Importance of mechanics on CAT excavators

Heavy equipment are bound to breakdown given the fact that they are compelled to work beyond their limits. This at many times take a huge toll on the heavy equipment and it suffer major breakdown which is rectified only with the intervention of a mechanic or an expert who know how to fix earth moving machines. This gives rise to the importance of a genre of men without whom the industry will have a hard time moving ahead. We require mechanics for all sorts of gadgets. Right from the Television fitted in our drawing room to the air-condition/heater in our bedroom, all has the tendency to breakdown at some point of time and to fix that we need a mechanic. Similarly, the construction industry depends heavily on the mechanics who charge a good sum of money for their services. But not all mechanics are paid handsomely. It is only those who have the required level of experience and the knowledge to resolve issues are sitting at the top and rightfully minting money.

Excavator is kind of a blue eyed candy when it comes to heavy equipment for construction houses. The reason is it is meant to do all kinds of work barring few. One only needs to change it attachments and get the desired things done from this machine. Therefore an excavator becomes prone to often breakdowns. Irrespective of the company that produces excavators, during the passage of time you will find it giving up slowly and steadily and this is where you see the need of a mechanic the most. The moment it starts giving issues, you got to call the mechanic to fix it. Knowing the importance of the excavator in your business, you just can’t afford to neglect the issue or else it will crop up to something magnanimous and will then become a pain for you.

Cat excavators though are renowned all over the world for its efficiency, caliber, high performance and reliability it may still fail to work if proper care is not taken from the beginning. Simultaneously, any part of the CAT excavator can catch up with a problem at any juncture. It might give you some signals with the snarling sound. The operator has to understand it then and there or else the problem may aggravate and may result in replacing the part completely.

Alternatively, every part of the machine comes with an expiry date which may or may not be printed on the part. Being a CAT excavator, it may be possible that a particular part of the machine loses it vitality few months after its expiration date but it will expire some day or the other. Post which you need to get in touch with a mechanic to get the stuff replaced. You doing it on your own can lead to more complications and is also certainly not advisable. CAT company also has mechanics of their own who services the machine but construction companies has their own preference when it comes to mechanics and therefore it is important that one must be sure that they are dealing with an experienced one who knows his work well.

Making of a construction company

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It may sound hard to begin a business when you do not have much experience on how to run it. It will in fact be quite difficult for you to sustain the initial few years and this is to be considered the most crucial period of any business setup. It is during this time that you experience too much of turbulence in your business and many people are compelled to shut their shops. But the one who are able to make it through these rough times are the one who are set to make history. The beginning of a construction business is no different and one has to go through the hardships which a person from some other industry goes through. However, what one needs to understand is till how long they have to experience the turbulence before finding the shore.  For this one needs to ensure that he has the right frame of mind and a sound financial backup that will help through his journey of setting up a mighty construction company.

Know how the industry functions:-

In order to run your business successfully, it is quite imperative to understand how the overall industry functions at ground level. Without knowing much about the industry, it will be futile to go any further with your business. It may lead to severe complications that may catch unaware. Things like how you can take a project, what prerequisites are required, the kind of expectation that one can set upon you and what you can do to fulfill those expectations are crucial. Running a construction business is not a easy one and involves lot of technicalities that the one who runs it should understand and also apply it well.

A bit of experience is always helpful:-

A person who knows how to deal with challenges and overcome them is the one who will find his place in the construction domain. Having little experience on how to run the business is crucial. It actually teaches you to deal with different types of situations in an effective manner without ruining your daily affairs. It also helps to learn to maintain good relation with your clients even when you have surrounded with different forms of challenges some thrown by the clients themselves. It is never easy to keep your clients satisfied as they always expect more from you. But to know the way to keep them content is an art that one can learn only through experience.

Have sound financial backing:-

This is perhaps one of the most important criteria one must consider. Every affair of your business in co-related to finance. You get projects keeping into deliberation the strong financial backing you have to complete the project on time. Your clients gives you work after they are satisfied that you have the resource to pay salary to your employees. You have to buy heavy equipments and that costs you a bomb. Therefore having a strong financial backup or some sort of reserve is imperative when you are about to begin a construction company.

