Plant & Equipment News from Highways.Today
Nextpower Pushes Solar Integration Deeper into the Power Plant with NX PowerMerge
Nextpower Pushes Solar Integration Deeper into the Power Plant with NX PowerMerge A single patent on a direct current connector rarely shifts an industry, yet United States patent 12,712,292 tells a pointed story about where margin and defensibility are collecting in utility-scale solar. The grant covers Nextpower’s NX PowerMerge electrical balance of systems (eBOS) trunk … Read more…
What to Look for When Replacing Old Access Covers
What to Look for When Replacing Old Access Covers Replacing worn or outdated infrastructure rarely feels urgent until something actually breaks. Cracked lids or corroded frames are more than just eyesores, as they quickly evolve into genuine safety hazards. When you begin sourcing new access covers for a site, the stakes are almost always higher … Read more…
Hyundai and Shell Pivot to E-Fluids and Thermal Management
Hyundai and Shell Pivot to E-Fluids and Thermal Management On the surface, Hyundai Motor Company’s decision to extend its global cooperation agreement with Shell Lubricants through 2031 reads like the routine renewal of a supplier relationship that has run since 2005. The substance underneath is more consequential. The engine oil marketing that built the partnership … Read more…
First USA Built Volvo Excavators Signal a Shift Towards Regional Manufacturing
First USA Built Volvo Excavators Signal a Shift Towards Regional Manufacturing The first excavators and large wheel loaders assembled on American soil by Volvo Construction Equipment have begun reaching customers from the company’s plant in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and the milestone carries more commercial weight than a routine production update. The manufacturer now builds more than R… Read more…
Dual-Power Equipment the Practical Route for Landscape Electrification
Dual-Power Equipment the Practical Route for Landscape Electrification The professional landscaping sector has spent the better part of a decade being told it faces a binary choice between the petrol engines it trusts and the battery power that regulators increasingly demand. ELIET’s decision to build its Prof 6 shredding platform around both, using power systems … Read more…
DEVELON Expands Compact Equipment Strategy with DEF-Free Track Loaders
DEVELON Expands Compact Equipment Strategy with DEF-Free Track Loaders DEVELON’s decision to build two compact track loaders that need no diesel exhaust fluid reads, at first glance, like a modest maintenance convenience. Seen against the shape of the North American compact equipment market, it looks more deliberate than that. By dropping the D24 engine into … Read more…
Tower Cranes Take Construction Engineering into Amazon Climate Science
Tower Cranes Take Construction Engineering into Amazon Climate Science The deployment of four Liebherr 85 EC-B tower cranes at the AmazonFACE research site near Manaus reads, at first glance, as a curiosity: construction plant repurposed for science, a photogenic footnote to a climate story. The more useful reading for anyone in the equipment business is … Read more…
Vermeer and Interlune to Industrialise the Lunar Construction Supply Chain
Vermeer and Interlune to Industrialise the Lunar Construction Supply Chain The most revealing thing about the expanded partnership between Interlune and Vermeer is not that a lunar excavator exists. It is that a mainstream industrial-equipment manufacturer, with nearly eight decades of terrestrial earthmoving behind it, now treats the Moon as a serviceable jobsite rather than … Read more…
LANDCROS Signals Hitachi’s Shift from Construction to Construction Intelligence
LANDCROS Signals Hitachi’s Shift from Machinery to Construction Intelligence Hitachi Construction Machinery has opened its LANDCROS Innovation Studios Challenge to Europe for the first time, inviting startups to submit ready-to-test solutions between 31 July and 30 September 2026 and pitch to the company and its partners at a Demo Day in Amsterdam on 3 December … Read more…
Skyjack’s ELEVATE and the Race to Own the Connected Rental Machine
Skyjack’s ELEVATE and the Race to Own the Connected Rental Machine Skyjack’s latest push around its ELEVATE telematics suite, its operator-facing ELEVATE Live tool and a widening line of ACCESSORYZER safety attachments looks, at first glance, like routine product housekeeping from a well-regarded access manufacturer. Read against what the largest rental groups are now doing … Read more…
