Kinshofer quick to solve distributor dilemma
10 February 2016
Original equipment distributors (OEDs) are often faced with selling to a customer who has an inventory of old attachments he wants to use with the new machine.
Contractor Sales of Albany, New York and salesman Jeremy Rauf found themselves in this situation after selling a Liebherr 964 to a customer who had multiple Cat buckets he wanted to use to replace an old bridge. Contractor Sales had initially purchased another brand of coupler to mount onto the Liebherr to pick up the Cat buckets.
However, it didn’t come as advertised and could not pick up the Cat 330CL with the D-linkage buckets which requires a 90 mm pin in the stick and 80 mm pin in the linkage. Bill Liburdi, Contractor Sales’ rental manager, contacted Kinshofer about its X-Lock brand coupler – and Kinshofer, using the required specifications of the D-linkage, was able to design a coupler that would mount to the Liebherr machine and also pick up the necessary attachments.
Kinshofer has expanded its range of couplers and buckets once more this year. Building on the success of the S-type coupler built in Sweden by Kinshofer subsidiary RF-System, and its own X-Lock pin-grabber style coupler in the UK, France and North America, the company is now supplying the solution to Germany as well.
It already supplies speciality attachments for excavators in the German market.
Stefan Sparwel, product manager for couplers and buckets, said: “As a global company, we understand that in different regions customers have grown accustomed to particular styles and features of products, including couplers.
“While we try to improve on designs to offer greater productivity and especially safety, we understand that customers have existing inventories with which we must make our couplers compatible.
We respect regional differences and work to offer the solutions that each require.”
In the case of German customers, this includes mechanical (KMS) and hydraulic couplers (KHS) from 0.5 t to 40 t. TC Series tilt couplers are offered for excavators with an operating weight of 1.5 t up to 22 t .
