by Nick Drew | Tue 29 Sep 2015
Classic plant still earning its keep in Greece: Top Blogs Re-visited
I thought it would be a great idea to look back at a few blogs from the CJ days of my blog, as there was a lot of interesting stuff posted on there that has sadly disappeared off the internet. Blog reader Xristos, sent in a large batch of photos, showcasing machines they still use on a daily basis, including a number of real classics.
Xristos's company is called Georgopoylos George and they are based in the Greek city of Kalamata, which is the second largest city of the Peloponnese in Southern Greece and lies 238km south west of Athens. Most of their work is in the city and its surrounding villages, which are famous for its olive trees.
One item of plant that interested me was the Poclain 90P, as seen in the photo above, loading one of the company’s three Mercedes Benz trucks. This 1985 model is still in good condition considering its age and Xristos had been so pleased with this machine at the time, that he was looking to buy another one of similar age from here in the UK.
Here we see the company's 1993 O&K (Orenstein & Koppel) RH9PMS excavator, about to perform a bit of major tree surgery, not a problem for this 33.6 ton machine, which is capable of taking out the tree with ease!
Another unusual machine on the fleet is a Zeppelin ZR55 5.5ton midi excavator. This 1999 model was in fact a badged Shaeff machine, and were only ever sold in the UK under the Shaeff banner.
In this great shot, we see a Gehl 3610 skid steer loader being lowered into an excavation by the company’s O&K MH6PMS "rubber duck".
Now this is something that we don't see very often in the UK anymore. Moving your track shovel from job to job in the back of a tipper lorry, in this instance it's a Caterpillar 955L in the back. This was once a common practice in the UK especially in the demolition industry, when the trusty International "Drott" or Caterpillar Traxcavator, was the tool of choice for knocking down buildings.
Once again another rare machine is this 1982 O&K Faun F1410 wheeled loading shovel, seen here in action with the O&K RH9PMS in the background.
I thought this was a good shot, not sure of what they are trying to do here, but I was impressed with the ingenuity of it! I know for a fact that we could not get away with this in the UK anymore due to our over-zealous health & safety rules.
Finally, a British icon to conclude our trip to Greece. This 2002 JCB 3CX gets a well-deserved wheel wash in a stream. Great photo!
Thanks to Xristos for sharing these great photos with us and bringing a bit of sunshine to the pages of the blog. We have more of these interesting shots to share in a later post here on the Digger Man Blog.