Bobcat Wins Three CMME Awards Signalling a Broader Play for Gulf Worksites
Bobcat Wins Three CMME Awards Signalling a Broader Play for Gulf Worksites Bobcat left the 2026 Construction Machinery Middle East (CMME) Awards in Dubai with three trophies, and on the surface that reads as a straightforward night of industry recognition. The more instructive story sits in the shape of the categories the company won rather … Read more…
The Mid-Sized Excavator is Being Re-Specified as a Multi-Tool Platform
The Mid-Sized Excavator is Being Re-Specified as a Multi-Tool Platform A North Yorkshire groundworks contractor quietly re-equipping one excavator is not, on its own, a market event. When J Lingard Site Services fitted a Rototilt RC5 tiltrotator to a new 16-tonne Volvo EC160E, complete with Leica machine control, an in-cab hydraulic tool-change system and active … Read more…
Standby Power Moves to the Centre of the AI Data Centre Buildout
Standby Power Moves to the Centre of the AI Data Centre Buildout The tightest constraint on the artificial intelligence buildout has quietly shifted from processors to power, and specifically to the physical equipment that delivers and secures it. Developers can place orders for accelerators faster than utilities can connect new load or manufacturers can build … Read more…
Edge Detection and the Shift From Paving Craft to Sensor-Guided Control
Edge Detection and the Shift From Paving Craft to Sensor-Guided Control A single laser sensor bolted to the side plate of a paving screed does not, on the face of it, sound like a strategic development. Yet the quiet arrival of automated screed width control on Germany’s B535 federal road points to a deeper change … Read more…
Liebherr Turns Excavator Durability Testing Into an Autonomy Proving Ground
Liebherr Turns Excavator Durability Testing Into an Autonomy Proving Ground On paper, the new test rig that Liebherr France SAS commissioned at Colmar in early 2026 is a durability tool. It costs close to EUR 2.5 million, sits inside an enclosed hall, and exists to punish crawler excavator structures until their weak points reveal themselves. … Read more…
Skipper’s C8 Barrier and the New Economics of Street Works Safety
Skipper’s C8 Barrier and the New Economics of Street Works Safety Pedestrian barriers rank among the least glamorous items in the construction supply chain, yet they sit at the point where three separate pressures now converge: a tightening expectation that street works remain navigable for blind and partially sighted people, the stubborn logistics cost of … Read more…
The Independent Blueprint Behind Y.E.S.’s Kubota Expansion
The Independent Blueprint Behind Y.E.S.’s Kubota Expansion Falkirk-based Your Equipment Solutions has committed to more than 70 Kubota mini excavators from local dealer HRN Tractors, and on the surface the deal reads as a routine fleet top-up by a regional plant and tool hirer. Read against the wider market, the transaction says something more instructive … Read more…
Yanmar and Hitachi Explore a New Model for Competing in Compact Equipment
Yanmar and Hitachi Explore a New Model for Competing in Compact Equipment When two Japanese manufacturers sign a letter of intent to “explore” a collaboration, the temptation is to file it under industrial courtesy and move on. The agreement signed on 23 July 2026 between Yanmar Holdings and Hitachi Construction Machinery deserves closer reading, because … Read more…
JCB Hydromax Sets 368mph Record Ahead of FIA Hydrogen World Record Bid
JCB Hydromax Sets 368mph Record Ahead of FIA Hydrogen World Record Bid JCB’s Hydromax streamliner has clinched a Southern California Timing Association speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats, averaging 368.347mph across two runs and breaking a class benchmark that had stood since 2010. The headline is a motorsport one, but the significance for construction, … Read more…
Predictive Sales Data Comes for Construction Equipment Dealers
Predictive Sales Data Comes for Construction Equipment Dealers For most of the past decade, competitive advantage in construction equipment distribution has been argued in terms of iron. Dealers and manufacturers have competed on product line, price, uptime and the strength of their product support, and they have measured themselves after the fact on units moved … Read more…
