by Nick Drew | Thu 30 Nov 2017
Åkerman Swedish Durability
I recently paid a visit to Padstow to witness the sand extraction process in the harbour and to see an old Åkerman excavator that has been working there for over 20 years, you will be able to read about it in a future edition of Earthmovers, but the visit inspired me to take a look at some of the videos on the net about these old classic machines.
The Prynn family who own Padstow Sea Sand & Aggregates Ltd are big fans of the Åkerman excavators having run this old H14B LC for a long time and other models of the Swedish manufactured machines. So much so that they are now considering replacing this machine with another newer model, although a much larger one.
I myself have been a long-term member of the Swedish forum www.maskinisten.net which was originally set up by former Åkerman employee, engineer Anton Grenmmiger, as a resource for information on the Swedish brand. One member, Emil Boström, set out on a mission to purchase an H5 model and documented his progress in this thread on the forum.
In this video from Emil we see his H5 machine being matched with a donor undercarriage from an EC130 machine, with a powerful demonstration of lifting from a EC300 machine.