Construction Equipment: The Ultimate Buying Guide

With a broad loader bucket on the front and a narrower digging bucket towards the rear, backhoes excel at digging trenches, removing trees, smoothing surfaces, and pushing dirt around the construction site. They can be found hauling materials away, performing light demolitions, digging and filling trenches for piping, and grading roads.

Bulldozers have a large pusher blade on the front for clearing land and managing debris. They also have one or more ripper claws on the back for breaking apart extremely dense materials. Bulldozers often lead the way for other heavy equipment by stripping away soils and sand to create a level construction site. They are also used to rip apart asphalt, push construction debris into compact piles, and easily tow massive containers of petroleum and other chemicals.

Concrete mixer trucks are also commonly referred to as "cement trucks", though this term is only partially correct. Cement is actually mixed with water and either sand or gravel in order to make concrete, so concrete mixture trucks is the correct phrase. Aside from transporting the concrete mix across roadways, these trucks can pour the cement mixture where it needs to go using chutes, pumps, hoses, or conveyor belts.

Excavators use a boom and bucket fixed to a rotating base to dig holes, handle materials and remove large obstructions such as boulders. As one of the most common construction machines on both large and small jobs, excavators can perform basic “cut and fill” site preparations, construct roads, transport construction materials, remove debris, demolish, dig foundations, trench, and work on marine engineering projects such as building sea walls, dredging, and installing harbors and marinas.

Providing adequate power is a top priority on any job site, and that’s exactly what generator sets are meant to do. Generators can run on clean-burning natural gas, gasoline, or diesel fuel. Gasoline generators are the cheapest to buy and operate, but sometimes they have pricey replacement parts; natural gas generators cost less than diesel generators, but are more expensive overall to run; and diesel generators are the most reliable, but also the most cumbersome when transporting.

Light towers are portable light sources with at least one high-powered electric lamp on top of a tall pole. They conveniently come with their own generators to provide power as well as tow trailers for transportation. Light towers keep workers safe by illuminating the job site, preventing injuries and allowing construction to take place at night as well as in darkened indoor areas. The value of light towers really “shines” during the months with shortened days, when dusk comes sooner.

A motor grader is a powerful piece of road construction equipment that uses a long flat blade to create a smooth surface (for asphalt, gravel and dirt roads). They also have a massive ripper attachment that lowers from the front to break apart asphalt and other tough surfaces. Construction crews use motor grades for road maintenance and construction, to create foundation pads out of the soil, to clear out underbrush for site preparations, and for fine grading sites for large buildings.

Scraper tractors remove soil or clay by shredding it first with a sharp-edged hopper and then simply driving over it for collection. The hopper raises and closes off when full so that the scraper tractor can safely deposit its contents somewhere else. Scraper tractors excel at short hauls and are primarily used for highway and road construction.

Skid steers are highly versatile and maneuverable construction machines with a front bucket that can dig into soil and grade surfaces. The true value of a skid steer is its seemingly endless array of construction attachments, which allows it to do everything from demolition jobs to road construction. Skid steers can prepare sites by grading, haul away debris, spread materials, mill roads to new modifications, mix and pump concrete, and lift heavy loads. Skid steers are also perfect for lifting pavers and setting them down precisely to create customizable pathways in both residential and commercial construction projects.

Wheel loaders have two arms attached to a powerful front loader bucket that can loosen materials before scooping them away. These construction machines specialize in stockpiling, dumping, and transporting asphalt, dirt, site waste, gravel, rocks, sand, and woodchips wherever needed. With the right attachments, they can also help prep sites by removing heavy vegetation and trees.