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Mistakes a construction company should avoid doing

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Humans are bound to do mistakes in their lives and so do they also learn from it. Mistakes can happen in any industry and in any profession but there are some mistakes that can be avoided and one will never want them to happen. Mistakes are certainly not pardonable in professions where you just can’t afford to make mistakes. Doctors for that matter are bound to make no mistakes. Similarly, we expect the same from a pilot. But there are others industries where a mistake made, may not be life threatening but can definitely lead to severe loses and one can only try to avoid them. Construction industry is one such industry where you commit a major error and you got to be ready to pay a big price for it. There are few grave mistakes that one should avoid making especially when he is part of the construction segment.

Safety of employees should never be compromised:-

You can’t take human lives for granted come what may. People who are working for you are your men and it becomes your moral responsibility to safeguard their interests and their lives. Therefore, you should provide them with all the equipment and trainings that will keep them safe and sound. By no means should the safety of the employees be compromised. This can pose a big threat to the future prospects of the company and if reported to the concerned authority, you may even have to pay the price by leaving the project or by paying a hefty penalty. Also when you know that a job needs the attention of expert workers, you should know deploy men who are not trained for that job. They may end up injuring themselves.

Title should be clean:-

When you take a new project, you should ensure that the title on the property is clean and it does not have any disputes. These things should be done before you take up the work. In case you are a contractor then knowing about the title will help you to determine where you are heading. You should always keep your hands off from any disputed projects as that will lead you to complications. Check with the title company if there is any dispute on the property and if the title owners are the ones you have been informed holds the property. Projects are held up for years due to non-clearance of title and have become a matter of huge concern.

Never miss out on your finances­:-

The financial part of the company plays an important role in determining where the company is heading. Construction companies are known for not able to keep a tab on their finances. Money is needed to buy raw materials, heavy equipment, paying salaries to employees and taking care of other operating expenses but it all should be recorded or else you will not have any clue where your money went and what you can do to prevent unwanted expenses. Keeping a log of all your transactions is the need of the hour for every construction company and it may turn out to be a big mistake if not managed at the right time.

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Take sound decisions if you are new to the construction industry

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When you are inexperienced you may not get it right the first time. You be into any profession, you need some amount of advice and guidance in order to learn things in a better way. Simultaneously, you are also unable to take the right decision when you do not know the difference between what is going to be beneficial for you and what will turn out to be a drastic debacle. It is quite important to first understand the subject properly before you get into it in order to take the right decisions in life. Your decisions will be quite circumstantial in nature. It will vary on the basis of the circumstance that you are in. One such industry is the construction industry where people find themselves in a tight spot over taking the right decision. The circumstance may be such that they will find it difficult to analyze which way to go.

Taking up of new projects is one such example where people do not know if they should be accepting the new project or wait for the existing ones to get over and then jump on to it. Ideally, when a construction business owner is given a new business, the giver expects him to get going with the work but the irony of the construction company is that he has to first wind up the existing work he has got in his hand and then only can deploy his resources for the next assignment. The other option is he can get more resources for the new project and start with the work but then once the work is completed in the next 2 years, he will have to do away with all his resources provided he has managed to get more work. But a construction company can’t perform on assumptions of events that may happen after a couple of years.

In this case, the company is in a dilemma if it should take it or leave it. Leaving the project will also have repercussion that the company has to face. It may be out of work for few months after the completion of the existing one and that is definitely not a good sign for any business. So situations like these can leave any construction company owner under stress and when it comes to a new company, one can only imagine how difficult it will be for him to take the right call.

Now when it comes to taking right decision, you need help from others and that others have to be an expert in the same domain. A new guy in the construction industry may have a mentor who is a guiding force for him. He should reach out to him for advices. He may get something phenomenal from his mentor which will help him to take control of the situation and eventually take the right decision for the company. The difference between making money and losing everything is nothing but taking sound and unsound decisions.

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It makes sense to buy attachments of heavy equipment

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Once you are a part of the construction industry, you have to deal with many things and there are few things where you decision to buy some machinery or take it on rent will matter a lot to the company. So when it comes to buying heavy equipment or taking them on rent, it completely depends upon the situation you as well as your construction company is in. If you have surplus funds available and can easily buy a machine or two, you can opt for buying them but if you see scarcity of capital and are struggling to keep your business afloat then you better go with taking it on rent.

