by Nick Drew | Thu 06 Oct 2016
Liebherr fan looks back at some of his past mounts (Blog Re-Visited)
When I recently announced that I was going to be test driving a Liebherr machine, I was inundated with messages via my Facebook and Twitter accounts, from machinery men who were keen to hear my thoughts on them. One of them was Luke Harris, the former plant operator, and now well-known plant salesman from the South West, who holds a lot of affection for the famous German brand.
During his operating career with Torquay based Alex Sims Plant Hire, Luke Harris spent a lot of time at the controls of Liebherr excavators, from the small R901 seen in this shot, where Luke is digging out and forming a pond, up to the big R974, which he operated on a number of high profile big sites in the Westcountry.
Other smaller Liebherr’s that Luke spent time on included this R912 wheeled excavator, or “rubber duck” as we like to call them in the UK. The machine is seen here about to lift a large water pipe, which is on the other side of an early Cat 428 backhoe loader. Also of note in this shot, is the German Eder based Caterpillar 211LC hydraulic excavator in the background.
Liebherr, of course, are well known for their big kit, and it was the larger models that really impressed Luke during his time with Alex Sims. Luke spent considerable time on the 100 tonne class R974 machines, as seen here on the A30 road construction site along the Jamaica Inn area.
Alex Sims also ran a Liebherr R974 in face shovel configuration on the same site. This company were big German machine users, running many Liebherr machines and also a large quantity of O&K (Orenstein & Koppel) excavators too.
Luke also worked on the site of the Plymouth Aquarium, which now proudly stands in the spot where this shot was taken, looking back across the water to the famous Barbican area of the city. Luke is seen here at the controls of one of Alex Sim’s 2 large Liebherr R974’s, which is sporting a massive Rammer G120 hammer. At the time, Mr Sims owned 2 of these hammers and they were the only ones available for hire in the UK. Luke commented on them, “Those Rammers were one hell of a hammer - they weighed 7 tons and packed a hell of a punch!”
We don’t see quite as many Liebherr machines in the South West these days, but with the outstanding build quality that is engineered into them, the ones that are in operation down here, will be around for many years to come.