Construction equipment is the group of machines that dig, push, lift and crush at construction sites and mines. It includes excavators, dozers, cranes, aerial work platforms, rock crushers and haul trucks. An aerial work platform lifts workers to a height. A rock crusher breaks and sorts rock. A haul truck carries rock out of a mine and can be as large as a house.
The buyers are construction contractors, mining companies and rental companies. The makers rarely sell directly. They sell through independent dealers, as described under selling through partners, and the dealers supply parts and service for years. A machine is used hard and wears out parts such as the teeth of an excavator bucket. Wear parts are the parts that wear out in use and are replaced often. This repeat business is the idea of service after the sale. Over its life, a construction machine needs parts and service worth about as much as the machine itself. A mining machine needs about twice as much.
Construction and mining use the same kinds of machine in different sizes. A construction site uses mid-sized machines that move from job to job, often on rent. A mine uses the largest machines, which stay in one place for years and run almost all day. In both, an idle machine costs money, because the crew and the schedule wait for it.
The machines now carry computers. A telematics device on the machine reports its position, working hours, fuel use and faults to the owner and to the dealer. Machine control uses GPS to guide a dozer's blade or an excavator's bucket to within a few centimetres. Parts for repair are managed with service parts management, and many contractors rent or finance the machines through lease management software. A large mining site may also use a mobile battery storage unit to supply power where no grid is nearby.
Imagine a contractor building a flyover in Bhubaneswar who rents an excavator for six months. The rental company reads the machine's working hours from its telematics, bills the contractor for the hours used, and sends it for service every 500 hours. (These numbers are only illustrative.)
This page covers one group in heavy equipment. Farm machines are described separately under agricultural machinery.