The first excavator I ran was a Liebherr 945B in 1976. My father bought it from Rivquip in Prince George, BC. It came with a feller buncher boom and a hoe boom. Cut trees in the winter and dig dirt in the summer. He went on to buy a 965 in 1979 and another 965 with a Pierce log loader boom a year later. The Deutz engines were despised but the rest of the machine was pretty good. He still had the 945 and the 965 excavator when he died two years ago. They have both been patched, reworked and repowered with Jimmy's, 471 and 671 respectively but they still worked until the 945 blew a final drive a few years ago. When my father discovered that a new final would cost more than a Hitachi or John Deere to replace it he left it right where it sat. The first excavators with pilot controls, or so I was told.