99% Don't know what Hitachi's Hiding.

In the next few years, there are some really exciting changes coming to Hitachi. We're off to Texas and we're going to meet up with some of the top dogs from Hitachi down in Texas and take a look at their brand new equipment because Hitachi has decided they are not going to be in the background any longer. These guys are coming into North America and they're coming hard and strong. This is exciting times. I want to show you what Hitachi has cooking. Let's jump down to Texas and check it out right now together. Oh, by the way, guys, this is Patrick. What do you do for Hitachi? Yeah, Stanley. I'm Patrick Baker. I'm the product manager for all excavators um for all Hitachi excavators in North America. So I cover compact, mid and large size as well as specialty application products like long fronts, high- reach demolition machines and other products like wheeled excavators coming down the line for the for future development. We built the machine. It's reliable. It's durable. It's well known in the marketplace. So, we have the product, but now it's our turn to build the brand, tell the story, build dealership networks, and really get the support behind the Hitachi product. We want to start to capture those customers and capture those sales because we have a really, really strong product that's well known in North America. The reason Patrick mentioned John Deere is because one of those little known facts is that for many years now, Hitachi has been the main manufacturer for a majority of the John Deere excavators that we see in North America. So, if an operator's hopped in a John Deere excavator, it's very likely he's actually hopping in a Hitachi manufactured machine that's just been painted. So, if you're familiar with a John Deere excavator, it's very likely it was actually made by Hitachi and you're sitting in a Hitachi piece of equipment, just a different color. But, Hitachi has a new North American headquarters that they put over $und00 million of investment in back. opened up in 2024 and they are aggressively coming into the United States to capture what they originally built but was labeled a different brand under a different company. Is that correct? Correct. A a ton of resources and energy is being brought to the largest construction market in the world that is North America. We think we can grow a very strong active customer base with our product. So, we're we're really proud of our product, but we're we're not ready to just get into the market and and be in the middle. We consider ourselves a tier one player. We're going to build dealers. Tier one. Define what you mean by a tier one player. Patrick, this is Hitachi considers itself to be the upper echelon of equipment. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. in in terms of of our engine systems with our hydraulics, the quality of componentry, the engineering and manufacturing efficiency. Um, we strongly believe we can hang with the big boys, the Cats, the John Deers, the Kamasus. And one of the things that sets Hitachi apart that nobody else in the world, if I'm correct on this one, Hitachi has not a one pump, not a two pump, they have a three pump excavator system, which basically makes that Hitachi sing and dance in the worst possible conditions you can put this machine in. If I'm understanding this correctly. Yep, absolutely. We do have a 210-7 we can take a take a look at and do a do a walk around on. But Hitachi is known for the hydraulics, the controllability, the responsiveness, the third pump on our Trius system, which is found on our 210 all the way to our 35 ton ZX 350. Okay. Um so that's eight models in that segment that have the three pump system. Okay. Um, depending on the application and the the need of the job, you can prioritize the boom, you can prioritize the stick, the bucket cylinder, you can prioritize your swing and tracking. Say you're doing road work and needing to crawl along a roadside in a single lane of traffic. It's about track operate. Everything just flows. It just smooths. You're not compensating for one to make this one work and then your tracks go like this. Okay. Okay. So, that that three pump, this is the -7 that we were talking about right here. Mhm. Walk me through this thing if you wouldn't mind real quick, Patrick. Yeah. So, going to give you just a highle view of some of the things that separate us from our tier one competitors like we just discussed. Okay. Um, right off the bat here at the dig, you're going to see that all of our arms and booms are heavy duty. They're reinforced with extra plated steel. We also have on the back side our counterwe is the heavy counterwe. We have the heavyduty counterwe out of the box. Better breakout, better lift capacity. You're not having to swap counterwes where one sits unused at the dealership for 2 and 1/2 years until you auction it off. And that's standard. Standard. So it doesn't cost you extra, but in fact you're saving about an average of 10% over a different t tier one machine. Now, one of the things that, you know, guys are going to want to say, I mean, we we get that John Deere was made by Hitachi, so there's not going to be a sacrifice in quality, but you're actually going to get more do bang for your buck, more value for your dollar. So, if you went with a Hitachi excavator, you may pay less, but get more, but you're not sacrificing anything. But let's find out what the rest of the upgrades on the Hitachi excavators are. And then we're also going to look at those same upgrades that they've reserved for the Hitachi wheel loaders after that. The end user. So the counterwe may not be important to everybody, but it is important to some people. But what else are we looking at? Yeah, this is a great spot to look at our undercarriage. So we use very high quality components from the Burko