This trade supplies and sustains the iron. On the mobile side that means haul trucks, excavators, wheel loaders, dozers, graders, water carts and production and blasthole drills, bought new, bought used, or taken on hire; on the fixed plant side it means jaw, gyratory and cone crushers, screens, feeders, conveyors, pumps, cyclones and mills, supplied as individual units or as a modular crushing and screening train. A large part of the money is not in machines at all but in sustaining them: component rebuild and exchange, where engines, transmissions, final drives, torque converters and undercarriage are remanufactured and swapped as exchange units against a returned core, and wear parts — liners, teeth, ground engaging tools, screen media, chute and pipe wear packages — consumed continuously against tonnes moved. Around all of that sits field service: mobile technicians, in-field component changeouts, oil sampling and condition monitoring, shutdown labour and commissioning support, plus hire fleets used to cover a prestrip campaign or a broken machine without buying an asset.
22 firms working in this trade
Alphabetical. Nobody paid to be here
- A.M. KingOroville, California
Used and surplus mineral process equipment, inspection and asset disposal
amking.com - Columbia Steel Cast ProductsAurora, Oregon
Replacement wear part castings and liners for crushing equipment
columbiasteel.com - Conn-Weld IndustriesPrinceton, West Virginia
Vibrating screens, screen media, parts, installation and field service
conn-weld.com - Deister Machine CompanyFort Wayne, Indiana
Vibrating screens, feeders and grizzlies, plus screen rebuild services
deistermachine.com - Derrick CorporationBuffalo, New York
Fine wet and dry screening, dewatering machines and screen panels
derrick.com - Eagle Crusher CompanyGalion, Ohio
Portable impactor, jaw and screening plants with parts and service
eaglecrusher.com - Empire CatMesa, Arizona
Caterpillar sales, rental, parts, service and certified machine rebuilds
empire-cat.com - EriezErie, Pennsylvania
Magnetic separation, flotation and metal detection equipment for minerals
eriez.com - IROCK CrushersValley View, Ohio
Tracked and wheeled crushing and screening plants, parts and service
irockcrushers.com - JENNMARPittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Roof bolts, resin, beams and ground support products for mines
jennmar.com - Kirby-Smith MachineryOklahoma City, Oklahoma
Heavy equipment and crane sales, rental, parts and service
kirby-smith.com - L&H IndustrialGillette, Wyoming
Heavy machine repair, component rebuild, manufacturing and field services
lnh.net - LippmannCudahy, Wisconsin
Jaw, cone and impact crushers, plus crusher rebuilds and parts
lippmanncrushers.com - Martin EngineeringNeponset, Illinois
Conveyor belt cleaners, dust control, industrial vibrators and field service
martin-eng.com - McLanahan CorporationHollidaysburg, Pennsylvania
Crushers, screens and wash plants with parts and field service
mclanahan.com - Modern MachineryMissoula, Montana
Komatsu and allied equipment sales, rental, used machines and parts
modernmachinery.com - Screen Machine IndustriesEtna, Ohio
Mobile jaw, impact and cone crushers, screening plants and trommels
screenmachine.com - Superior IndustriesMorris, Minnesota
Crushing, screening, washing and conveying equipment and complete plants
superior-ind.com - Tractor & Equipment Co.Billings, Montana
Cat dealer selling, renting and rebuilding machines and components
tractorandequipment.com - Wagner Equipment Co.Aurora, Colorado
Cat machine sales, rental fleet, parts and field service
wagnerequipment.com - Western States CatMeridian, Idaho
Cat equipment sales, rental, parts, service and equipment rebuilds
westernstatescat.com - Wheeler Machinery Co.Salt Lake City, Utah
Surface and underground Cat mining equipment sales, rental and service
wheelercat.com
Listed because we found them, not because they asked or paid. Every entry was checked against the company’s own website; none of it is an endorsement, and we have no commercial relationship with anyone on this page. Work in Equipment, parts and rebuild and want to be added, corrected or removed? Tell us — it is free either way.
