LiuGong: Why This Equipment Manufacturer Deserves a Closer Look

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In North America, LiuGong is not a well-known brand, but that’s slowly changing, especially as more contractors find out just what the company has to offer.
In this episode of The Dirt, we hear from Christopher Saucedo, vice president at LiuGong North America, and learn there’s a lot more to the Chinese manufacturer than most U.S. contractors are aware.
For one, the company is the largest manufacturer of wheel loaders in the world. It has a new F-Series line of excavators hitting the market, and it’s made great strides in electric equipment. LiuGong also produces dozers, motor graders and soil compactors.
The 65-year-old company has a longer history in North America than you might think. It’s also China’s largest exporter of construction equipment and one of the larger construction equipment brands in the world.
So for a closer look at a company that you’ll likely be hearing more about, check out this episode of The Dirt.
Equipment World serves up weekly videos on the latest in construction equipment, work trucks and pickup trucks - everything contractors need to get their work done. Subscribe and visit us at equipmentworld.com!
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In This Episode:
00:00 - What Is LiuGong?
00:44 - LiuGong History and Product Offerings
03:48 - How Is LiuGong Different From Other Global Equipment Manufacturers?
04:23 - Are LiuGong’s Products High Quality?
06:46 - LiuGong’s Unique Approach to Maintenance
07:40 - LiuGong’s Electric Wheel Loader
13:52 - LiuGong’s New F-Series Excavators
17:17 - Final Thoughts
Video Transcript:
Bryan Furnace:
Today we're here to talk about LiuGong. What is LiuGong? Well, it's only one of the biggest equipment manufacturers on the planet, but we just don't know them very well here in the US. And if you're like me as an American contractor, you probably imagine an excavator with 20-year-old technology, toggle switches, sticks that are way up here and look like they're out of a dozer from the 1960s. But as Chris Saucedo's going to tell us, that is not the case at all. These are some very advanced machines and they actually have a leg up on some of the American machines. So without further ado, here's Chris.
Let's just kind of get the big elephant in the room out front and open.
Christopher Saucedo:
Sure. Okay.
Bryan Furnace:
LiuGong is not one of the big, recognized brands, especially here in the American market. And so for some of the people who have never even heard of your brand, could you give us a brief overview of just your product offering here in the US?
Christopher Saucedo:
LiuGong may not be a big brand in North America, but it is actually a very old, established brand. We're celebrating our 65th year this year globally. We have 13 manufacturing facilities globally. We've been in the US market since 2008, not with our construction equipment product line but rather with our fork truck product line. So those are the first products we brought into the North America market. But since then we've expanded our portfolio, expanded our dealer network, which is one of the fastest growing networks in the construction equipment market in North America. We've also increased our sphere. So the LiuGong North America area of primary responsibility, if you will, is actually the countries from Panama to Canada. So we have a very diverse product portfolio because of the emissions regulations, the lesser regulated markets versus the higher regulated markets.
But in the main, wheel loaders is our core product. You may not realize, but LiuGong is actually number one in the world in wheel loaders. We've built and sold more wheel loaders globally than any other manufacturer. That's our flagship product. We have a complete excavator line, everything now from 1.8 ton to our 95-ton machine, which we unveiled at ConExpo this year. We have a line of dozers, both organically in the LiuGong name and in 2014 we purchased Dressta. So we have the Dressta dozer line as part of our product portfolio in North America as well. We launched a new 12-ton dirt roller at ConExpo, and that will be part of the family of rollers, eight-, 10-, and 12-ton capacity. And we are also bringing in motor graders. Later this fall we'll introduce a 35,000 pound, 200 horsepower, 14 foot motor grader into the marketplace. But for us, we are focused in five product segments, which is general construction and rental, our quarrying aggregate product offering, which we unveiled at World Concrete two years ago now is growing quite rapidly, and our product portfolio is growing as well...