’s time. All you need to do is log into your internet and key in what you are looking for. You will be flooded with alternatives and then you got to pick the best alternative. There you have to do a bit of research. You need to check each websites individually and understand which appraisal service will be the best for you. You can check the reviews left by people who have used their services. This could be really helpful for you to take a decision. People believe in sharing their experiences on the net and whatever may be their experience they will put it out there for everyone to see. Go through the reviews carefully and apply your rationale to take a decision. You should go through maximum 5 appraisal companies reviews and try to take a call from that. Too many alternatives can also confuse you and your decision making ability can go for a toss.

Check with someone in your business circle:-

If you do not find a good appraiser on the internet and if your are the person who believes to follow more “word of mouth” then the best option is to check with guys in your business circle. We all buy and sell heavy equipment and before we sell any we need to get that appraised. All you have to do is check with someone who has recently sold heavy equipment. Once you know that you can easily know the name of the appraisal company. You can also know the person’s experience with the Appraisal Company which will help you to take a call.

Go for repo heavy equipment to get them cheap

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There are basically two to three ways to get heavy equipment at cheaper rate. The first one is to buy used machines that was with one owner for a long period of time and then went on to other and now again getting resold to you. So when the heavy equipment changes hands the price diminishes. This was one of the scenarios. However, in the first scenario the quality of machine is not at all up to the mark and you feel that it is better that you go for something that works faster than this. Heavy equipment that are faulty are also sold at a cheaper rate. The owner of the heavy equipment for some reason do not want to spend on the fixture of the machine and therefore would like to sell it at a lesser price so that the prospective buyer can take the onus to change the parts that has ceased to work and get it up and running. This was the second scenario and it is accepted by people who have technical knowhow of the machine. Rest does not want to get themselves involved in this.

The third and probably the most accepted scenario is buying heavy equipment from banks at cheaper rate. Now the question is from when banks started selling heavy equipment. Well, they are not here to sell construction machines but are bothered about getting their money back by selling the stuff at a dirt cheap price. What ideally happens is they sell repo machines. The heavy equipment whose monthly installments are not paid and the primary owner of the machine also does not have any intention to pay the money are repossessed by the banks who then auction it so that they can make up the cost by selling it in the open market.

Are there any buyers for repo construction equipment? Well there are plenty of contractors, rental houses and construction companies who are always on hunt of such deals. They have their men working in close nexus with the guys in the repo team who informs them about such machines and when the banks will auction them. Once they get the news about the auction, they keep the money ready. They know that they have to be there with the money and bag the deal. Some contractors even have tie-ups with banks who facilitates the machines at cheaper price. They obviously take some cut from the deal. This may not be as per the guidelines of the bank but things happen and this is how it works out there.

Almost all kinds of heavy equipment can be repossessed by banks as long as they are not paid by the owner. Many a time, in order to save their machine from getting repo, people take another loan with higher interest rate and pay the dues. But that can have a strong repercussion on them as they have to end up paying more to the other lender.

Selling technique is what matters while selling heavy equipment

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Any successful salesman who is into selling heavy equipment will speak about his own unique selling technique. His technique might be different from others and perhaps that is the reason why it is called as unique. So the technique which one salesman uses to sell his products may not go well with the other salesman. He may try to adopt his selling technique but it may backfire and he will eventually end up losing confidence of selling the product. Therefore it is a must to produce your own technique rather than adopting others. More importantly, you should make a note of the selling technique of different salesman and try a combination of it. You should not just copy it entirely but use your innovative skills and prepare a technique that goes well with your persona and your way of communicating with others.

People who are into selling heavy equipment will often share with you their unique technique to sell heavy equipment and may also add a disclaimer that will speak about how difficult it is to sell construction machines to companies and contractors. But at the end of the day, they all manage to do their part well and end up making a sale for their company. This is what matter to them and they do this with the help of the selling technique they have developed over the years. This also suggests that selling technique is not a one-time activity and one has to keep on using some or the other permutation and combination that goes well with the buyer and he buys the product. So you got to keep on trying things and check which sounds to be the perfect one for you.

Never stick to one particular selling technique:-

As no two individuals are the same, so is the selling technique. You can’t restrict your selling ability to one particular technique and have to keep on bringing new techniques that are innovative and can impress an individual to buy the equipment. It is not always the features of the heavy equipment that makes the sale, but it is the way the salesman put it across that plays the trick. So as long as you do not use different methods, you may not taste much success. You may be able to sell your stuff to few people but when you move to a bigger crowd, you may experience hurdles.