However, when it comes to the buying attachments of heavy equipment and you know that you will always need them irrespective of the project you are in then it makes more sense to buy some attachments rather than taking that on rent. You will simply pay monthly rent on an item that you know you will need as long as you are in the business. Therefore buying the item altogether will solve the problem of contacting an owner to provide you with the attachments.

Since we know that heavy equipment are highly expensive items their attachments are not less expensive and can cost a good amount of money especially when you are buying them from branded makers. You also can’t compromise on the quality of your work and therefore can’t use an attachment that is manufactured by company that you have never heard of. You have to buy the attachment of a branded company to keep the pace of your project going. So what you can do is get hold of dealers or companies that deals with used machines and attachments.

There are a lot of such dealers who sell attachments of almost every company under the sun and that you can name of. In case if they do not have the stuff in their shop then they will make sure that they get it for you in few days so that your business does not suffer. They sell these attachments at a comparatively lesser price. They usually buy old and dilapidated attachments from people and then give it an altogether new life. At times they buy it directly from the company and sell it to someone with a promise that they will buy it back from them at a decent price.

This is why many people buy attachments from such dealers and take the assurance home that once it gets old they have a place to sell it off. This is how you get different kinds of attachment of different heavy equipment and that too of different heavy equipment companies at a lower price. By taking attachments on rent will never let you own one. You will simply use and return it to its owner. Your only gain is that you get to use the stuff when you need it the most but for the next project you again have to hunt for another owner making the entire process complicated. This gives enough reason why one should buy the attachments than taking it on rent.

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Process to buy Caterpillar Excavators

Excavators are type of heavy duty equipment used mainly during construction work. They can dig through the concrete, transfer loads of bricks and break down entire huge structures. Due to their wide applications, they are very much required in any construction project. Caterpillar Inc. ranks foremost in selling the best quality of ~300 different types of construction related equipment. Generally, Caterpillar Inc.’s excavators are preferred by any commercial user. They manufacture excavators which are easy to operate, possess good mobility, speed and have safety features. In addition, these are upgraded with latest technology and are easy to maintain.

Caterpillar provides two types as, crawler and wheel excavators. There are 54 and 17 different models of crawler and wheel excavators, respectively. These models differ from each other in their maximum speed and operating horsepower. In addition to the brand new models, Caterpillar also sells used excavators which are in good working conditions. Due to the wide variety of Caterpillar excavators, it’s a challenge for a commercial user to choose the suitable type of model.

Any heavy equipment including excavator is highly expensive, the buyer needs to be careful while selecting the right type of excavator. The following guidelines will be helpful for the buyer during the process of buying an excavator:

  1. Buyer should learn about the applications of excavators. They should be set their own needs and expectations.
  2. They should gain knowledge of the parts of excavator and understand their functions. Further, they should learn the application of different types of models by referring to the available options and product specifications. Also check for reliability and ease of use.
  3. Buyers should keep in mind the conditions at the construction site and whether an excavator can function well in these conditions. Also they are required to consider weather conditions and excavator storage and transport.
  4. To decide on the type of excavator required. The crawler excavators are most commonly used. They move on steel tracks and provide stability on the uneven spaces. The wheel excavators are less commonly used, which move on wheels instead of tracks. This gives them more mobility than crawler to move from one job to another.
  5. To decide on the excavator model type and size. Mini excavators are small sized and used for work in small construction spaces and cause minimal damage to the landscape. While large excavators are huge machines used for heavy construction work.
  6. Generally excavators are provided with standard buckets. However, buyers should be aware of other attachments such as specialized buckets (heavy duty, severe duty tilt, sorting buckets), augers used for drilling, thumbs to grasp objects, hydraulic hammers, rakes, mulches and rippers. Possessing multiple attachments allows excavator to perform a variety of tasks, simply by switching the attachment.
  7. Buying used excavator: Since these machines last long and can operate for long hours, user can try this option of buying a used excavator. The user should ascertain the working condition of excavator and the cost of repairs.

The most important guideline during process of buying an excavator is the nature of construction project and which model can best perform that type of work.

