In a sea of specialty equipment, the backhoe is holding its own as a do-it-all machine

After years of contraction, the backhoe loader market seems to have found a sustainable level. Here’s why backhoes still fit on the jobsite:

Backhoes have taken a beating with years of falling sales driving OEMs to limit their offerings. Who stole backhoes’ market share? The usual suspects. Skid steer loaders. Compact and smaller mid-size track and wheel loaders and excavators. Where these machines did tasks also done by backhoes, they did them better. It was a burgeoning age of specialization.

But that age of specialization is also what saved backhoes from extinction. They don’t do specific tasks as well as the specialists, but they do everything competently. A skid steer is better at scuttling around tight quarters loading trucks and transferring materials, but it can’t trench. A crawler excavator is better at excavating, but it can’t be driven on the road between jobs at 25 mph. In a sea of specialty equipment, backhoes stand out for their versatility, and this versatility keeps backhoes in fleets.

“A backhoe’s best attributes are still trenching, excavating and loading, but the point is they can do all three,” says Diego Butzke, product manager for backhoe loaders at JCB North America. “And over the years, they’ve gotten much better with attachments. The backhoe is a do-it-all machine.”

Dustin Adams, product application specialist for Caterpillar, says, “Backhoes excel when the job requires the machine to complete a variety of tasks. Quick couplers afford the ability to turn backhoes into sweepers, compactors, asphalt mills, snow pushes and more, making it even easier for operators to capitalize on the machine’s versatile nature.”