Latest and Greatest Landscape & Construction tools - The Best & Worst Power tools & Innovations 2018

Stan: Check this out.

Stan: All right guys, it's the best and worst, and one of the worst is actually going to surprise you because it surprised me. The latest and the greatest inside the landscaping and construction industry and it's all brought to you today by Volvo Heavy Equipment. You see, Volvo brought me out to Houston, Texas where I was able to tour the world of asphalt. I'm also going to be bringing you footage from the world of concrete and everywhere else I can find cool stuff.

Stan: Make sure you guys subscribe because coming at you right down the pipeline, Frankie and I are in the process of building a plywood sink. Yep. A sink out of plywood. That should be an interesting one, right Frankie?

Frankie: Yeah, should be.

Stan: What are we waiting for? Let's get into it.

Stan: Now this one is called the Steel Wrist, it allows you to rotate the bucket indefinitely 360 degrees, has a built in grapple on the back of it, allows you to tilt the bucket from side to side giving your excavator that much more capability.

Stan: All right, next guys, we're going to check out some really neat job site lighting. It's gotten faster and easier to use than ever. Do any of you guys remember the old halogen lights that you would plug in, they'd be about 500, maybe even 1000 watts, you would eventually touch the light in some way, shape, or form, literally barbecuing the flesh off from your body? Well those days are gone. No heat and no power chords.

Stan: For you guys that snow plow, this next one is for you. They're called Pull Plows. I put my very first one on the back of my pickup truck just a few months ago, and it's a game changer. After experiencing how fast and productive these things are, I knew I had to have another one and put it on my second pickup truck.

Stan: This is like the skill saw your daddy grew up with, except on steroids. It's actually meant to cut giant timbers, so that makes it cool.

Stan: How does this run? What is this, a Haaga?

Speaker 3: Haaga sweeper. It's made in Germany, yeah.

Stan: Haaga, yah, made in Germany. Okay, that's my best German accent. Always got to have an accent in these videos.

Stan: Made in Germany, and it runs off of what? Battery?

Speaker 3: It runs on a battery or you can use it manually, so you can shut it off and you can still push and it'll clean. [inaudible 00:04:37].

Stan: All right, next what you're going to see is a really exciting concept that's really disappointing when you go to actually use it. So what you're looking at is a concrete saw, but it's a battery powered concrete saw. You can see exactly how well this works here.

Speaker 4: [inaudible 00:05:00].

Stan: Now this unit is made by STIHL and it has zero torque. I swear I feel like I can probably grab the blade and stop it, but please don't do that. Now they'll tell you you have to let it rev up before you can actually make the cut, which is kind of like telling you that we don't have any power in our saw.

Stan: All the shows I've been to, I'm going to vote that as my number one biggest disappointment. Now watch DeWalt's version of a battery powered concrete saw in action. It's like night and day different.

Stan: This is a battery operated concrete saw. He's got the water hook up right there. [inaudible 00:06:03].

Stan: Just because STIHL has one of the worst saws out there doesn't mean they can't have one of the best, and they do. They have this thing called an undercut saw which allows an operator to take a chop saw and to cut up towards.

Stan: Looking at the undercut STIHL chop saw. Go ahead and do it. It's got kickback.

Stan: The way they do that is they have this sensor inside of the saw that has kickback protection, so if the saw jolts out of the operator's hands it automatically shuts it off, keeping you from slicing your face off. Now, you may be asking, "Why would I want an undercut saw?" Well if you've ever had to crawl in a trench and try to cut underneath a pipe or try to do a vertical 90 degree cut, that's when you need an undercut saw. This thing makes up for all of the slack that the battery powered saw didn't have.

Stan: Guys, I've said it before, the little things make me very happy. Check this out. Come back here. One of the worst jobs I've ever had is crawling upside-down into a machine trying to clean out the radiator. In the dirt business this gets plugged up and you got to get pretty creative or you got to be a gymnast to get it cleaned out. Check this out. Look at this, the radiator slides in and out. I love this thing. Slide it out, clean it up, put it back in place.

Stan: On the Volvo, I mean to me guys that is a game changer right then and there, but delayed engine shutdown. Pet peeve, my guys jump in a piece of equipment, someone walks up to talk to them, and what do they do? Turn it off while it's still at high idle. Ahh. Do you know what that means? That means the diesel engine is cooking. With the delayed engine shutdown, they have programed this thing so you can't do that. You can literally turn off the machine, stick the key in your pocket, walk away, and the machine will still run until it reaches the proper shutdown temperate, that's cool.

Stan: Believe it or not guys, this next one almost got me kicked out of the World of Concrete because the guys running the show didn't want me to drive it outside of the area. Now the guys with Overland Cart didn't care at all, but the guys that were running security, sure did. Of course, if you don't get it right the first time, you can always try again.

Stan: Check this out guys, this is so cool. Plus, you can bring it in and you can manually dump this. How's that camera looking? Nah, you kind of screwed that up.

Stan: Yes, I am that picky, so here's take three, and about now security's calling other security for backup.

