Another Hyundai upgrade for Kirk Hough

by Nick Drew | Tue 02 May 2017

Another Hyundai upgrade for Kirk Hough

Forward thinking plant man Kirk Hough has recently taken delivery of his latest Hyundai excavator, an HX140L model for his operator Ben Olds, the Digger Man Blog headed west to find out more.

Cornishman Kirk Hough has certainly become a dedicated Hyundai user over recent years and also a staunch supporter of the Scandinavian way of working with tilt-rotators now fitted on all his excavators and a wide range of attachments to support them. Kirk is also lucky to have secured the services of two talented local young operators in Ben Olds and his older brother Adam Olds who operate the company’s 14 tonne conventional and 14 tonne reduced radius tail swing models respectively.

Last year Ben got married to his partner Alison and the happy couple embarked on an amazing 6 month round the globe vacation which saw them visit countries as varied as Bali, Australia, New Zealand, Cambodia and Vietnam to name a few. The new Mr & Mrs Olds returned to Cornwall recently and Kirk had arranged for the brand new all singing, all dancing, HX140L to be ready for Ben to go back to work on.

According to Ben this machine is his 3^rd new Hyundai in 3 years and Kirk has certainly pushed the boat out with this one as it is “pimped up” to the max with a whole host of extras. The machine is fitted with an Engcon EC-OIL Q-Safe Quick Hitch, EC-OIL Q-Safe EC219 Engcon Tiltrotator, DC2 controller & MIG2 joysticks, full LED light package, blue strobes, air suspension seat, Hyundai’s AAVM 360 degree camera system, rotation circuit, 2.5m short dipper arm and even a Kicker subwoofer & speaker package.

Ben is certainly impressed with the new HX model saying, “I think the Hyundai’s just keep getting better and better as each new model rolls out, this one is so smooth and responsive it’s unreal, to say I’m delighted with it would be an understatement!”

Equally impressed are the ground crew on the Champion Groundworks site in Camborne which is where we visited to see the new machine in action. A spokesman said, “These machines with the tiltrotator on are really something else, they are capable of so much more than a conventional rigid bucket set up, and with the ability to pick up hydraulic attachments instantly it means less manual work for those of us on the ground which is fantastic”.

This was demonstrated on the day of our visit as Ben went about his business backfilling over drainage in front of the house plots, rather than use a traditional walk-behind compaction plate, Ben has an Engcon compaction plate attachment in his arsenal making the machine so much more versatile than a standard set up.

Kirk Hough is one of those plant guys who never stops thinking outside the box, it will be interesting to see what he does in the future. Summarizing Kirk said, “I’m always looking into new ideas and ways of doing things better, I also get great support from Tom Wilson at Molson’s which can only be a good thing for me and my business”.

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