An excavator is a rotating cab and engine house sitting on a turntable above two crawler tracks, with a boom, a dipper arm and a bucket hanging off the front and a blade at one end on the smaller machines. The whole upper half spins full circle. That shape is what separates it from a backhoe, which is a tractor with a digging arm on the back.
The parts a counter will ask you about
The undercarriage and tracks carry the weight, rubber on small machines and steel on large. The house holds engine, cab and counterweight and turns on a slew ring. The front is boom, arm and bucket joined by pins. A blade backfills and levels. A quick coupler lets one machine change buckets in about a minute.
Telling the size classes apart by eye
A one to two ton mini has rubber tracks, a canopy rather than a glazed cab and a blade you could step over. A five to eight ton machine has a cab, a heavier counterweight and often steel tracks. Above fifteen tons it rides on its own lowboy and will not pass through a garden gate at any angle.
Zero tail swing and conventional
On a zero tail machine the counterweight stays inside the track width as the house rotates, so it works alongside a wall without the back end clipping it. Conventional machines overhang but carry more counterweight for the same digging force. Yards print it on the spec sheet because it decides urban and boundary work.
Excavator, backhoe or track loader
A backhoe loader has a loading bucket at the front, wheels underneath and a rear digging arm with limited swing. A compact track loader carries a bucket on lift arms and does not rotate at all. If the picture in your head has a spinning cab and a long jointed arm, an excavator is what you are describing.
Questions people ask about what does an excavator look like
How do I know what size excavator I need?
Work from the deepest cut, the reach across the trench and the narrowest point of access. Access usually settles it: a machine that cannot get through the gate is the wrong size whatever it can dig. Yards will size from a photograph of the entry if you send one.
Do excavators come with different buckets?
Yes, and most yards include one or two in the rate. A toothed digging bucket is standard, a wide grading bucket cleans and levels, and a trenching bucket matches a pipe width. Breakers, augers and thumbs are extras with their own daily lines.
Rubber tracks or steel tracks on a rental?
Rubber tracks are kinder to driveways and paving and are standard on minis. Steel tracks bite harder in mud and rock and last longer under weight. If you are crossing a finished surface either way, ask about track mats rather than hoping for the best.