Compact Construction Equipment Specifications
A specification database of 2,469 compact construction machines from 70 manufacturers across five equipment classes — skid steer loaders, compact track loaders, mini excavators, backhoe loaders, and wheel loaders split into five coherent weight bands. Every published figure is checked for unit consistency, physical possibility, and plausibility for its equipment class; figures that fail are withheld rather than shown.
✓ QA-verified — suppressed figures show “not published”, every class median carries n; method →◆Equipment classes10 classes · 2,469 models
Median operating weight and engine power per class, each over the machines that publish it (n). A median appears only where the specification is published for at least 80% of the class — otherwise it reads “not published” rather than characterising a class from too little data.
| Class | Models | Median operating weightlb | Median engine powerhp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skid steer loaders | 360 | 6,810lb (n=334) | 62hp (n=335) |
| Compact track loaders | 184 | 9,360lb (n=182) | 74hp (n=167) |
| Mini excavators | 479 | 6,550lb (n=438) | 24hp (n=448) |
| Backhoe loaders | 294 | not published | 85hp (n=282) |
| Compact wheel loaders (≤22,000 lb) | 374 | 12,590lb (n=374) | 72hp (n=367) |
| Small wheel loaders (22,000–45,000 lb) | 439 | 30,730lb (n=439) | 165hp (n=408) |
| Medium wheel loaders (45,000–90,000 lb) | 198 | 53,100lb (n=198) | 275hp (n=190) |
| Large wheel loaders (90,000–150,000 lb) | 39 | 106,770lb (n=39) | 444hp (n=37) |
| Very large wheel loaders (>150,000 lb) | 45 | 224,650lb (n=45) | 801hp (n=41) |
| Wheel loaders — weight not published | 57 | not published | 148hp (n=49) |
What this database covers
Covered: compact construction equipment — skid steer loaders, compact track loaders, mini excavators, backhoe loaders, and wheel loaders. Wheel loaders are banded by operating weight, with compact defined as ≤22,000 lb (~10 t); heavier bands are published too, up to the mining class, because the raw category spans 2,050–598,004 lb and no single median describes it.
Not covered: full-size excavators, dozers, cranes, articulated trucks, telehandlers, and attachments. If you need one of those, this is not the right database — said plainly so you can tell in one screen rather than three clicks.
Not published: pricing, ownership cost, and auction results. We hold no verified cost data, so we publish none rather than estimate it.
Class comparisons
Method. Figures are manufacturer reference specifications, not measurements. Every value is checked for unit consistency, physically possible magnitude, and plausibility for its equipment class before publication; figures that fail any check are withheld rather than shown, and figures reconstructed or corrected from related data are marked on the machine's own page. Class medians are computed over the full catalogue and always carry their sample size (n); a median is never published for a class that does not report the specification widely enough to characterise it. 2,434 of 2,469 machines carry at least one published headline specification. No figure anywhere on this site is estimated.