Machine Serve Open Days is Another Success

While I was away in Finland my local Yanmar compact equipment dealer Machine Serve, held its latest open days event at its premises near Winkleigh in Devon.

Although so often plagued by wet weather, Machine Serve’s open days are incredibly popular with the local plant and machinery community, and from what I gather this latest 3-day equipment extravaganza was as busy as ever.

Taking place across the 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th of March, Yanmar products were largely dominating the event, but other products from the dealer’s portfolio were also on display and being demonstrated including, Gyru Star screening buckets, Arrowhead breakers, Digga earth augers, Lumag, and RockZone crushers and cutting tools.

There was even an appearance of Yanmar’s famous 90 second challenge game, first seen during Bauma 2022, where operators have to place sections of a jigsaw onto the panel against the clock, such competitions are always popular with operators who are keen to demonstrate their skills.

Talking about the challenge competitions organised, Machine Serve MD Phil Davey said, "We think the games gave a real buzz to the proceedings, it was really competitive on the Yanmar 90 second skills challenge. We had Martin Parish come in and complete it in just over 50 seconds. Ed Lambert came along and beat that, so the gauntlet was well and truly thrown down, for Martin to come back. He then scored an incredible 45 seconds, and got off the machine physically shaking with determination to win, all completed in the presence of Simon Goodman of Yanmar, we actually think we managed to break the European record".

Balls from the Gyru Star ball pit were flying in all directions and showed how the material rolls in the buckets really well and the Arrowhead challenge, fastest time to knock a nail in was hammered.

I was due to visit the event as I normally do, being local, but couldn’t make it due to a series of assignments popping up in Finland. However, one of the big guns of the social media/influencer scene made the long trek down to the South West, namely Lloyd Peckham, aka “Bearded Excavation” who was working with Digga. Phil said, "There was a lot of swearing from the Beared Excavation guy as he was trying to get through the Digga maze without the buzzer going off too, lots of fun".

Talking about the RockZone demo Phil said, "Faiz from Rockzone was busy all the time with the Rockcrusher R7 bucket in action on a 14-tonne Kobelco. We even had Ray Copper come the next day with a Cornish cannon to see if it would handle it. Made it grunt a bit, but it crushed the mighty Cornish Blue Elvan, and actually made the Cornish granite from Wadebridge look like a breeze".

It looks like it was another top job by Phil and his team at Machine Serve, and I hope to be back again for the next one.  

All photos featured in this post are courtesy of Machine Serve's Facebook page.