supplier for our undercarriage. So on the undercarriage, we've beefed up the idlers. We've added three track guards for for better protection for your for your track chain. We've even increased our hose diameters to our drive motors by a/4 of an inch for what we like to call track uh effortless tracking. So if you're on a relatively flat piece of ground, because of the better hydraulic flow to the drive motors, it's going to save you anywhere from 5 to 10% on fuel efficiency. What about in the cab? This is where a lot of guys spend a lot of hours. And if some of these equipment operators are spending more hours in the cab of that machine than they're spending in bed with their wives, what did you do to make their life better? Yeah. So the cab again, that's 8, 10, 12 hours a day, sometimes longer. This is it's just like a cubicle for myself at HCMA. You have to be comfortable to be productive. Um, so we've lengthened the cab by over 3 in and added two additional inches of added head space. Okay. Um, the head space really makes this cab feel very, very roomy. We've also added the dual adjustable seat and console. So, you'll see that the the seat will move forward and backwards as well as up and down with your joystick so you can find that perfect operating position to stay very productive and perform at a very high level throughout the day. You're also going to see our new LCD anti-glare 7-in incab display. um anti-glare material. You can do a ton of programming on on this new display. You can preset up to 16 attachments by holding down the the number nine on our keypad. It opens up to a full service menu where you can actually set maintenance reminders, set service and maintenance schedules, as well as identify any codes or errors that may be thrown during operation. Can I throw something at you? Yes, sir. As I'm looking at the cab, and I spent, I don't know, 15, 20,000 hours in an excavator. I am not ever overly impressed with a cab that has more bells and whistles and buttons than I can actually use to dig a hole in the ground. And as I look at this thing, I see a piece of equipment that is simple, welllaid out, and allows me to move one operator out and another operator in without a massive learning curve because I never have I don't have one operator for every piece of equipment. I have multiple operators that have to hop in multiple machines. And so I like the fact that it's not overly sophisticated in my my two cents. Yeah. With some of the new cabs that have come out for some of the competitive machines, operators have have even told me that they seem overwhelmed at times with how many gadgets and gears and buttons and functions. Um, Hitachi does a few things really, really well, and that's excavators, hydraulics, power system, and that's where we've dedicated resources to that Trius3 pump, that Isuzu engine without a DPF. We do Wait, but what do you mean without a DPF? So, our Isuzu engines on our on our main and large size excavators, our after treatment system does not require a diesel particulate filter. It's actually incredible. Um, one of the things written in the operator's manual is that our diesel per um, I'm sorry, our after treatment system is 99% maintenancefree. And for a Japanese company to put that in writing really, really means something a lot because they're super hyperconervative versus what you're going to get. The Japanese culture is hyperconervative. So, if they're saying it's what was it? 99% maintenancefree. And you can look that up in every operator's manual we have for mid and large size excavators. The after treatment system, we run a series of selected catalytic reduction filters plus what we call a DOC or diesel oxidation catalysts. Mhm. In layman's terms, it's a number of filters that's mixed with that ammonia deaf fluid. What does that mean for maintenance though? Again, it's it's 99% maintenancefree. you still you do still have regen um but it's it's much less frequent and again anytime I get a chance to to put this out in into the world and it's uh idle these machines as least as possible run them wide open you're really going to have a lot more success on the maintenance side and taking care of your hydraulics and engine really prioritize safety at Hitachi all of our mid and large size excavators come with left rear and right side cameras with LED lights standard. Standard. Okay. And you have six different viewing positions within the cab display. Bird's eye, left, right, rear, right, rear, left. So, you have a lot of flexibility on any job site to be able to know who's around you and what's happening around the machine. Patrick, thank you. I want to talk to a guy that actually does the service on this next. Okay. So, I'm going to head over to Asco. I'm gonna talk to one of the service reps and find out exactly how out exactly how that service is out in the field from someone that is doing it. Barrett, every machine breaks. What are you going to do to ensure that guys can get back in operation as fast as possible? It's a great question. With 95% on the shelf parts availability, it is our mission to get parts in hand in 24 hours. have our customers back up and running in 48 hours. So, when you say 95% parts availability, Hitachi has two separate strategic locations inside of the United States. How does that process go? You've got a guide broke down out in the field. What happens from that point? What happens from that point is that particular customer will call into our office or to one of our uh on-site product support sales reps. They will let us know they're down. We will get those uh machines inspected. We'll get the parts ordered. We'll get them here. We'll send one of our 273 service techs out to that machine location and get that guy up and running. But the 273 service techs are from Asco. That is correct. From Asco Equipment, what if they don't happen to be in an Asco area? So the beauty is that in Hitachi's dealer network, the way that they partner with dealers is to make sure that their values match up with ours so that they can also keep that level of service from the other dealers across the United States. So it doesn't have to be an Asco thing. It's any Hitachi dealer has 95% parts availability within 24 hours to keep guys up and operating. That is correct. Now, we prefer obviously that you use Asco if you're in Texas or Oklahoma, but the other dealers top-notch as well. Awesome. All right. Thanks, Barrett. