Zebra’s Crossing

I was browsing the fantastic French forum/Facebook group Technique TP over the Christmas break, its always one of my favourites, respectful, knowledgeable, and very friendly, and aside from that the contributors share some wonderful content too.

One such contributor on Technique TP is Eric Nialcop whose last name, you might notice, is clearly a pseudonym for the once magnificent French manufacturer Poclain!

Eric posts some brilliant old school images from years gone by and among some recent postings I spotted this distinctive looking Fiat-Allis SL15 TAB boomed hydraulic excavator that was being displayed at a trade show somewhere back in the day.

Machines are often custom painted for the big trade fairs, something that continues to this day. This particular machine was sporting the black and white zebra style markings, and very smart it looked too.

This instantly brought back memories of when I visited Yorkshire based Potter Plant Hire in 2015. While being driven around the massive A1L2B road project by Mr Giles Potter himself, we came across one of their Hitachi Zaxis 170W wheeled excavators, which was also sporting some stylish zebra markings, but this one even featured a zebra head on the top of the dipper arm.

I can’t 100% recall why they had this done, but somewhere in the back of my mind I think Giles mentioned it was something to do with his daughter being a zebra fan, hopefully if someone from the Potter organisation see's this they can give us the definitive answer!

One thing is for sure, it was certainly a machine that got noticed wherever it was working, which can only be a good thing in terms of company exposure, its certainly stuck in my memory ever since!