We may be a little late on this but this is great news. Not surprising with the Euro and the Dollar punching it out that Volvo is moving Mfg back to the States. The first Volvo excavator to be built at the Volvo Construction Equipment manufacturing facility in Asheville, North Carolina, rolled off the production line Friday, November 9, 2007.

More from the press release at Volvo

Tags: Construction, Excavator, Manufacturing, New, Volvo

Railroad maintenance equipment is an interesting product set in the world construction equipment. Many manufacturers create variants on equipment that serves one purpose and then with the chassis being retrofitted it then hits this category.

On the other hand there are manufacturers who make products specifically for the industry and do a great job. One example of this is Colmar which is an italian manufacturer who makes railroad cranes specifically designed for railway line maintenance. They were designed to be compact. They can be used for cutting foliage along railway lines, or for ballasting maintenance. Rail wheels come standard on railway cranes, enabling them to move unaided along tracks, as well as being transported via rail cars for long journeys.

Tags: Colmar, Crane, Gradall, Railroad, XL3100

How many people ever think about using a SnowGroomer Chassis to tackle many jobs which we use other equipment for.   After operating one of these machines I believe others would purchase this for their versatility.

Bottom line is with  their extremely low ground pressure, PistenBully vehicles can be used even on sensitive surfaces which will not support wheeled vehicles or where such vehicles cannot be used.

 Check out more here.

Tags: Kassbohrer, Pisten Bulley, Snow Grooming, Special Purposes

THE NEW 8500 GUIDANCE SYSTEM

Ditchwitch announced the release of an advanced, highly accurate electronic guidance system for tracking horizontal directional bores.

Check it out.

Tags: Boring, Digging, Ditchwitch, Excavation, Trenchless

This aquisition will strengthen CAT’s position in this part of the industry. In the deal CAT will also receive 2 manufacturing facilities, sales office, service office, and a PDC.

Since 2003, Caterpillar and Blount have had an agreement to jointly produce and market products globally under the Caterpillar and former Timberking brands.

More can be found at CAT

Tags: CAT, Forestry, Hydro-AX, Prentice

Many construction manufacturers are starting to move down the path to create GPS / Diagnostic services which they are reselling with their equipment.  Currently all the big players seem to offer this but outside of new OEM products there are limited offerings.It would be nice to see other manufacturers provide this. Could it be that not enough organizations have the capability or are there barriers for their entry.

Tags: Caterpillar, Gradall, JDLink, JLG, John Deere, Komatsu, Oshkosh