Be innovative with your approach:-

Any activity that does not have any kind of changes in it can soon become monotonous and then gradually you will feel like moving into something else. It will not be fun any longer for you. Similarly when you do not change your selling style, you will find it to be boring and will have trouble pitching products. Moreover, heavy equipment at times becomes a boring subject for many so as long as you do not bring any innovation in your selling approach, you may cease to like what you have been doing and that will also reflect on your sales figure.

Heavy Equipment Safety videos

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It is very important to ensure that the items you use for your business are always in order so that when you put them to use they function like they should and also does not cause any harm to others. When we talk about causing harm to others, we specifically relate it to items that are important for your business but at the same time if not maintained properly can turn to be injurious to the user or to people who are involved in the work. In order to ensure that the materials are safe to use, one needs to be first trained to keep the items safe. Only when that is done the owners of the business can expect no casualty as far as the item is concerned.

Training here plays a pivotal role in making sure that the necessary safety procedures are followed. In the construction business, safety of heavy equipment is of utter importance. The people in charge of the safety of heavy equipment should be well trained with their work as it can have a larger impact on the machines if they end up doing a shoddy work.

How can you train the guys to keep your heavy equipment safe? You can get ample of literature and reading materials on the internet that will speak volumes about how to keep the machines safe. One can go through those items and if they can grasp things that are helpful to them they should continue with that. But you also have an easy way to learn how to keep your heavy equipment safe. You can download some heavy equipment safety videos which will help you to understand how actually things are done. When you read books it may confuse you but when you see the videos you will be able to grasp things pretty quickly. Construction companies should keep some of the videos in their archive so that when they form a team of guys who will be given the responsibility to keep the machines safe they can be trained showing the videos.

Videos help you to catch things faster:-

People watching videos can catch up things faster than reading training material. When you see things you tend to remember them. You can visualize what you have seen in the video and try to implement it in the ground level. This will help you to learn things faster and also you will get to know the various other ways to keep the heavy equipment safe.

Every machine is different:-

Not all machines react the same way when you try to use certain safety measures that you have read in some books. Remember that every machine is different and therefore the treatment required to keep them safe is also different. The safety videos shall also talk about how to work on a particular machine and not to try that on others. Watching heavy equipment safety videos is highly recommended to construction as well as heavy equipment manufacturing companies so that they do not end up losing an expensive item just because they failed to take proper care of it.

Have questions on line boring heavy equipment

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Questions pertaining to heavy equipment are quite evident in the construction sector. The person operating the machine may come across a number of issues and that becomes his questions. He needs answers to them in order to resolve the problem. At times he experience some sort of challenge in working in a situation that he has never worked before and he probably does not know how to go ahead with it. This also acts as an obstacle and he wants someone to address that issue or give him some kind of solution so that he can overcome the issue and get up and running. Line boring work is a very different kind of work but it will not be proper to call it at all difficult. Just because it is little different than the rest of heavy equipment people find it to be difficult and have questions on how to get the line boring heavy equipment to work. All you need in this case is a bit of patience to know the new stuff and perhaps some amount of concentration.

Ideally when a person who worked on heavy equipment doing things other than line boring will not have the knowledge on the subject and therefore the first thing will be to acquire some knowledge on how the pivots work and work together with other pivots on the heavy equipment. One should also learn to set up the bars level parallel to other pivots. Now this is something that you will only learn with time. You also need bit of experience and you will steadily see your skill getting honed. Remember the first time you started learning about heavy equipment you found that to be way too difficult and many also had thoughts of giving up the learning and do something else. So when you deal with something new you are bound to have questions and you got to seek for the answers.

While working on line boring heavy equipment you should fair deal of idea on how to measure a bearing or pin and from that assume the size the bore should be. These all are pretty basic and will not take a long time for you to learn but definitely the initial phase will not be rosy at all. You got to struggle a bit and will also have questions. What you can do is put forth the questions that you can’t derive an answer to someone who is pretty experienced in the stream and take his opinion on the matter. Experienced people can get you workarounds that you can’t even think of that being a possibility. It may amaze you for sure and will also be quite a handy thing for you.

Other than that you can place your questions on a blog for the experts to answer them. These days there are so many people who have turned on to the virtual world to get answers for their questions. You can also depend on it a bit and will find it to be really helpful.