Classic Insley excavator shots

by Nick Drew | Sun 05 Jul 2015

Classic Insley excavator shots

I was delighted to receive an email from Matt Besser last week, Matt is an avid reader of Earthmovers Magazine and the Digger Man Blog and has kindly sent in some old black & white photos of a classic Insley excavator.

Matt works as a Sales Executive at Lords Builders Merchants in London and was keen to tell us about a driver they have working for them called Jeff, who is in his 70’s, naturally the guy has a love for the classic plant , whereas Matt is more keen on all the shiny new kit and this is what they find so appealing about the Digger Man Blog in the fact that we do have a wide variety of topics to keep everyone interested. Jeff brought in some photos of an American Insley excavator, that I suspect is an early K Series model, which is seen working on a stretch of road between the Hogarth Roundabout and the Chiswick Flyover as they are today.

Details, dates and machine ID are very sketchy but these shots which feature the Fitzpatrick owned machine were taken during the early construction phase of the job. One can only imagine what a hideous ordeal it must have been to sit at the controls of something like this for a 10 or 12 hour shift, it hardly looks very operator friendly!

What I have been able to discover is that Insley machines were produced in the UK under licence during the 1930’s and 40’s by Blaw Knox out of three factories, one in Worcester, one in Watford in Hertfordshire and one Rochester in Kent.

We thank Matt for sending in these classic photos and for his continued support of the Digger Man Blog.

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