Tag Archives: heavy equipment

Know a bit about heavy equipment to ease selling them

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Selling items is a cake walk for people who know their product well. Guys who can speak for hours on a particular product are also confident of selling the item without much hassle. They are confident that they will be able to answer any questions that are thrown at them. Their confidence about the product speaks how knowledgeable they are and how easily they can convince people to buy the item.

Salesmanship is all about the confidence you have on yourself and the product that you are selling. If the product that you are asked to sell is not quality stuff you will problems while pitching it because you know at the back of your mind that you are not speaking the whole truth. You are disclosing facts that the customer needs to know but there is very high possibility that the customer will get back to you with complaints. This will pull down your confidence level while pitching the commodity. This is why you should never engage in things that are of inferior quality because it will come back to you and you may lose your customer forever.

A sales man who sells heavy equipment needs to be very precise with the features and the shortcomings of the machine. He/she just can’t afford to misinform his customer about the machine. In case, he/she is asked a question that is technical and he does not have an answer for it then he should state that he will get the answer for him rather than saying something that may sound good at that point in time but when the beans are spilled he may get into a problem.

Technical knowledge of heavy equipment is not necessary for a salesman but it is always better to know more about the stuff you are selling than asking the customer to give you time to get back with an answer. It somehow also puts you in a bad light and the customer may wonder if you at all know anything about the machine. Remember there are many other heavy equipment salesman who are in hunt of customers. In a situation like this, you can’t afford to lose a prospect with your ignorance for the machine.

Spend time with engineers to know a bit of technical stuff. No one can tell you about heavy equipment better than an engineer who works on building machines. If you can’t catch hold of an engineer which in most of the time is difficult to get through to them you can always find a heavy equipment mechanic who will be the next best person to help you explore your knowledge on heavy equipment. You can watch him work on a machine and ask questions. Apart from this, you can also watch videos on internet that will impart you information about different types of heavy equipment. These things will really help you gain lot of information about machines and this in turn will help you gain the confidence to sell the product.

How to look at oil analysis reports on your heavy equipment

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Oil analysis reports on heavy equipment are as crucial as a blood report is to a human. By the blood report we get to know the ailments in our body and in the same fashion by doing an oil analysis we get to know if the machine that we see so strong is indeed strong or is it becoming weaker from inside. Remember just like we humans who may look strong from out but may carry a lot of ailments that remains hidden inside our body the machines too may have issues inside it but may still look healthy from the outside. It becomes the duty of the owner to ensure that the fluids of the machine are checked in a timely manner and then an analysis is done to understand the actual position of the machine and if the equipment is not as healthy as it appears to be then necessary steps need to be taken to get it fixed.

A contractor will not have the tools to conduct oil analysis and therefore it is recommended to check for an authorized and qualified oil analysis laboratory who will do the necessary tests for you and give you the detailed report. Ideally the oil analysis laboratory gives you 2 types of reports. One is the basic report and the other is the diesel crank case report. The basic report is not a very helpful one as it only provides with very limited information which focuses on wear metals and contaminants. But there is certainly more to see than just these two and therefore it is advisable to go for the diesel crank case report. In the latter one, a person gets detailed analysis on the report which helps the owner understand the current position of the machine. It not only gives feedback on wear metals and contaminants but also on additives, viscosity and base number.

Other than these 2 analysis there are more oil analysis that can be done which will be slightly expensive than the above 2 tests. They include more chemicals which make the process lengthier but accurate and which is why if anyone wants to go for advanced oil analysis they can ask for it. By paying a bit more will lessen your worries as you will have the correct picture in front of you and that will help you to decide the way forward. Once you are done with the tests and the preventive actions are taken the next question is when you should again undergo the tests. Well that will be informed to you by the guys in the laboratory. So get a detailed guideline from them and also some piece of advice on how you should be dealing and what extra care should be taken to increase the longevity of the heavy equipment.

Doing oil analysis regularly not only lengthens the life of the machine but also increases its efficiency and you may find that the machine is consuming less fuel and have become more productive.

Winters can be a big problem for heavy equipment

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Extreme climate change can pose real big problems to almost any type of business. When people face difficulty to move from one place to another due to extreme weather, it does have a larger impact on the smooth functioning of the business as well. As a matter of fact, you will not find much of an alternative to crack the problem.

