Koehring, Once a Big Player in Excavation

North American manufacturer Koehring were a big name in the excavator business back in the 1960’s, 70’s and early 80’s producing some of the largest bulk excavation hydraulic excavators around at the time.

I came across a very interesting old promotional video on You Tube recently. Originally written and produced by Jim Holton who worked for the Koehring business, he has posted the classic footage on the video sharing platform for all to see. A very welcome addition as there is not much on this classic old brand to be found on that source.

Photo: The Koehring 1066 seen here during the period of connection with Ipswich based NCK Rapier (Digger Man Blog Archives)

Some of their most notable models are featured in the video, namely the 1066 and 1266, I can remember seeing adverts for these machines in my father’s copies of Construction News in the 70’s, that he used to pass down to me after he had finished with them, and I was always impressed by the look and size of them!

The 1066 weighed in at around 168,000lbs (76,205kgs) so it was similar in size to the Caterpillar 245 model when it was eventually launched. The machine was powered by a Detroit Diesel 8V 92T diesel engine producing some 430hp (320kw).

The larger 1266 tipped the scales at 375,000lbs and was powered by not one, but two Detroit Diesel engines offering a power output rating of 1100hp.

Koehring also produced smaller machines too, like this 475 model, seen here working for the then London based J&A Demolition.

Photo: Digger Man Blog Archives.

Checkout the video below to learn more about this classic old brand.