If you’ve never encountered trenching equipment before, you might be a bit perplexed as to who uses it. Yes, our website has several images of people digging trenches, but who exactly are they? Are trenchers exclusively for professional use or do they have domestic applications as well?

It’s a fair question and the answer is more far-reaching than you might expect. Here at GeoTrencher, we’ve had customers from all manner of industries. Farmers, gardeners, construction crews and even a few private individuals have contacted us over the years. Let’s have a look at just a couple of examples. If you’ve ever wondered who uses trenchers, here is a brief overview. 

Construction Teams

The first and perhaps, most obvious answer is construction teams. Building work involves a lot of high-impact work and digging trenches is no exception. Work crews will need to lay the foundations for new buildings or extensions and trenchers are perfect for excavating large areas quickly. 

Walk past a construction site and you’re likely to see a trencher. On larger building sites, you may spot one of the big, wheeled trenchers that workers can sit in and drive. However, if it’s a smaller site, such as a housing estate, the handheld trenchers that we supply are more common. 

Pipelayers

Trenchers are also widely used by professional pipelayers. This type of work often involves digging through thick layers of tarmac and rock, especially in urban areas, so a trencher is ideal. All the electrical cables that supply power throughout our cities, or the pipes which bring clean water into our homes rely on underground channels to work and trenchers are perfect for making them. They can excavate large areas in a relatively short time and help to minimise disruption to the local area. We all know how irritating it can be to get stuck in traffic because roadworkers are digging up the carriageway, but if it wasn’t for trenchers, they’d have to use shovels, and it would take even longer.

Farmers

Away from the cities, trenchers are often used by farmers, especially those with acres of crops to look after. They use trenchers to dig drainage ditches and while they could feasibly use shovels, this can be time-consuming and back-breaking work. It’s more efficient to use a trencher to carve irrigation channels and frees up time to focus on other work. Maintaining fields of wheat, corn, rapeseed and other crops is a lot of effort, but trenchers can take some of the edge off. 

Private Use

Most of our customers contact us for business purposes, but we still encounter private individuals who are interested in trenchers. Most of the time, they’ve got major garden projects on the go and want equipment for digging through the ground quickly, but we get a few offbeat ones too. For example, we’ve had a motocross enthusiast who was building a dirtbike track and wanted a trencher to help with it. 

This isn’t an exhaustive list and there are other areas we haven’t covered, but the one common link is that they all depend on trenchers to make their jobs easier. Laying pipes, digging irrigation channels and any other groundwork can be exhausting, but a powered trencher can make it less taxing. If you’re looking for portable or wheeled trenching equipment, you’re in luck. Visit our online shop to browse our collection or contact us if you’ve got any questions. Our expert staff are more than happy to help.