Hot summers are still manageable but heavy monsoon and chilled winters are almost unacceptable for most of the industries and if we talk specifically about construction then monsoons and winters are its biggest enemies. If it rains heavily then there is a problem with transportation of materials and simultaneously you can’t even work on an existing project. Winters can have havoc on your heavy equipment. Winters do not affect the project directly but it plays a bigger role in hampering your work by attacking heavy equipment. Thus the productivity of heavy equipment takes a hit and you take the hit on your business.

Before the arrival of winter, you should be prepared to do some basic repair work on your heavy equipment. Your machine goes through a lot during all the weathers and still perform. So it becomes crucial for you to ensure that the needs of the machine never go unattended. With the onset of winter, the oil gets thick which blocks the flow while you start the engine.

This has been a major problem for every operator. At times it takes over an hour for an operator to just start the machine. Other than that, there are many other complications that come in with the arrival of winter. Experts believe that heavy equipment that are serviced regularly and are well maintained do not give a tough time to the operators during winters but the ones that are not serviced at regular intervals are bound to cause trouble.

Take help of a mechanic:-

Firstly it is important to keep the heavy equipment well maintained. So keep a track of the days when you service the machine and also ensure that you do not delay the service date for the upcoming month. It has been observed that you perhaps think to delay it by a day or two but you eventually end up delaying it by more than a week. This is absolutely not healthy for any heavy equipment and it thereby weakens the machine from the inside. Before winter arrives, you should take help of a mechanic and ask him to inspect the machine. If they find any flaw with it, ask them to get that fixed even if it requires replacing some important parts of the machine. Give very clear instruction to the mechanic that you want the heavy equipment to work like it always does during the winter.

Take help of user manual:-

Heavy equipment before the start of the problem give signals. If you fail to comprehend those signals, take help of the user manual and check what does signals are for and what you need to do if it throws some kind of signals. The user manual usually talks about the care that you should take and going by the book can really lengthen the life of the machine and also keep it running during winters.

Training videos are a big help to fix heavy equipment

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An owner of a construction company will never want his heavy equipment to stay silent for a single day. It costs a lot of money to the company as a whole and then it also gets tougher for him to complete the work in stipulated timeline. In US a construction company works on strict deadlines and has to complete the work within the time frame. A delay of few days is ok but if it is a matter of a week or so then they may have to pay penalty. Now a construction company will never want to get into things where it has to pay penalty out of its pocket and therefore it ensures that all the things related to the construction activity are in order and he gets to use them as and when it is required.

Now there appears to be a problem with the heavy equipment that he has been using for the construction work and does not know how to get it fixed. Getting a mechanic at such a juncture is never so easy. The mechanics are loaded with enough work to have any time to come to the jobsite and fix the problem. This means that you are now completely dependent on yourself but the irony is you do not know how to repair the problem. This is quite a critical juncture for you and your business and it also leads to a point where you got to take charge of the situation and learn few things through which you can fix the issue on your own.

You may be immensely absorbed in your business and therefore you need a quick solution for your problem which you can expect to get in training videos on the net. So all that you need to do is an internet connection and key in the specific issue you have with the machine. You will see a lot of videos on the page. Out of those many videos some may be useful and others may not be as helpful. You need to know to pick the right video from the lot. The video that you will pick should relate to your concern and should show in details how to resolve the problem. These videos can be really helpful to you when it comes to fixing technical problems in your heavy equipment. You can also get to know tricks that you have never heard or seen before.

The people who upload such videos are expert in their profession and they understand that people suffer due to lack of knowledge on the given subject. This is why they take the effort to impart the knowledge to others and help them minimize losses in their business. Many small construction companies and private contractors find these videos as a big help and they often spend time watching them to upgrade their knowledge. You will get to see a lot of stuffs that is needed to keep the health of your machine intact and one should always follow them to increase the longevity of the heavy equipment.

What machines are used in an environmental disaster clean up?

