J. C. Bamford

JCB is a family business named after its founder J.C.Bamford, producing distinctive yellow-and-black engineering vehicles, diggers ("Backhoes") and excavators. In the UK, the word "JCB" is synonymous with any such type of engineering vehicle, although it is still treated as a trademark.

Vehicles

Most of the vehicles produced are some variant of the backhoe, with variations including

• Tracked or wheeled vehicles
• Mini and large versions (but not the "ridiculously large" mining vehicles sometimes associated with CAT)
• Variations for carrying and moving items, for example the fork lift vehicles, and telescopic forklifs for moving materials to the upper floors of a building site.

Tractors

JCB made its name in the tractor world by producing one of the first such machines to feature proper suspension and capable of travelling at speed on roads. (previously, suspension was difficult because of the fixed-height connections required to farm machinery, and tractors were notoriously slow on the roads)

JCB called this machine the "FasTrac", and it was featured on Tomorrow's World when it first appeared.

JCB display team

To demonstrate the versatility of the backhoe configuration, JCB setup a display team (JCB Dancing Diggers ) to tour agricultural shows and produce videos, showing some of the unusual ways in which such vehicles could support themselves or manoeuvre. For example, it is quite common for drivers to support the vehicle on both scoops, either for turning on the spot without damaging ground, or for spinning the tracks in a puddle to clean them. The display team expanded this concept into a sort of vehicle gymnastics.

Use in modelling

The Lego technic range featured a scale-model of the JCB backhoe, complete with working hydraulics systems (simulated using pneumatics) and many other features of the original. See [1] for some other designs.

Humour

The cutting of network cables during road repairs is now so common, that network engineers often refer to "backhoe fade" as an inevitable cause of communications problems.

"A network enginner always carries a short length of Cat 5 cable with him. If he ever gets lost in the wilderness, he simply buries that cable, waits, and asks the backhoe operator for directions"

External links

Company website