Wheeled excavator

The very beginning of wheeled excavator

A wheeled excavator belongs to the most widespread types of construction equipment. It's a large earth-moving machine on two-axled wheel chassis. Its working organ is a digging bucket mounted on a movable arm.
First mobile excavators were designed to move on rails  then came tractor and truck excavators (also named Blackhoe) made by Bucyrus Osgood and Marion. The first European wheeled excavator with pneumatic tires was Nordest Supermobile with only 45 hp and 9.3 mph (15 km/h) maximal speed.

The construction boom after World War II. created demand for new types of equipment. In that time appeared the first modern wheel excavators as we know them today. In 1948 Carlo and Mario Bruneri introduced an excavator with a 360 degree slewing ring and thoroughly hydraulic bucket.

A wheel excavator is a single-bucket excavator so it has one bucket mounted on a single arm. The arm's construction is based on a human arm  bending in elbow and wrist  and the bucket plays the role of a hand.

Design of Wheeled excavators and their use today

Another part which makes a wheeled excavator so maneuverable is the slewing ring. Although such an excavator isn't so stable as a crawler excavator and during work must be stabilized by outriggers  it has also a possibility to rotate. Another advantage is that a wheeled excavator doesn't need any other means of transport as it can easily run on public roads on its own with a maximal speed of 60 km/h.
Wheeled excavators and other heavy machinery are manufactured eg. by Atlas,  Bobcat,  Case,  Caterpillar,  Fiat,  Hitachi,  Hyundai,  Komatsu,  Kobelco,  Liebherr,  Sennebogen and Volvo.