Diggers Royal Cornwall Show Highlights (Part One)

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the Digger Man Blog, with a trip up to Wacker Neuson in Stafford, followed by the Royal Cornwall Show, then straight off up to Peterborough for Plantworx! Hence, I am only just catching up with material for the blog, starting with a first lookback at the machines on the various trade stands at the RCS.

118,201 people visited the Royal Cornwall Show across its 3-Day event, for what is the biggest date on the Cornish social calendar, and enjoyed what was a beautiful few days of early summer weather, with not a drop of the ‘wet stuff’ in sight.

Revealing the total number of attendees, the Monday after the event, Show Secretary Chris Riddle, expressed his delight at what had been a resounding success.

“We had the most amazing weather for both the build-up and the staging of the Show; however, we are not surprised that we are not quite at the attendance levels of 2022, a combination of excitement of the Show returning last year, and with everyone watching their wallets a little closer, we expected it to be difficult to match, but all in all, it is still a very good attendance”

My first port of call every year at the Royal Cornwall Show is to the CBL Plant Sales stand, the local dealers for Takeuchi, Thwaites and Bomag to name a few, who had plenty of kit on display, most of which were emblazoned with local companies branding, and set to be delivered straight to site at the end of the show.

One of the most interesting exhibits and taking centre stage was this TB260 fitted with ultra-low ground pressure swamp pads. This is one of a batch of machines purchased by the South West Peatland Partnership all kitted out in the same way complete with Engcon tiltrotators.

The machines are set to go to work on the peatlands of Exmoor, Dartmoor, Bodmin Moor, and West Penwith, and the partnership is actively seeking excavator operators and labourers to help them undertake over 2,500 hectares of ecological restoration work across the South West. I will be visiting these machines when they go to work for Earthmovers Magazine, so lookout for that one.

Heading a line up of other machines on display, it was a case of “Blue & Grey” not “Red & Grey” with another TB290-2 sporting the familiar colours of Steve Hoskin Construction Ltd.

Representing the Thwaites brand, a nice line up of 9-tonne dumpers were on show, with two fully cabbed models heading for MJL Group and M Scoble, while a ROP’s model was heading for Liskeard based Champion Groundworks.

Checkout my You Tube short video from the stand.

Further on up the showground we paid a visit to Mike Murphy and the team at Plant & Engineering Services (PES) the Volvo Compact dealers for the South West, who also share parts of their stand with Volvo Construction Equipment’s local Sales Manager Richard Shelbourne.

As is quite traditional, at one end of the stand a nice example of Volvo CE’s popular 14-tonne offering the EC140EL was on display sporting the livery of Hayle, Cornwall, based customer, C.I.B Lello Plant Hire.

Volvo’s reduced radius 6-tonne class ECR58 looks to be a very nice machine style wise, cannot comment on how they operate personally as I’m yet to get a shot in one, but no doubt the day will come for sure.

Topping out the stand was the impressive 35-tonne class EC350EL hydraulic excavator which was yet another machine at the showground heading for Helston and Exeter based MJL Group whom I was once an operator for, a great business that has gone from strength to strength under the guidance of Managing Director Matt Lugg.

Take a look around with my You Tube short video.

More Royal Cornwall Show machinery highlights to come later this week.