Season of the Machine
The Holidays Are a Perfect Time to
Plan Your Next Purchase for 2008
Our concept of Santa Claus is all wrong. A jolly geriatric who flies around the world using nine flying arctic deer (one with nose glow) and an old snow sled to deliver presents to billions? If anything, Santa is a total gear head. He’s a sleek and agile toy tycoon, sporting the latest cell phone, GPS tracker and laptop, capitalizing on the coolest equipment to load his air force of super jets to distribute gifts to each and every household.
But you don’t need to be Santa to know the advantages of using the latest equipment to give ground support to your fly-by-night lifestyle. Keen contractors understand the importance of working with the right iron, and the holiday season is actually the perfect time to start planning your next big equipment purchase (with the 2008 work season looming).
To help compile your wish list, the secret Santas at Compact Equipment have gathered the ultimate dealer lot of just-released, cutting-edge machinery. Thumb to page 14 of this issue and find some of the most inventive products launched in the past 12 months, detailed in our 2007 innovations showcase, “Welcome to the Jungle.” Put on your turtleneck, grab an eggnog and read about Caterpillar’s luxuriously comfortable new C-Series of skid steers and compact track loaders. Pull up a chair at the crowded mall bar, order up a frosty Christmas Ale and learn about Ditch Witch’s cool new trencher tool carrier, the Zahn. In all, 11 innovative machines, technologies and attachments are highlighted and each one would make a great addition to most professionals’ fleets.
Overall, the entire December issue is the ultimate holiday handbook — especially when it comes to mini excavators. Realizing that our readership spends most of its time on the jobsite and not shopping for new equipment, we’ve decided to bring all of the major brands of compact excavators directly to you in a nice 8 ½- by 11-in. format. We’ve contacted 13 different manufacturers of mini excavators to uncover the models, features, specifications and even pricing of nearly every unit in the industry. From page 40 to 56, “The Mini HEX” story focuses on more than 100 makes and models of mini diggers, describing, with specs, nearly the entire compact excavator industry in North America (those machines 6 metric tons or below in operating weight).
If you still have a little loose change left after conquering those two extensive articles, mosey over to our “Holiday Gift Guide” (page 28) and find a few stocking stuffers for the co-workers, machine heads and family and friends on your list. Pick up a sweet die-cast collectible, a family-fun John Deere board game and a handsome book or two detailing the histories of some of America’s greatest equipment companies.
Whether it’s tackling the entire compact excavator market or their cool toy replicas, we will continue to deliver the goods just like sweet old St. Nick. Just make sure you belly up to our Web site at www.compactequip.com to guarantee you and your crews get signed up for Compact Equipment in 2008. It just might be the second best gift you get this year.
Keith Gribbins
Managing Editor
kgribbins@benjaminmedia.com
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