£4m JCB order from Lafarge Tarmac
Staffordshire digger company JCB has secured a £4 million order from road surfacing and highway maintenance group Lafarge Tarmac for 60 of its new 2CX Streetmaster backhoe loaders.
The order marks a 25-year partnership between Lafarge Tarmac and JCB for handling road maintenance projects. The latest machines were supplied by JCB dealer Gunn JCB.
The cabs for the backhoe loaders are made at the JCB Cab Systems plant at Rugeley.
Lafarge Tarmac's national plant and transport manager Jonathan Medforth said: "The JCB 2CX Streetmaster in its various guises has been our machine of choice for 25 years now.
"It truly is the workhorse of our contracting sites on a daily basis. The low vibration rear-mounted breaker, the speed and manoeuvrability of the 2CX and its ability to operate in small working areas combine to make it ideal for our work."
The new fleet was manufactured at JCB's world headquarters in Rocester, Staffordshire, and is painted in the company's distinctive white livery.
JCB is the world's biggest manufacturer of backhoe loaders and has manufactured more than half a million of the machines since the first one rolled off the production line in 1953.
The Lafarge Tarmac machines will be used for long-term maintenance contracts, major new-build highway projects, airfield surfacing, lane rental type motorway and trunk road reconstruction schemes as well as smaller scale surfacing works such as non-trunk roads, residential streets, industrial estates and car parks.
Lafarge Tarmac – which took delivery of its first 2CX Streetmaster model a quarter of a century ago – instigated the configuration for the latest batch of machines. It was developed in conjunction with the company's operatives and Safety and Health team and the models purchased have been tailored to their exact requirements.
Purpose-built for road maintenance and construction tasks, the JCB 2CX Streetmaster aims to balance manoeuvrability and performance. The compact machine with 4x4x4 steering is suited for small urban areas.
Lafarge Tarmac was formed from the merger of French group Lafarge's UK business and road surfacing and quarries firm Tarmac, formerly based in Wolverhampton. The group is now based at a head office in Solihull.
