It was wonderful to hear the news last week that Staffordshire based equipment manufacturer JCB was celebrating the production of its 1 millionth backhoe loader.
It is hard to think of another business that has done more to raise the profile of our county, and their iconic yellow diggers and ‘JCB’ entry into the Oxford English dictionary is testimony to how well known the brand is around the world.
Our industry is heavily reliant on the JCB backhoe loader and all the other pieces of plant produced in Rocester, which is just a few miles from our head office here in Burton on Trent.
We estimate that one in three of our GRM site investigation projects uses a piece of JCB equipment! And ironically GRM were involved with the redevelopment of the former JCB manufacturing facility on the outskirts of Cheadle in Staffordshire, to turn it into new housing (manufacturing was re-located to the company’s purpose built factories in Cheadle).
GRM first started back in 1991, and JCB had several of their 3CX backhoe loader models from the 1990’s as part of the cavalcade during their celebration event last week. Their first ever 1953 machine is still in full working order and took pride of place at the front of the procession, with their latest hydrogen powered model showcasing the very latest in engineering technology at the end.
We therefore decided to trawl through our project photo library to find our favourite field-based JCB image, and it was a unanimous decision with this example which featured in a news story from several years ago (sunrise-or-sunset?). Its not a backhoe loader, but it does show how integral and adaptable the various pieces of plant are for land development projects, here being used for a soil stabilisation project in Leicestershire.
If you have any development or construction projects, then please get in touch to find out how we can help save both time and costs. Please use your main point of contact at GRM or for new enquiries email richard.upton@grm-uk.com or call 01283 551249.