A Life on Backhoe Loaders

Fri 02 Aug 2019

A Life on Backhoe Loaders

The venerable backhoe loader was once the machine of choice for many builders or civil engineering companies, but their popularity has declined in the past couple of decades, having said that they are still popular with some contractors and will always have a place in the industry. The biggest problem these days seems to be being able to find the operators to man them. Its probably fair comment to say that Ken, who turns 50 in August, has been an extremely loyal employee over the years, a rare commodity these days. He started working for local company Harkins Plant Hire in May 1986 taking on the role of yard boy. He served his time on his feet and it wasn’t long before he was promoted to operating backhoe loader’s something he continued to do for the company until he finished in the May of 2015.

Pictured Above: A proud Ken with his last new Caterpillar backhoe loader on Harkins Plant Hire. Many of Harkins earlier backhoes came from the Case stable, Ken had his first 580G model in 1991 which at the time had about 2000 hours on the meter, he is seen here working on a site in North Cornelly near Porthcawl.

During 1993 the company were in the backhoe market again and had a series of demo machines brought in for Ken and his fellow operators to try out, including this Massey Ferguson MF 760 model which was supplied by Kellands Plant Sales via their Bridgend depot.

Also trialled during this period was the then new, Case 580 Super K 4x4 model. Ken recalls that the first one he was meant to go on had unfortunately fell victim to a fire and was completely burnt out.

Following this evaluation period, the company decided to opt for the Caterpillar 428B 4x4 Turbo, a machine which was to kick off a long-term association with the British built Cat backhoe loaders, not only for Harkins Plant, but for Ken himself too.

Over the following years more Caterpillar backhoes joined the fleet including 428C and 428D models, which were later to be replaced by 432E and 432E2 models respectively. In this photo Ken was working on the demolition of the old banana packing factory at Pontypridd. This machine was the first one he had with servo control joysticks and air conditioning.

In this shot Ken had been asked to park his Cat 432E for a photo shoot with local school children at the site of the Church Village Bypass Visitors Centre a job which he had been working on.

Anyone who has read one of Ken’s post’s on social media will know that he is a big fan of the Michelin XMCL tyres, almost to the point of obsessional! Ken said, “I have always found the XMCL’s to be the best of the best, with both front and back sets lasting well over 8000 hours”. Ken is also passionate about the upkeep of machines he is charged with, with the Cat backhoes for instance, he used to do all his own servicing and would wash the machine down on the weekends. Ken estimates that he probably amassed close to 50,000 hours on the backhoes with the company!

Ken was delighted to have been invited to attend Caterpillar’s 30^th Anniversary of backhoe production event at the Desford facility in Leicestershire, although Cat were not aware of it, this night would mark the end of Ken’s 30 years of operating backhoe loaders as shortly after the event Ken left Harkins and took a job with KW Bell Contractors operating a 6-tonne class Doosan 62R hydraulic excavator, which he continues to operate to this day.

He still remains fiercely supportive of the backhoe loader as a machine saying, “In my opinion, you won’t beat a backhoe with a good operator on it for versatility, I never once failed to do a job and I did face some very awkward ones!”. The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Ken for sharing his photos and thoughts with us.

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