Big Cat Spotted in Llantrisant

One of our most dedicated followers Kenneth Hatcher has been out taking photos in his local area again, and has kindly shared them with us here on the Digger Man Blog.

Back in the early days of this blog, it was pretty much self-feeding as keen machine people were always sending me in interesting photos and videos of kit that they had spotted, however, with the rise of social media, sadly we don’t get as much material from readers as we used to, so it’s especially nice when we do receive something to share these days.

On this occasion Kenneth Hatcher had made one of his regular pilgrimages to his local Caterpillar dealer Finning UK & Ireland’s depot in Llantrisant in South Wales.

Upon his arrival he was surprised to see a much larger than average Cat wheeled loading shovel, parked up on the dividing island at the entrance to the main car park. Upon further investigation, he discovered that the machine was in fact a 992K model which is the third largest wheeled loader in the Caterpillar range. Powered by a Cat C32 ACERT with a rated power output of 907hp, the machine has an operating weight of around 99.83 tonnes, has a bucket width of 4.824m, and can carry a maximum bucket capacity of 12.3m³ making it capable of loading Cat 775 and 777 rigid off-highway trucks in 3-4 passes.

Confined largely to quarrying operations, these machines are rarely seen by the general public, apart from some appearances at the large trade shows, so it’s always a treat to come across one.

As we understand it, this example at Llantrisant has undergone a full rebuild and re-spray at this facility.

As it happens, I was lucky enough to visit Aggregate Industries Torr Works quarry in Somerset back in 2018, where they had just added a second 992K and got to spend the day with the team there watching the new machine go about its daily business, which was super impressive to see and made for a great article in Earthmovers Magazine at the time.

Here’s a video clip from that site visit back in 2018.

The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Kenneth Hatcher for sharing his three images contained in this blog with us.