How it is actually bought
Contract shapes and what they price
Machines are acquired by outright purchase, finance lease, operating lease or rental with an option to purchase, and the right answer depends on how long the pit lasts, not on the sticker price. Sustaining work is bought in several distinct shapes: a maintenance and repair contract priced per operating hour or per engine hour with an availability or uptime guarantee and defined exclusions; component exchange priced as a reman unit plus a core charge that is credited when the old component comes back within a stated condition and time window; wear parts on cost-per-hour or cost-per-tonne arrangements where the supplier carries wear rate risk in exchange for volume; and field service at a schedule of rates by technician grade with separately priced mobilisation, travel, standby and after-hours multipliers. Hire fleets are quoted daily, weekly or monthly, wet (operator, fuel and maintenance included) or dry (machine only), with a stated minimum term, an hours-per-month allowance and damage and tyre liability spelled out. Risk allocation turns on the warranty on reman versus new, whether the availability guarantee has real remedies or only credits, who owns parts inventory and consignment stock, lead time commitments, and — for used machines — who carries the cost of the first failure after handover.
Who regulates it
And what each one requires of this trade
- Mine Safety and Health Administration — 30 CFR Parts 56 and 57 — Sets the safety standards any machine has to meet in service at a US mine, including Subpart M (machinery and equipment), Subpart H (loading, hauling and dumping), Subpart K (electricity), Subpart R (personnel hoisting) and, since 2024, Subpart T, a safety programme for surface mobile equipment.
- MSHA — Safety Program for Surface Mobile Equipment final rule — Requires every operator, regardless of the number of miners, to have a written safety programme for surface mobile equipment other than belt conveyors, covering hazard identification and risk reduction, routine maintenance and non-routine repair procedures and schedules, evaluation of available and emerging safety technologies, and training; effective 19 January 2024 with compliance required from 17 July 2024, adding 30 CFR 56.23000–56.23004, 57.23000–57.23004 and 77.2100–77.2104.
- EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality — nonroad compression-ignition engine certification — Requires engine manufacturers to hold a certificate of conformity issued through EPA's engine certification system before a nonroad diesel engine can be introduced into US commerce, under 40 CFR parts 89, 1039, 1065 and 1068 — which is what determines whether a used or grey-import machine can legally be operated or repowered here.
- MSHA — 30 CFR Part 45, independent contractors — A field service or rebuild vendor working on mine property is an independent contractor whose purpose under Part 45 is to be held responsible for its own violations: it must give the production-operator its trade name, address, phone, work description, location at the mine, MSHA identification number and address of record for service of citations, and the mine must keep those records on site for inspection.
The standards that apply
Ask which of these a firm works to
- 30 CFR Part 56 Subparts M and T (and Part 57 Subparts M and U) — Part 56 covers surface metal and nonmetal mines across 20 subparts from ground control to a safety programme for surface mobile equipment; Part 57 is the underground equivalent — these, not OSHA's general industry rules, are the standards a machine and its maintenance regime are inspected against on mine property.
- 40 CFR Part 1039 Subpart B — emission standards for nonroad compression-ignition engines — Contains the tiered exhaust emission standards and related requirements by engine power category, including the Tier 4 standards and their phase-in provisions, which govern what engine a machine may legally carry and what a repower must meet.
- ASME B30 series — cranes, hoists and rigging — Covers construction, installation, operation, inspection, testing and maintenance of lifting equipment across volumes including B30.5 mobile and locomotive cranes, B30.9 slings, B30.10 hooks, B30.16 overhead underhung and stationary hoists, B30.20 below-the-hook lifting devices and B30.30 ropes — the standards that govern component changeouts, mill relines and shutdown lifts.
- ISO 9001 — quality management systems — Now in its sixth edition, published 16 September 2026, covering organisational context, leadership, planning, support, operations, performance evaluation and improvement; it is the baseline a buyer should require of a remanufacturing or rebuild facility whose process control, traceability and nonconformance handling decide whether an exchange component lasts.
- ASTM C33/C33M-24a — Standard Specification for Concrete Aggregates — Defines grading and quality requirements for fine and coarse aggregate including fineness modulus, deleterious substances (clay lumps, friable particles, coal and lignite, organic impurities) and five-cycle soundness loss limits; for a quarry, this product specification is what the crushing and screening circuit must be designed to hit, so it belongs in the equipment enquiry, not just the sales contract.
What to demand from a firm
Credentials worth checking before you sign
- MSHA Part 46 or Part 48 training records for every technician who enters the site — Under Part 46 a new miner needs no less than 24 hours of training with at least 4 hours before work begins and the balance within 90 days, plus 8 hours annual refresher; under Part 48 new underground miners need at least 40 hours and new surface miners at least 24, with 8 hours annual refresher and task training for new equipment assignments. A vendor who cannot produce current records cannot legally work.