Beyond the Loader: The Automation Layer Now Deciding Underground Mining
Beyond the Loader: The Automation Layer Now Deciding Underground Mining When RCT technicians commissioned the last Caterpillar R2900G ever sold, at a silver and lead operation in Queensland, the moment carried more weight than the retirement of a single machine. The loader in question, an NLK-specification unit, was the fourth of four new R2900G LHDs … Read more…
CNH’s Norcar Alliance Signals a New Strategy for Compact Construction Equipment
CNH’s Norcar Alliance Signals a New Strategy for Compact Construction Equipment The industrial cooperation agreement CNH Construction signed with Finland’s Oy Norcar Ab on 24 July 2026 looks, on the surface, like a modest distribution deal: a small manufacturer of sub-two-tonne miniloaders gains a route to market through the CASE and New Holland Construction dealer … Read more…
The Tadano AC 7.450-1 and the Economics of Constrained Lifting
The Tadano AC 7.450-1 and the Economics of Constrained Lifting A single lift in the medieval heart of Bruges rarely carries much market significance, yet the operation Belgian crane service provider Gheysens completed with a Tadano AC 7.450-1 is worth reading closely. The job was small in tonnage terms and the decisive problem was never … Read more…
Utility Strike Prevention Goes Fleet-Wide as Network Plus Backs Live Dig Radar
Utility Strike Prevention Goes Fleet-Wide as Network Plus Backs Live Dig Radar Network Plus has committed to fitting RodRadar’s Live Dig Radar across more than 200 machines in its repair and maintenance fleet, a multi-year programme that moves underground strike avoidance out of the realm of procedure and toolbox talks and into the specification of … Read more…
Electrified Harbour Cranes are Reshaping Port Competitiveness at Gulfport
Electrified Harbour Cranes are Reshaping Port Competitiveness at Gulfport SSA Marine and the Mississippi State Port Authority at Gulfport have commissioned a second Liebherr LHM 550 hybrid mobile harbour crane, supported by a US$1.6 million state grant that will fund the electrical connection needed to run the machine on grid power. On the surface this … Read more…
Komatsu and AIM Put Physical AI at the Centre of Autonomous Earthmoving
Komatsu and AIM Put Physical AI at the Centre of Autonomous Earthmoving Komatsu has spent nearly two decades proving that heavy machines can run themselves. Its FrontRunner system put the first commercial autonomous haul trucks into mines in 2008, and in April 2026 the company became the first manufacturer to commission a thousand ultra-class driverless … Read more…
One Bobcat’s T86 Compact Track Loader and a $59 Billion Market
One Bobcat’s T86 Compact Track Loader and a $59 Billion Market A single compact track loader arriving on a roadworks site near Brescia would not normally register as market news. Gambara Asfalti, a paving and asphalt contractor of forty years’ standing that works across the northern Italian provinces of Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Parma and Piacenza, has … Read more…
Volvo Targets Japan’s Urban Construction Boom with a Smarter Compact Excavator
Volvo Targets Japan’s Urban Construction Boom with a Smarter Compact Excavator The New Generation ECR355 arrives in a market defined less by weak demand than by the shortage of people available to meet it. When Volvo Group Japan handed the ceremonial key to Takayama Kenzai Kogyo at CSPI-EXPO, presenting its 36-tonne compact-tail-swing excavator to the … Read more…
Beyond Heavy Iron – The Next Century of Construction Equipment
Beyond Heavy Iron – The Next Century of Construction Equipment One hundred years ago the construction equipment industry crossed a threshold it never crossed back over. Steam shovels, cable excavators and the first crawler dozers replaced the muscle that had built roads, harbours and railways for millennia, and in doing so they changed the industry’s … Read more…
Bobcat Compact Equipment Moves to the Front Line of Europe’s Wildfire Prevention
Bobcat Compact Equipment Moves to the Front Line of Europe’s Wildfire Prevention Crews in rural Guadalajara spent the third week of July 2026 working a fire that had burned more than 32,000 hectares across a landscape where roughly 90 per cent of the affected ground sits inside a national park. Spain’s Minister for the Ecological … Read more…
JCB LiveLink Update Marks Shift From Machine Monitoring to Remote Fleet Control
