This year Caterpillar are going to be celebrating 25 years of producing backhoes at its Leicester factory. There are various exciting events planned and Digger blog will be going along to record the action for you.
As a preview to this event here are some Caterpillar Backhoe loaders from my photo collection.
I spotted this early well looked after Caterpillar 428 whilst on holiday in Fuerteventura in December 2003 and have seen it working on numerous holidays on the island ever since, I believe it is owned and operated by the local authorities.
Now here is something you don't see very often these days, your blogger at the controls of a backhoe loader! In this instance a Caterpillar 438C which used to be owned by Callington based M.J.Troup & Sons.
At the time these shots were taken in February 2004 I was operating a Caterpillar 312B excavator for Matthew who very kindly lent me his backhoe loader to use at home clearing the muck heap created by my partners horses. It had been many years since I last sat in a backhoe loader the last one probably being a JCB 3CIII but as they say it's like riding a bike really and you never forget how to drive one!
And here is the same machine on the Persimmon homes site in Okehampton with it's regular operator Mick in the seat.
Look out for the report on the Caterpillar backhoe loader celebrations in a forthcoming post here on the Digger blog.
