by Nick Drew | Tue 09 Jan 2018
Ringing the Bell for South African machinery manufacturing
At the annual Earthmovers Christmas gathering I was chatting with our editor Graham Black about various company’s around the world of interest to our readers and amongst them was Bell Equipment, the South African based manufacturer of ADT’s, but I quickly discovered there is a lot more to this company than first meets the eye and I was inspired to find out more.
The family owned business was founded in 1954 by Irvine Bell a fitter and turner by trade and someone who like all successful entrepreneurs had a vision for what equipment his potential customers required to do the jobs. The company’s first breakthrough came in the early 1960’s when Mr Bell designed and manufactured a 3-wheeled hydraulic loader specifically for the sugar cane industry, these unique looking machines continue to feature in the company’s large portfolio of products to this day, but are rarely if ever seen in the UK market.
In the UK we associate Bell primarily as a manufacturer of articulated dumptruck’s and wheeled loaders, but its interesting to learn that the company has a massive global presence with over 40,000 machines out in the field in 80 countries. I have had the pleasure of visiting many sites where Bell ADT’s are working and proving themselves to be an excellent choice in what is a very competitive market. Chris Moore who is a legend in articulated dumptruck hire runs them, as does the equally famous Lionel Whitnell one of whose trucks is seen below.
Bell’s most recent offering is the mighty B60E which was officially showcased in Munich during the Bauma Trade Fair in 2016. Combining the attributes of an ADT and a rigid dumptruck the 60-tonne class B60E is capable of moving large volumes of material in areas where a rigid truck would not be able to compete, something I witnessed first hand when I was fortunate enough to visit a demonstration model being trialled at the Cornish China Clay works in St Austell, which I covered in Earthmovers Magazine.
But as mentioned previously there is a lot more to this company which these days is headed by the 3 Bell brothers, Peter, Gary and Paul. The following corporate video offers a great insight into the business, I for one am looking forward to finding out more.