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We often think that heavy equipment are exclusively used for construction related work and it does not have any importance other than that industry. However, the fact is heavy equipment are used in many other areas which does not fall in the construction genre. Construction is probably one of the sectors where we use the machines a lot but this is certainly not the only place where we require these big pieces of metal. Heave equipment are extensively used to clean up the debris after a catastrophe has hit a place. Be it an environmental disaster clean up or a human made catastrophe, these heavy equipment play a significant role when it comes to saving lives of people who are stuck under the debris. There have been a lot of instances in the past where heavy equipment like an excavator are used extensively to pull out debris from a catastrophe hit zone and save the precious lives of people.

Heavy equipment are also used in cases where there has been a manmade catastrophe. For instance, if there is a major accident in one of the chemical industry that causes havoc in the area. In order to contain that from spreading, the authorities take necessary steps so that it does not spread to the other areas. However, once it has been contained the next part is to set things right and this is where the use of heavy equipment come. They need to bring in different types of machines as no one type of heavy equipment will be capable enough to do the entire job. Heavy equipment such as dozers, excavators, backhoe loaders, articulated trucks and other such machines are used to remove the left outs. This is an extremely painful and risky job for the operator as it can also endanger his life. So the guys who are behind the machine should be extremely experienced and need to tactfully complete their job.

When an environmental disaster like earthquake hits a place, it can swallow the entire city and it can be quite a difficult task to set aside the debris and rescue people from it. Floods, heavy winds, hurricane can also cause extreme damage to the people of a city and heavy equipment are used for the rescue work. Not just heavy equipment but also the attachments that are used on machines play an important role in cleaning up the mess in the zone. Therefore, when you are deploying heavy equipment like an excavator in a zone that has been struck by an earthquake, you also need to keep handy all those attachments that are required to remove the debris quickly. After all, you may find many lives inside the wreckage waiting for help to come.

Dozers are used to break open structures that cause hinder to the rescue work. So you can make use of lot of machines on the site at the same time. Each doing their part of work and ensuring that they simply things for the rescue team to pull out lives stuck inside.

Sell your old, dilapidated heavy equipment to a workshop

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The chance to get a good price for an item that has turned into a junk is pretty low. You also will not find many takers who would want to buy the item. It does not take much of an effort for someone to realize that he should not pay for a commodity that is old and not in a good state. The owner of the item will have to sell it in a shop that deals with all sorts of junk items as he will not find anybody else who would be interested in buying it. Owners of heavy equipment have often experienced enormous trouble to sell old machines to a new buyer. Contractors are ready to buy old machines but certainly not those machines that will turn out as a liability when they put it to use on the site. Hence a person who possesses a decade old or probably older than that has a problem selling it.

Workshops can pay you more:-

You may have come across certain heavy equipment workshops that repair heavy equipment and also sells them to prospective customer who can’t shell out a lot of money in buying machines. These guys work really smart. They buy really old heavy equipment at a nominal price and then refurbish it by installing latest gadgets and technology. They paint it and give it a new life so that buyers who are not rich enough to afford branded heavy equipment can easily buy it from them. The only problem is you can encounter some or the other problem with the machine at any given point in time. It is absolutely not a reliable piece but it does not mean that there are no takers for the machine. These workshops sell with an assurance that id anything goes wrong with the stuff the owner can bring it back to them and they will repair it for free.

They do not pay you a meager amount:-

If you wonder the price they will pay you for the old metal you can be assured that you will get more than what you will get from a junkshop. The guys in the junkshop will eventually sell it to them. They will just keep aside the profit which can be yours if you directly approach these guys. Start with a higher amount and do not be surprised if they say no. You are just beginning a negotiation and therefore try to begin it on a higher note. They will try to bring down the price to an amount that may not be acceptable to you. This will be the test of your skill where you need to hold your price or let it come go down by few dollars. Remember, it is completely up to you to fix the price that sound to be acceptable to you.

Locating such workshops is not a tough task. What you need to do is visit a few of them before you nail the price.

Heavy equipment required for construction of dam

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Dam construction is one of the most important constructions in this world. Channelizing water supply and to store water, as well as to prevent flood, dams play a huge role. Sometimes, the dams are so beautifully structured and constructed that they can afford to bear rails and bridges for communication.

However, many people do not know how the dams are constructed on the rivers. Have you ever thought of the sort of engineering that might be engaged into constructing a dam? Without the support of the heavy construction equipment, it would be extremely difficult for the engineers to make the huge dams that hold such a huge amount of water pressure.