JCB LiveLink Update Marks Shift From Machine Monitoring to Remote Fleet Control For close to two decades, construction telematics has been sold on visibility. Fleet owners were promised they would finally know where their machines were, how hard they were working and when they needed servicing. JCB’s latest update to LiveLink moves the proposition somewhere … Read more…
Why Equipment Reliability Matters on Major Infrastructure Projects
Why Equipment Reliability Matters on Major Infrastructure Projects Major infrastructure projects rely on precise coordination. A motorway widening scheme, bridge replacement or major drainage installation may involve dozens of contractors working to carefully planned programmes where every activity depends on another being completed on time. When equipment fails unexpectedly, even a relatively min… Read more…
Stevens Equipment Rental is Leading Britain’s Shift to Intelligent Wheel Loaders
Stevens Equipment Rental is Leading Britain’s Shift to Intelligent Wheel Loaders Stevens Equipment Rental has taken delivery of its 1000th new machine, and the choice of asset says more about the direction of the UK plant market than the milestone itself. The Cumbrian rental business, trading for more than 50 years and formerly known as … Read more…
Liebherr Power Deals Shift the Battleground From Machine Price to Lifetime Cost
Liebherr Power Deals Shift the Battleground From Machine Price to Lifetime Cost The second round of Liebherr Power Deals, running from July 2026, looks at first glance like a conventional dealer incentive programme. Read the structure rather than the headline, however, and something more deliberate emerges. The centrepiece is not a machine at all; it … Read more…
Danfoss Expands Global Fluid Conveyance Reach with Alfagomma Acquisition
Danfoss Expands Global Fluid Conveyance Reach with Alfagomma Acquisition Danfoss signed a definitive agreement on 9 July 2026 to acquire Alfagomma, the Vimercate-based manufacturer of hoses and fittings, and the transaction will fold roughly EUR 600 million of annual sales into the Fluid Conveyance division of Danfoss Power Solutions. Judged only on scale, the deal … Read more…
Volkswagen Expands Transporter Range with First Plug-in Hybrid Van
Volkswagen Expands Transporter Range with First Plug-in Hybrid Van Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles opened UK order books on 21 July for the first plug-in hybrid version of the Transporter, priced from £38,155 excluding VAT and offered in Panel Van, Kombi and Shuttle form. The specification is familiar to anyone who has followed the Ford Pro architecture … Read more…
EBRD Backs Tavanbogd’s Hitachi Workshop in Mongolia
EBRD Backs Tavanbogd’s Hitachi Workshop in Mongolia A MNT 143 billion loan for a maintenance shed is easy to underestimate. Read against where money and margin are actually moving in the heavy-equipment business, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s latest Mongolian commitment looks less like real-estate finance and more like a wager on the … Read more…
The Hidden Economy Behind Every Construction Machine
The Hidden Economy Behind Every Construction Machine A machine may be purchased once, but it consumes, wears, moves, communicates, breaks down, gets repaired, is refinanced and eventually changes owners across a working life that can extend well beyond a decade. Attachments, tyres, tracks, lubricants, filters, hydraulic components, replacement parts, fleet software, transport, servicing, refurbish… Read more…
Volvo, Komatsu and Liebherr Anchor INTERMAT 2027 as Electric Turns Commercial
Volvo, Komatsu and Liebherr Anchor INTERMAT 2027 as Electric Turns Commercial The construction machinery business tends to judge a trade show long before its doors open, and the signal that matters most is not the visitor forecast but the exhibitor list. On that measure INTERMAT 2027 has already made its case. With the countdown to … Read more…
P&M Excavations Builds a Competitive Edge on a Decade of Trimble Machine Control
P&M Excavations Builds a Competitive Edge on a Decade of Trimble Machine Control A family-run civil engineering contractor from County Tyrone has spent ten years proving a point that much of the wider construction sector is still only beginning to accept, which is that sustained investment in digital machine control changes the economics of groundworks … Read more…
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