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Now, earlier we were talking about the -7 upgrades that Hitachi has put into their excavators, but they've also put them into their wheel loaders. Chris, that is correct. Okay, guys. This is Chris. What do you do for Hitachi? I am the product manager here at Hitachi. Okay. For wheelers. And we have a -7 next to a -6. Correct. Let's look at the -6 first and then let's show them the differences. Are you good with that? Yeah, let's do it. But one of the main differences on the D6 machine is really the inside of the cab. So, we wanted to focus on comfort, and this is based off of feedback from our dealers and our customers. So, what we did is is we changed the booms uh you know, color design. so it's easier. Uh we made them so that way you have better visibility when looking out the cab. We also changed the inside of the cab to give you more room, more leg room. Uh ergonomics has been improved and the buttons have been placed up on the right B-pillar post to allow the operator to easy access to any of the functions that he needs on the wheel loader itself. So would you say a lot of the upgrades in the wheel loader would be in operator comfort or is there structural massive structural changes or no massive structure? There's slight changes to the structure as well. I'm testing you. Okay. Because I don't want to see massive structural changes in a piece of equipment. When Ford comes out with a brand new pickup truck, I'm not the early adopter. I'm the guy that waits for a year or two for the bugs again. Yeah. And typically that's what it is. You know, people look at the bugs and they're like, "Hey, what's wrong with the machine? What did you guys change?" So, small changes, gradual changes, you know, over time. Uh, basically what the dealers and the operators are asking for. So, change more comfortable seat. Um, and this one was really based on our customers. What are we looking at when we get in here? What did you guys change? All right. One of the changes is the whole mounted uh seat as you know the the armrest and everything are part of the seat function which which helps uh on the left hand side more leg space as you can see in the in the front. So and then the seat was changed. So we made sure that the seat was comfortable for the operator um because they're going to be sitting in it uh you know like I said 10 to 12 hours uh out of the day. Uh joysticks are changed depending on the operator. You can have single lever, uh, multi-function. Um, I'm a joystick guy myself. If I'm operating machines, I want everything on there. So, your FNR switch, which is forward and neutral, reverse. Yep. And then, uh, you know, so, and then you got all your buttons up top. So, you got your power modes. Uh, reversing fan is is automatic, standard. Um, but you can change the setting. Uh, and the other great thing about the -7s is, uh, you know, they come with a payload system. So, it has a scale for the operator to look into the screen. They know how much material they're dropping uh into standard on desk 7s. Correct. -7. So, that's just par for the course, not an upgrade. Cost them extra dollars. Nope. That is standard on desk 7s. Now, we do have two types configurations for our wheel loaders. We have standard and premium. And premium, you know, will come with heated and electric mirrors on it. Um, it'll have a rear obstruction detection system. Um, and these are things that depending on what the operator needs, right? Um, some operators, they want everything, all the bells and whistles, and some of them, you know, they just want a simple machine that can get the job done. That's Puts a hole in the ground. Yep. Puts a hole in the ground. Okay. Got it. I got it. Hey, show me about the upgrades in the back, Chris. Yeah. So, one of the great things about 1807 wheel loader is the engine bay panel. So, as you can see, you know, you pull the latch, the whole thing opens up. I have access to everything I need inside of here. Um, we've also added handles to it, so if I actually had to step up, you have your three points of contact and you can stand up and then do any, you know, maintenance that you need to do on the machine or reach into the engine bay. The rear of the machine, simple button push opens it up if you need to clean it out, any debris that might get in there. And then just as easy as that, a latch that'll open it up and it'll allow you to get a wand on the inside. Yeah. Um, you know, to blow out your cooling pad. But wait, there's more. There is more. So, the other side, same feature as we just talked about. Pull the latch. Engine bay door. You have everything. You have access to everything. Your filters, your fuel filters, your oil filters, your air filter, and everything maintenance- wise can be done at ground level. All right, guys. That's going to call it for today's video. It was a blast being able to learn so much about Hitachi, which I never knew, and I wanted to bring this information to you guys as well. So, I hope you guys picked up some nugget knowledge, and the next time you're around a Hitachi machine, just take a look at it with a little different light, cuz I absolutely will be. God bless and go get them, you guys. We'll catch you on another one.