Christmas telly worth worth watching ?

Richard Hunton

Richard Hunton

Well-known member
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve read all year. If there was a battery version of every machine you have, would you change? No, because you couldn’t afford to, and if you

could you’d soon get pissed off with the batteries going flat after a couple of hours of hard work, and deteriorating after a year or two. If you think the cost of batteries is going to fall, think again. They’ll go up due to the scarcity of what goes into them, and the fact that China has quietly got its hands on a lot of the resources.

It was only about diggers on telly .....

Supprised no one brought up Bamfords latest court battle.......
 
O

Old Operator

Active member
I was surprised to hear the areas that still buy the backhoe loader included the UK (so they say) , along with Eastern Europe, Russia, The Americas etc. You almost never see one on site over here, if you do it is an odd one about 20 yrs old. I saw a new owner operated Cat 428 a couple of years ago but no others. These things started out as a converted tractor (this tractor also had volume production bringing its cost down). Gradually they got more whistles & bells until they became unaffordable to the average builder. Why something only doing 20mph max needed a curved windscreen is beyond me. (Hanix made a point of only using flat glass for cheapness when a yobbo inevitably broke it!)
According to the sales map most of Western Europe have turned away from them as they did the Drott some years ago. They featured a big jobsite in Hertfordshire that did not have a single one on there!!! It was long ago said that their use was 80% backhoe & 20% front shovel.
The midi excavator is really a 'backhoe dozer' & if you compare cycle times the midi can swing 3 or 4 buckets over a truck in the same time that the TBL can do one front loader cycle. Basically you are buying a very dear forklift & the ability of self roading, over the midi, but at a cost of £70K. It surprised me that JCB did not feature stuff that does sell eg. their mini's, telehandlers, & maybe that new duck they make. I see many ducks on big road jobs. The above is sad as the TBL was an ideal owner driver machine. I myself was interested in a small simple TBL (similar to Terramite - but with a good roading speed) It just does not exist. Had to put my own restoration to one side after a huge tree crashed over into my dad's - neighbour has no insurance, Dealt with this & cut up some oil tanks at the school for the widow, weighed in £260 of scrap.
Must get back to it.
 
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