Crawler excavators are hydraulic excavators mounted on a tracked undercarriage and are the standard solution for earthmoving, demolition and specialist construction work involving higher operating weights. Typical operating weights range from 13 tonnes for medium-sized crawler excavators to over 90 tonnes for large machines used in quarries and mining.
Variants include standard crawler excavators for earthworks, high-bucket excavators (front shovel) for quarries, long-front or long-reach excavators for hydraulic engineering and embankment maintenance, demolition excavators with reinforced boom systems, and material-handling excavators with raised cabs.
Common manufacturers include Caterpillar, Komatsu, Liebherr, Volvo, Hitachi, Hyundai, Doosan and JCB.
Crawler excavators are used in civil engineering, earthmoving, quarrying, open-cast mining, demolition, recycling, as well as in hydraulic engineering and forestry. Attachments such as hydraulic hammers, demolition shears, pulverisers, grapples and magnetic plates significantly expand their range of applications.