Keith Haddock has had a long career in earthmoving and surface mining. After graduating as a professional engineer, he worked for major earthmoving contractors in the UK on highways, dams and opencast coal sites until moving to Canada in 1974 to work for a large surface coal mining company. He left his position as Manager of Engineering in 1998 to become a full-time author and freelance writer on heavy equipment, and since then has written innumerable articles in the trade press and researched, appeared on or contributed to many TV programmes and DVDs on the subject. This is his twelfth book.