Stan: All right guys, sometimes innovation comes at you from a completely unexpected place. Take the battery on this Black & Decker system. The battery will power the drill, it will power the sander, the flashlight, it'll even power the jigsaw, but the battery will do more than that. You can take the same battery, you can plug your phone into it, and this battery will then power your phone. Meaning you can take this on the go, take this with you, and making it a portable power supply for your phone. That is really flipping neat.

Stan: You guys didn't think I was actually done with that payloader did you? Because there's a lot more cool things that I really want to show you.

Stan: They didn't stop. This machine is really neat. Check this out, in the front they've lightened up the loader arms giving you more capacity in the bucket. This is where your money is made, this is where their new design comes in handy for you guys that got to move a lot of material. Lighter loader arms, still strong as ever, more capacity in the bucket, more money in your pocket.

Stan: All right guys, now I promise I'm done with the payloader, but there's something I want to show you that I've never seen before and it's by Ridgid Tools, so let's go.

Stan: This is the MegaMAX by Ridgid Tools, this is the power base, it's got three different heads. This is the rotary head, put this on, your jackhammer away. This is a right angle hole drill, and this is reciprocating saw head, but watch this, check this out. All you got to do is twist it, turn it, lock it, you're in business. Let's say this isn't the way you want to cut, you twist it, you can pull it off, you can angle it a different angle, and you can cut that way as well. It comes off with a click of a button and this power head communicates with the battery, which communicates with the rest of the tool to optimize the torque, so when you grab a different power head it knows what's on there and it can deliver the right power to that tool head.

Stan: All right guys, this is Hilti's outdoor laser transit system. It's got about a six foot drop protection. You can see that it's got, it's protected on the outside of it, but the protection goes deeper than what you see right here. Actually internally all of the vital components are also protected to keep it from your average drops and falls, it can handle it.

Stan: All right guys, now I know this looks like a regular fuel tank that fits in the back of a pickup truck, but it's not. It's a little extra special, because it has death on it as well. If you got that equipment that needs death, you can fill it up with one nozzle ...

Stan: Nozzle, I think I just hit puberty.

Stan: And you can fuel it up with another, with your regular diesel fuel, making this fuel tank a one stop shop.

Stan: This is a tracked wheelchair made right in Texas and it allows the user to go through snow, mud, dirt, debris, take it out hunting, fishing, do whatever they want to do with it.

Stan: All right guys, this is absolutely awesome. It's called Soil Compaction Assist. As you're operating the roller now, you can put a [inaudible 00:13:05] over the top of this so you can work it in dirt or asphalt but it ...

Stan: All right, for you dirt-loving purists, that roller can't be used on asphalt, but the system that tells how dense the material is underneath it, can.

Stan: As you're actually operating the roller, it's testing the density of the ground beneath it giving you feedback right on the display up in the cab if you've actually reached the right density with your soil or your asphalt. It's giving you feedback as you're actually operating the machine so as you go forward and backward it'll tell you if you need to make another pass or if you're good to go and can move onto the next section. I've never seen this actually in a machine before.

Stan: Okay guys, this is the actual screen that the operator sees while he's running the machine. Now this is a blown up version of it, but this is right next to him. You can tell that he's actually, he gets instant feedback. All right, he needs to hit another section, or he's good to go and can move onto the next one.

Stan: All right, let's check this out. Guys, you're going to like this. Go for it.

Speaker 5: This is a cutting wheel or a grinding wheel. Cutting softer stuff like aluminum, stainless steel, cutting and grinding.

Stan: Where do you find it at?

Speaker 5: Our website, our 800 number, or at any of the over 100 trade shows we do around the country a year.

Speaker 6: Sorry about that.

Stan: Sometimes guys the coolest things come in the littlest packages, like this little, teenie, tiny Milwaukee Impact Driver. This thing has got insane power. The battery, you can run all day long and only swap the battery out one time. This is easily one of the very best impact drivers that I've ever used.

Speaker 7: I'm just going to walk this back, all right? It could have [inaudible 00:17:13].

Stan: All right guys, what you're looking at is actually a road building system. Imagine if you have to gain access to the front or back of a yard and you don't want to scar it up, you would lay out plywood. Well this is an alternative that's easy to lay out. Now, while you watch this guy I want you to remember this guy's like 75 years old and he happens to be sicker than a dog in this video, but yet he can still lay it out and bring it in pretty easy, so check this out.

Speaker 7: It would be easier if we had a [inaudible 00:17:46]. Then you straighten it out on the pallet itself. Now if you're going to peel them off ... Now I'm going to get down to a radius. You get a little curve.

Stan: All right guys, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link to everything that I can find down below this video. Now I hope this video's helped you guys out. Let me know if it has, if it has give me a big thumbs up, or give me a comment down below. Now this video would not have been possible without the help of Volvo Heavy Equipment. In fact, they were the ones that flew me down to Texas, put me up for a couple of days, and allowed me to film all of this. In fact, they've even gone a step further than that, they've done a series of videos with me on how to safely run an excavator without killing yourself, so make sure that you look for those coming up very soon. It's designed to help guys that are new to running excavators get inside of the machine, feel comfortable with the controls, be able to be familiar with how the basic functioning of an excavator is before they take one out onto their own job site.

Stan: Again, that was made possible by Volvo Heavy Equipment, without their help none of this would be possible. God bless you guys, go get them, and let me know what you think down below.