Types of dams:

Before you understand what it takes to build a dam, you need to understand the purposes that a dam might serve. Dams are constructed for various reasons. The most common ones are –

  • Providing protection from flood, by channelizing water supply
  • Reserving water or making water reservoirs at the backwater dams
  • Creating shipping channels as lateral dams
  • Producing hydroelectricity.

Whatever the type of dam may be, the construction equipment that is used is almost the same.

Heavy Construction Equipment Needed for Dam Construction:

  • Excavators:

 

The first step for dam construction is the diversion of the river. For that the excavators are used to dig the ground. Once the river is diverted on another side, the ground on which the dam needs to be made is excavated.

  • Loaders:

 

The debris from the excavated ground needs to be removed from the area. Hence, loaders are used to remove the debris from the ground. It is removed and taken to some other area, so that the area is completely cleared off the debris.

Once the loaders remove the debris, high power pumps are used to remove the water from the area. The entire area that is given a boundary with scaffold is dried up for further construction.

  • Compactors:

 

After the construction of the ground, the compactors help in making the area suitable for further construction. There are different kinds of compactors that can be used for making the site suitable for the construction of dam.

The ground is then filled with the concrete materials. Large volume of concrete is filled into this gap and then let to dry. Ready-mix trucks are used to fill the concrete into the structure of the dam. In case of huge large constructions, sometimes mixing plants are established right at the place of construction. This helps in supplying the concrete mix to the place of the construction.

The engineers make plans for the dam construction in such a way that it can hold the huge pressure of the water from the river. Some dams are smaller in size and some are larger. The gates are installed into the dam, so that water can be passed when needed. As the concrete is dried up entirely, the water path is again channelized into its original flow. It is then ready for storing water, holding water and also for generating hydro-electricity as needed.

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Heavy Equipment used for tree logging

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Cutting trees require skills and to load the logs inside the truck is quite a challenge for the operator who does this job. While picking the log, he needs to be pretty sure that the heavy equipment has held the log tightly and there is no chance for it to lose it while the log is hanging in the air. Now this part of the job is quite a tough one because if you go wrong and for some reason the machine could not hold the log, it will fall straight on the ground and can cause harm to men or materials close to the site. Operators who do this job are specially trained and they use special kind of heavy equipment. You can’t use a construction machine for forestry work like tree logging. You can only do the job with those special machines. As we have seen an evolution in heavy equipments used for construction purposes, we have also seen a similar kind of evolution in the heavy equipments used for forestry work.

Earlier people used chainsaws which has new been replaced with modern equipment like feller bunchers, harvesters etc. These machines are usually manufactured keeping into consideration the weight of the machine and its changing area. It is crucial to keep a note of these things as the soil where the machines will function will be soft. Therefore the equipments can’t exert more pressure. There are few widely used heavy equipments without which the forestry sector could have never reached its helm.

Feller Buncher:-

A Feller Buncher is heavy equipment that is widely used for tree logging work. It has an attachment at the top of the machine through which it cuts the trees and also gathers them before they fall on the ground. It is installed with a tree grabbing equipment that holds the tree once it has been cut. Once the tree is cut, it is then put on a stack used for a skidder for further processing works.

Forwarder:-

Forwarder is heavy equipment that is used to pick the cut tree logs from the ground and place it on its back. It is more like a skeleton truck which has barriers on all the 4 sides so that the log does not fall off while the vehicle is moving on the road. It uses its arm to pick the log lying on the ground and then places it all on the truck. The only limitation is that it can’t load big logs due to size constraints and therefore while the logs are cut, one needs to ensure that they are cut as per the size that a forwarder can ferry.

Harvester:-

You can use a harvester to cut down big trees and then cut them into logs. A harvester and a forwarder are the most common heavy equipments that one can see in the forestry sector. Once the tree is cut into logs, the forwarder then picks them up and ferry it to a roadside landing.

