by Richard Cosgrove | Thu 29 Jan 2026
Sponsored post - Working with the RotoTop?
After working with it for a year, contractor Thomas Vickery from Cornwall doesn’t want to do his job without a RotoTop from German manufacturer Holp anymore. He saves about 50 percent of the origin processing time, which means that work gets done with greater productivity.
Thomas, who started working with excavators at just 16 years old, began his fleet by buying an 8-tonne machine. He later followed this up with a 13 tonner, then another, then a small excavator with a working weight of 3 tonnes. Thomas Vickery offers his customers nearly every job they throw at him when it comes to excavator work. He offers any sort of construction work, including earthwork such as digging up for houses or ponds or laying pipes and hoses. He provides various agricultural and landscaping services, such as trimming trees and hedges, and is open to taking on many other types of work beyond these tasks.
With the many different jobs Thomas takes on, he can be working alone or taking on operators to work with him on one of his other machines. This often leads to questions from these contractors on the machines and attachments he uses, which leads to him being able to sell on his own parts or send them in the direction of the dealers. One of these dealers is Jason McCullough, director of MPS Southwest Ltd and RotoTop UK, who Thomas has had a great relationship with for over a year and has been buying both machines and attachments from. This is where the conversation moved onto Holp attachments and the RotoTop, and after seeing a demonstration of the rotary drive, he decided he wanted one built for his Case CX130B.
The rotary drive RotoTop works like a wrist on the boom of the excavator, making all attachments rotate 360 degrees. This enables them to have the flexibility to fulfil all tasks on site with greater ease and higher productivity. Thomas loved the RotoTop enough to join Jason at Plantworx show in September to be the demonstrator for MPS and Holp.
Thomas has expressed how he believes the RotoTop is a game changer in excavator work, “For me the RotoTop is definitely awesome, really good! I wouldn’t want to live without it anymore; it makes a big difference in my way of working.” With a RotoTop and the ability to operate at various angles, the machine can complete tasks with fewer moves, achieving greater precision and causing less surface damage from excessive movement of heavy equipment. Also, with the use of a RotoTop a lot of the manual work can now be done with the excavator, as it allows the attachments to reach every corner of the working area and allows the bucket to get the last bit out to where it should be.
When cutting trees and hedges or when digging trenches, movements can be so much more precise, therefore making it quicker. Thomas believes that even “easy work”, such as loading material, is getting done quicker with the help of the RotoTop. He says, “You don’t realize how much you use the RotoTop unless you go back and use an excavator without it.”
But how much increase in performance does the RotoTop really offer? Thomas is sure that tasks such as tree shearing or grading are done up to 50% quicker, doubling his performance compared to when using an excavator without one. According to him, the RotoTop also has a positive effect on the wear of the machine; having to move it around less and being able to position the machine correctly at ease lowers the wear on the machines as well as reducing fuel and inevitably cost as a whole.
Thomas also got to use one of the specialized buckets from Holp which are designed to increase performance on sites: On his 3-ton excavator, he works with a MultiGrip bucket, which is used for safe transportation and placement of materials like stone blocks for a wall. With the help of the “fingers on the bucket,” MultiGrip can fill 30% more of materials in its bucket when loading and transporting but also ensures more safety: Due to the thumb principle, the MultiGrip does not transport its load between the bucket’s teeth but rather safely stows it away inside the bucket, not allowing any of the material to fall out. Thomas laughs, “One day, I hired a MultiGrip from Jason for one job and just didn’t give it back but bought it right away.”
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