Equipment used in construction

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A construction jobsite will give us the picture of laborers working tirelessly with their supervisors directing them to work and several types of heavy equipment digging deep inside the ground and rest busy carrying something or the other. Overall we will find nobody being idle. Everybody and everything is doing some or the other activity. Having said this, the construction industry is heavily dependent on the kind of heavy equipment being used on the site. The owner of a construction company invests good chunk of money in procuring heavy equipment and post buying takes immense care to ensure that the machines work fine. He spends good deal of money to keep them well maintained and so that it performs when it is needed the most. In a big project, you will see numerous heavy equipment. However, the most common types of machines that are seen on the sites will be discussed as follows.

Excavator:-

Excavators are machines that are required to excavate earth using its boom or stick. It has the potential to dig deep inside the ground and extract the soil. It is one of the most common types of heavy equipment that can be seen in almost every construction site. This is because every construction site requires some amount of digging to be done and they can’t have a better choice than using an excavator. Some companies also make use of alternatives which are undoubtedly good options but may not be able to deliver the result that an excavator can do. It can also carry the soil and dump it on a dump truck. So there is no need of heavy equipment like wheel loader to do this work.

Bulldozers:-

This is yet another common heavy equipment that can be seen in most of the construction sites. As the word goes bulldozers are used to demolish anything that comes on its way. Well, not literally anything but it is ideally used to break any existing structure and build something new in its place. Lot many construction companies depend on dozers during the initial phase of their project. Most of them prefer buying machines manufactured by Caterpillar and John Deere. However there are other players who have made their presence felt and are giving healthy competition to the pioneers thus giving rise to more innovative dozers.

Wheel Loaders:-

Wheel Loaders are primarily used to ferry huge pile of soil from one point to another. It has huge space to dump the soil which is not available in any other form of heavy equipment. It can also cover a lot of distance in less time as compared to other construction machineries that are capable of carrying debris. Therefore, a wheel loader is often used in big construction projects where the chances of accumulation of dirt is more and which can be ferried easily to the dump truck.

Dump truck:-

Last but not the least; a dump truck is also widely seen equipment on a construction site. It is basically used to carry the dirt and debris from the jobsite to the dump yard. Almost every construction company need a dump truck to do away with the huge proportion of dirt it yields on a daily basis.

Competition in heavy equipment industry

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Today the heavy equipment industry is in great demand due to the huge growth in urban population and infrastructure projects. Heavy construction equipment is a critical tool for any construction project since they reduce the labor cost and time. A variety of these are present in market to serve different purposes of heavy construction work. Although all may not be required, it is imperative for the owner/builder to buy a sizeable amount of these equipment to ensure that work proceeds smoothly.

 

The existing heavy construction equipment market is dominated by large firms such as Caterpillar Inc. (U.S.), CNH Global N.V. (The Netherlands), Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (South Korea), Volvo Construction Equipment AB (Sweden), JCB Ltd. (U.K.), Komatsu Ltd. (Japan), Deere & Company (U.S). These companies provide advanced heavy construction equipment and by gaining considerable expertise and experience over the years, they have optimized their processes and practices to become even more efficient. These key players use different strategies such as expansions, agreements, contracts, joint ventures and partnerships to garner share in the market. They also focus more on the emerging markets in developing countries with inclination towards industrial growth. They also rely on regional and local distributors to increase their profits and presence in geographical markets. They also acquire companies or other business to meet the demands of heavy construction equipment.

 

There are challenges faced by these key players too. There is demand for machines which are highly efficient, safe, and reliable, with highest productivity and lowest environmental impact. Further, if fitted with the latest technology which is user friendly and with numerous applications it becomes more popular among users. In addition, there are changes in the heavy equipment industry due to advent of big data, analytics and advanced technology. Some new entrants in the market produce complex products using big data analytics which are cost effective, hence are in demand. Further competitive business analytics allows new analytics to assist in pricing, budgeting, improving management of demand and supply, minimize costs and risks and maximize profits. This has lead to a tough competition within the heavy equipment industry. Industries which are not interested in being tech-savvy will find themselves difficult to survive in such a competitive market.

 

To retain the position of a being a key player in heavy equipment industry, one has to have key strategies such as:

  1. Product and technology: Top priority of many key players is innovation of their products. Hence, they invest more in research and development activities.
  1. Improvement in operations: global expansion increases level of complexity which makes it important to improve basic capabilities and processes.
  2. A Go market Approach: to expand operations and business in the developed countries.
  3. In addition they should have winning strategies and should be prepared for the new changes in market. Although there is competition in heavy equipment industry, yet the companies which will have right business strategies, innovative products and can adapt to changing markets will survive and grow to make huge profits.
  4.  In addition they should have winning strategies and should be prepared for the new changes in market.Although there is competition in heavy equipment industry, yet the companies which will have right business strategies, innovative products and can adapt to changing markets will survive and grow to make huge profits.

