Plant & Equipment News from Highways.Today
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…
Develon to Spotlight AI Safety and Series 9 Heavy Excavators at steinexpo 2026
Develon to Spotlight AI Safety and Series 9 Heavy Excavators at steinexpo 2026 When Develon returns to steinexpo this September, the more revealing story is not the size of its stand but what the machines standing on it say about where quarry and construction equipment is heading. The manufacturer is bringing seven large machines to … Read more…
Herrenknecht TBM Completes Critical SuedLink Tunnel Beneath the Elbe
Herrenknecht TBM Completes Critical SuedLink Tunnel Beneath the Elbe The completion of tunnelling beneath the River Elbe has removed one of the most technically demanding obstacles facing Germany’s SuedLink electricity transmission programme. On 22 June 2026, the tunnel boring machine Elsa reached its reception shaft at Wischhafen, completing a 5.2-kilometre underground drive from Wewelsfleth in &… Read more…
Hitachi and Pronto Put Mixed-Fleet Autonomy at the Centre of Mining’s Future
Hitachi and Pronto Put Mixed-Fleet Autonomy at the Centre of Mining’s Future The strategic partnership between Hitachi Construction Machinery and Pronto points towards a more commercially accessible model for mine automation, one designed around the equipment operators already own rather than an entirely new fleet tied to one manufacturer. Their memorandum of understanding covers the … Read more…
Australia’s AU$100 Million Equipment Auction Signals Deeper Market Liquidity
Australia’s AU$100 Million Equipment Auction Signals Deeper Market Liquidity Australia’s construction, mining, transport and agricultural equipment market has delivered a significant measure of its underlying strength. Ritchie Bros.’ 2026 National End of Financial Year auctions generated more than AU$100 million in gross transaction value, with 5,516 lots sold through ten auctions held across the… Read more…
ORNL Motor Drive Design Targets Heat and Wear for High-Power Electric Propulsion
ORNL Motor Drive Design Targets Heat and Wear for High-Power Electric Propulsion The next phase of transport electrification will depend on more than battery capacity and charging speed. Heavy-duty trucks, construction equipment, ships and aircraft need propulsion systems capable of handling sustained high electrical loads without excessive heat, interference or premature component degradation. Im… Read more…
Komatsu Brings Connected Earthworks to Singapore’s Changi Terminal 5
Komatsu Brings Connected Earthworks to Singapore’s Changi Terminal 5 Komatsu’s first full-scale Smart Construction deployment in Singapore will place digitally guided machinery and shared earthworks data at the centre of one of Asia’s most consequential infrastructure programmes. At Changi Airport Terminal 5, the immediate objective is to improve the accuracy, visibility and coordination of constr… Read more…
How Robotic Hydrodemolition is Reshaping Concrete Repair
How Robotic Hydrodemolition is Reshaping Concrete Repair Concrete repair rarely makes headlines, yet the economics of how a bridge deck or car park slab is stripped back and rebuilt sit close to the centre of the maintenance challenge facing most developed economies. Governments across Europe and North America are managing ageing structures poured decades ago, … Read more…
The Intelligent Machine Has Arrived
The Intelligent Machine Has Arrived Picture a working earthworks site on a weekday morning. An excavator trims a batter to design grade on its own, its boom and bucket following a three-dimensional model while the operator watches from a remote operations centre and keeps an eye on two other machines at the same time. Nearby, … Read more…
Hytera PDC580 Bridges Narrowband and Broadband on the Critical Front Line
Hytera PDC580 Bridges Narrowband and Broadband on the Critical Front Line The launch of a single handheld radio rarely counts as a strategic event, yet the release of Hytera’s PDC580 dual-mode rugged radio touches on a question that sits near the top of the agenda for infrastructure owners, transport operators and utilities across every developed … Read more…
MIDA Civils Deepens Kubota Commitment as Fleet Expands Beyond 100 Machines
