by Nick Drew | Tue 28 Mar 2017
Great turn out for Volvo’s Live It, Dig Event
The first leg of Volvo Construction Equipment GB’s Live It, Dig It event took place last week in Alloa, Scotland and Volvo/Steelwrist owner operator Ben Miller attended the show and has kindly shared some of his photos with us.
There has been a lot of buzz in the industry about this event and rightly so as with a wide range of Volvo kit being made available to test drive in real life conditions it was always going to attract a good audience. The undisputed big star of the show had to be the new EC750E which Ben was trying out in this shot.
There were plenty of other Volvo machines available to try out in the test drive areas including the EC380E, EC300E, EC220E, ECR145E, EC140E tracked excavators and the EW60E, EW160E, EWR150E wheeled excavators aka “rubber ducks”.
The show was supported by Volvo CEGB’s chosen tilt-rotator supplier Steelwrist UK and there were a decent number of machines equipped with their tilt-rotators on them. For many visitors it was probably the first time they have been able to get hands on with a tilt-rotator to see what all the fuss is about these game changing attachments. That can only be a good thing for the industry as more and more people begin to understand the benefits that they can bring to the end user.
From what I hear the tilt-rotator area was the busiest throughout the two days which will be good news for Steelwrist UK’s Pat Bulcock a long term promoter of the concept in the UK. There was probably a fair bit of head scratching going on as new people to the concept got to grips with all those additional movements going on. But what a fantastic way to promote the product as you just cannot beat getting “hands on”.
Volvo also had examples from its compact range of products available for test driving too with mini excavators including ECR35D along with ECR88D, ECR50D, EC55C, ECR25D, EC18D and the smallest in the range the 1.5 tonne class EC15D.
Volvo’s iconic product the articulated hauler was also present in the form of an A45G model which was also supported by a wheeled loading shovel.
Volvo Trucks will also be provided an opportunity to test-drive two of their latest Volvo FM and FMX trucks offering visitors a great chance to get behind the wheel of these fantastic looking trucks which have been designed specifically for the construction site sector.
The nice thing about this event is that it is held over a Friday and Saturday offering the chance for those all-important operators to visit on the weekend as they would normally be too busy to attend on a week day. The next Live It, Dig It, event takes place this coming weekend Friday 31 March and Saturday 1 April at the Armac Group, Solihull, Birmingham, B92 0DY and runs from 9am to 4pm on both days.
We thanks Ben Miller for the photos included in this post and to Mark Johnston for the last photo.