Learning the basics of heavy equipment

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Heavy equipment if learnt from the very basics can prove to be quite useful for the person who deals into it. For instance, a salesman whose job is to pitch construction equipment to big construction houses and to contractors needs to know almost everything about what he is selling. He might come across any sort of question and he needs to answer them to win their confidence. It is true that we do not want to buy a thing from a person who does not know much about it. Frankly, we will not have the confidence to buy it from him no matter how technologically advanced the stuff it is. We will always have this doubt that the person is not selling us the right thing because he couldn’t answer all our doubts. So when the salesman is dealing with heavy equipment, it is also dealing with large amount of money and nobody will want to buy the stuff from a guy who has less knowledge about the product.

Not only salesman but you can take for that matter anybody who is related to the industry that has need for heavy equipment, they need to have excellent understanding on the subject failing which can have serious consequences on their work and simultaneously on their career as well. So how do we go about learning the basics of heavy equipment and why we should start with the basics? Well, whenever you are about to learn a thing, you start from the scratch. It is because if you try to jump to the next level you will presumably and quite rightly not understand anything about the subject. They will be all interlinked to the first level which is ideally the basics. This is why you should also focus primarily on the basics of heavy equipment and learn it well. You can then steer into other dimension once you are pretty clear with the basics.

There are many institutions who teach people on heavy equipment. You can probably join one such place and gather books that will help you to learn about earth moving equipment. Books related to these subjects will be really helpful. You get to learn a lot from them. They consist basically everything that will help you know the basics of heavy equipment. Simultaneously you can also relate what is there in the books with the machine you have at your place. Please do not open up the machine because if you do so you may not know to put it back again. If you find that to be difficult then the next best solution is to use internet and check some videos that talks about the basics.

YouTube and other such websites contain a lot of videos that are referred by the best in the industry. They prefer to check out the YouTube videos if they want to know anything or fix up something on their machine. You can find them to be really helpful as far as learning the basics of heavy equipment is concerned.

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Servicing of heavy equipment can become quite a profitable business

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After having bought heavy equipment, we experience the real problem when we see the need to service the machine. Though the user manual also speaks about how you should maintain your machine to lengthen its life but getting the equipment regularly serviced by a mechanic is also very crucial. It has been lately found that people possessing heavy equipment see dire need of guys who can also service their machines. Heavy equipment manufacturing companies also have their servicing department but many of the times they are full with work and one has to wait for days and even months to get their equipment serviced. Getting good mechanics has become a big problem.

Construction companies big or small are in dire need of servicing stations that are reachable and can send their mechanics to service the machine without much delay. It is understood that mechanics will always be engaged with enough work to keep them occupied for days but they expect the servicing company to have surplus men who can be sent across to service the machine. Therefore people who are intending to open up such a kind of business can be assured that they will end up making good profits in this business. It can get you a lot of clients who are ready to pay you good money for your service.

Few important things are needed before you start the business of servicing heavy equipment.

Installing right infrastructure for the business:-

When you are thinking of starting up a service center, you got to be sure that you have the infrastructure in place. Servicing of heavy equipment is a task of huge responsibility and it also requires machines that do the work for you. It is pretty obvious that you can’t use your hand to clean the dirt that has been set in the interiors of the machine. For that you may need a water spray that will flush out the dirt from the system. In the same manner, you need other equipment for different kinds of work. So you need to ensure that you have the set of equipment ready before you start advertising about your business to others.

Having the right set of men to do the job:-

Having men who know their job is a very crucial point in this business. Before you start up the business, you need to have people who are good with servicing heavy equipment. You need guys who have worked as mechanics and have repaired different types of heavy equipment. Alternatively, they should also be aware of the places from where you can get heavy equipment parts because you may get machines whose parts needs to be replaced. So you buy the parts from that place in bulk and charge the customer as per the market price. So people who are experienced in servicing machines are the type you need for your business.

You also need to make sure that you pay your men real well so that they stick with you and do not move away to some other company just because they are offered more there.