MIDA Civils Deepens Kubota Commitment as Fleet Expands Beyond 100 Machines When a contractor barely five years old commits to fifteen new excavators in a single order, the number itself is less telling than the reasoning behind it. Bedfordshire-based MIDA Civils has added fifteen Kubota compact machines to a fleet that now exceeds one hundred … Read more…
Britain’s First Liebherr 620 HC-L Goes to Work Inside York’s City Walls
Britain’s First Liebherr 620 HC-L Goes to Work Inside York’s City Walls The arrival of the UK’s first Liebherr 620 HC-L luffing jib tower crane matters less for the machine itself than for the type of project it has been bought to serve. Bennetts Cranes has raised the crane on a tightly bounded plot inside … Read more…
Clearview and Prismo Secure DfT Approval for Cast Iron SolarLite S381 Active Road Stud
Clearview and Prismo Secure DfT Approval for Cast Iron SolarLite S381 Active Road Stud For most highway authorities, the obstacle to fitting active, illuminated road studs has rarely been the technology itself. Solar-powered studs that project their own LED light have been proven on UK roads for the better part of three decades, yet uptake … Read more…
Why Reliable Equipment is Essential for Modern Developments
Why Reliable Equipment is Essential for Modern Developments Modern developments, whether residential, commercial, or industrial, rely on a wide range of equipment to ensure projects run smoothly and efficiently. From construction machinery and storage systems to utility infrastructure and maintenance tools, the quality and reliability of equipment can have a significant impact on both short-term &… Read more…
Big Joe Forklifts at 75 looks at Lithium-Ion and Autonomy
Big Joe Forklifts at 75 looks at Lithium-Ion and Autonomy A seventy-fifth anniversary would ordinarily sit in the softer corner of the trade press, a moment for company photographs and a look back at old catalogues. In the case of Big Joe Forklifts, the milestone is more useful read as a market signal than a … Read more…
BYD SHARK Takes On the Ford Ranger PHEV in a Reformed Pickup Market
BYD SHARK Takes On the Ford Ranger PHEV in a Reformed Pickup Market The double-cab pickup has long held an unusual place in the British and European fleet, prized as much for its favourable tax treatment as for its ability to haul a tonne of aggregate up a site access road. That settlement has now … Read more…
From Haul Road to Smelter: Pedestrian Alert Technology Finds a Wider Market
From Haul Road to Smelter: Pedestrian Alert Technology Finds a Wider Market A pedestrian detection system built for the mining sector has been fitted across a mixed fleet of forklifts, skid steer loaders, cranes and backhoes at a mining and smelting complex in northwest Queensland, and the deployment says more about the direction of industrial … Read more…
The Next Frontier of Equipment Procurement
The Next Frontier of Equipment Procurement For most of the industry’s history, acquiring a bulldozer or excavator was a reasonably contained transaction. A contractor sized up a machine against the job, negotiated a price with a dealer, arranged finance and took delivery, confident their construction equipment asset would earn its keep for a decade and … Read more…
Sandvik Unifies Jaw Crusher Portfolio for Smarter Primary Crushing
Sandvik Unifies Jaw Crusher Portfolio for Smarter Primary Crushing Primary crushing remains one of the most demanding stages of any quarrying, mining or heavy construction operation. Equipment reliability, operator safety and predictable throughput all have a direct impact on project productivity, maintenance costs and profitability. Sandvik’s completion of its upgraded jaw crusher portfolio… Read more…
Kärcher and STIHL Forge a Shared Battery Standard for Professional Equipment
Kärcher and STIHL Forge a Shared Battery Standard for Professional Equipment When two of Germany’s largest family-owned equipment manufacturers agree to run their professional machines off the same battery, the significance reaches well beyond the two brands involved. Kärcher and STIHL have confirmed a joint battery alliance built around STIHL’s ALLPRO system, a cross-brand 40V … Read more…
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