Old Kit in the Wilds of Finland

I recently came across a Finnish guy on Instagram who has posted some great photos of equipment he has discovered rusting away in Western Finland.

Following a chat with Mikko Suutela, it transpires that he also works for Vantaa based VM Suomalainen, who I visited with my friend Olli Päiviö of Konepörssi during my most recent trip to Finland.

Mikko, who lives around 100km from Helsinki, operates a Liebherr 914 Compact wheeled excavator on the day job, but in his spare time he enjoys taking photos of abandoned motor vehicles including, cars, trucks and of most interest to us, construction machinery and he has kindly sent a selection to share here on the Digger Man Blog.

First to catch my eye was this pair of Finnish built Lokomo motor graders. The graders which probably date from the late 1950’s were called Teräskarhu = Steelbear in English and two examples were at rest in this forest location, a 12 model and a slightly smaller 9.

The Lokomo company was based in the industrial city of Tampere and had been producing heavy machinery since 1915. Cable excavators, cranes and crushing equipment were some of the early products manufactured and motor graders, which have long been popular in Finland for snow clearing and gravel road maintenance were to follow.

A lesser known machine named June, was parked to the left of the two Lokomo's. Its not known how long these old machines have been at rest here, but I would imagine its some considerable time.

Mikko also discovered a couple of old Ford excavators which as we know were French built Richier inspired machines. First up we have the P-42 wheeled model.  

And at another location Mikko came across an H-44 tracked hydraulic excavator. Both these machines would have been built in the early to mid-1970’s.

We hope to bring more historical discoveries from Mikko in due course here on the Digger Man Blog, and we would like to thank him for sharing these images with us.

I discovered this video which features a fully restored 1954 model Teräskarhu 12 motor grader outside the current Veekmas Oy grader factory, its in Finnish but just turn the sound down.