Cat Mini excavators are used extensively in the construction sector

We have often seen those big heavy equipment working around the construction sites half drenched in mud making way for a solid foundation. These heavy equipment play a strong role in the making of the all the tall rises that we see around us. Be it for commercial or for residential purpose the importance of these heavy equipment can never be rules out which is why these stuffs are so expensive in the market. Lately, it has been realized that these big machines can be used in huge construction sites but what if the contractor has to work on a narrow lane or in areas where there is not much space between two structures and still he needs to do this work without causing any harm to the other structure. It is simply not possible to bring in the heavy equipment that we see to perform in such sites. This is where the need of mini heavy machines becomes instrumental.

Caterpillar is known in the heavy equipment and the construction sector for its top quality machines and high performance. They have brought in the 302.5 mini excavators which according to industry experts are the best of its kind and can pose a good competition to the rest of the heavy equipment manufacturing companies. To begin with its specification, the gross power of its engine is 23 hp with a displacement of 91.3 cu in. One must not compare the power of a mini excavator with a full-fledged one as they are two completely different variants of machine. The operating weight of the machine is 2735 kg with a fuel capacity of 41.5 liters, the hydraulic system fluid capacity is 50 liters and the hydraulic system relief valve pressure is 20594kPa. Moving into the undercarriage segment, the show size of the excavator is 300mm and it has a travel speed of 4.5 km/hour. It is considered to be the maximum that a machine of this caliber can have. The Drawbar Pull is 22 kN and the track gauge is 1150 mm.

Moving to the important segment which is the Stick of the machine, the total size of the stick is 1110mm with a maximum digging depth and maximum reach along around of 15 ft in and 14.4 ft in respectively. The maximum cutting height and loading height of the machine is 14.4 ft in and 10.2 ft in respectively. It also has a good enough vertical wall digging depth which is around 7 ft in.

Talking about the dimension of the machine, the total width of the machine to the outside of tracks is 1140 mm. The length of the tracks on ground is 1470 mm and the ground clearance is 310 mm. The height to the top of the cab is 7.5 ft in which can easily accommodate the operator and also gives him enough space to move around inside the cabin. Overall, he will not find it as a packed room with limited space to spread his legs. Construction companies find it extremely affordable to buy mini heavy equipment and CAT 302.5 mini excavator is certainly one of the best choices that they have.

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Green (Environmental Friendly) Heavy Equipment

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Human progress is nothing if it is not competent enough to save its own race and what is ideally happening in today’s time is we are making living more complicated that what it was few decades ago. Our standard of living and our health has gone for a complete toss and people are suffering from all sorts of health related issues. One of the major reasons why we have to live an unhealthy life is air pollution.

If we feel that eating wrong is causing number of health related issues, we are not wrong in considering that as a big threat. However, that is still manageable as it is entirely in our control. We can change our lifestyle just in case we feel that it is getting out of hand and will result in losing our life but there is not much we can do about the air we breathe. We have to get out of our homes and we have to breathe constantly. We are inhaling poisonous air and making ourselves sick. Heavy equipment have a major role to play when it comes to polluting the environment. They emit huge proportion of toxics in the air causing numerous health related complications. People are becoming prone to diseases like asthma, heart strokes, lung cancer and so on and so forth.

Diesel run heavy equipment are the major source of emitting poisonous gas and make living next to impossible for people living close to a construction site. In such a situation, it becomes very important for heavy equipment manufacturing companies to introduce machines that are eco-friendly. The term eco-friendly denotes to things that does not cause or comparatively cause less harm to the environment. Governments of the developed countries are also taking initiatives by introducing subsidies to land to the construction companies who are using eco-friendly heavy equipment.

Eco-friendly heavy equipment are available in the market. It is just that they are expensive as compared to the conservative form of machines and perhaps has few performance related issues. Well, the equipment manufacturing companies are working hard to fill this gap and manufacture more machines that do not let down their clients one grounds of performance. They understand how important performance is for companies working in the construction domain. The government is also setting up various environmental standards that speaks about the standard of engine equipment manufacturing companies should be producing. They are kind of setting up a regulation and all the equipment producing companies should stringently stick on to those parameters. The sad part of the story is that the regulation is applicable only for the newly built machines and not for the existing ones which are the major contributor of air pollution.

This means that it will take another couple of decades for the non-environmental friendly machines to go obsolete, subsequently causing more harm to the people and claiming more lives. In order to curb this menace, government is urging construction companies to ensure that they conduct regular maintenance of their machines and apply mechanisms to reduce the emission of intoxicants.