- MSHA independent contractor identification number under Part 45 — Ask for the contractor's MSHA ID and address of record before mobilisation; Part 45 makes the contractor answerable for its own citations and obliges the mine to hold those particulars on site.
- ISO 9001 certification of the actual rebuild or reman facility — Certification is site-specific: require the certificate for the workshop that will do your component, with its scope, not a corporate certificate covering a plant on another continent.
- Engine certificate of conformity and emission control information label — For a used, imported or repowered machine, the engine's certification status under EPA's nonroad compression-ignition programme determines whether it can be legally operated, and a missing or mismatched label is the buyer's problem after handover, not the seller's.
Where to find firms yourself
Public registers and member directories
- Association of Equipment Manufacturers member companies — AEM represents more than 1,000 member companies across more than 200 product lines in agriculture, forestry, construction, mining and utility, and publishes a public member directory — the route to identifying which manufacturers actually make a given class of machine or component before talking to anyone selling one.
- Associated Equipment Distributors membership — AED's membership of more than 800 distributors, manufacturers and affiliate service providers covers firms that sell, service and rent heavy equipment for construction, forestry, agriculture, mining and power generation, and its directory is how a buyer identifies factory-authorised dealers by category rather than relying on a search engine.
- MSHA Mine Data Retrieval System — MSHA's public search over mine and contractor records, which lets a buyer check the citation and injury history attached to a field service contractor's MSHA ID before letting its crews on site.
- SAM.gov entity information and exclusions — Public search of federal entity registrations, exclusions (debarment) records and responsibility/qualification data, usable without signing in — a free integrity check on any vendor that also does federal work.
Numbers worth knowing
Each one carries its source
In fiscal year 2025 MSHA reported 886 active coal mines and 11,682 active metal and nonmetal mines, employing 327,465 people (62,901 coal, 264,564 metal/nonmetal) — the installed base this trade serves, and a reminder that most of it is small quarries rather than large mines.
sourceIssued by MSHA in fiscal year 2025 — 35,016 at coal mines and 52,356 at metal and nonmetal mines — which is the enforcement backdrop against which equipment guarding, maintenance records and mobile equipment programmes are judged.
sourceThe compliance date for MSHA's written safety programme for surface mobile equipment; the rule took effect 19 January 2024 and the final version dropped the proposed six-miner threshold so it applies to operators of every size, MSHA having found smaller operations face higher fatality rates.
sourceThe Association of Equipment Manufacturers' membership, as published July 2023; by member market representation, mining accounts for 17.5%, behind construction at 31.8%, with roughly 35.5% of members making wholegoods, 30.6% components and 15.3% services.
sourceAssociated Equipment Distributors' membership of distributors, manufacturers and affiliate service providers serving construction, forestry, agriculture, mining and power generation.
sourceHow this goes wrong
The specific traps, not general advice
- Taking an availability or uptime guarantee with no defined remedy. If the contract's only consequence for missed availability is a service credit, the supplier has no financial reason to hold parts inventory or send a technician at 2am.
- Not reading the core return terms on component exchange. Core charges are credited only if the old component comes back within a stated window and in a stated condition; a cracked case or a late return converts an exchange price into a new-unit price.
- Buying a used or imported machine without checking the engine's certification and emission label. Certification status under EPA's nonroad programme travels with the engine, and an uncertified or mislabelled unit becomes the buyer's compliance problem the moment it lands.
- Letting vendor technicians on site without Part 45 identification and current Part 46 or 48 training records. The mine operator keeps the records and the citation risk, and a contractor's paperwork gap becomes the mine's violation.
- Treating the new surface mobile equipment programme as the supplier's problem. Subpart T obliges the operator to have a written programme covering maintenance and repair procedures and schedules for its fleet, so a hire or MARC contract that does not hand over the maintenance data makes compliance impossible.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What is the lead time on the parts that fail first on this machine?
- Is the rebuild to OEM spec, and what warranty comes with it?
- Where is the nearest field service technician, in hours?
Where to next
Contract mining & earthmoving
Crews and fleets that move the rock
PreviousProcessing & metallurgy
Flowsheets, pilot plants, smelting and refining
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Every figure and requirement on this page is linked to the agency, standard or register it came from. Nothing here is legal advice, rules change, and a link is worth more than our summary of it — follow them.
