A FAMCO-produced YouTube video featuring Volvo Construction Equipment machines working in Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter, Rub’ al Khali, has passed 1m views.
The five-minute short shows Volvo CE A35F articulated haulers and EC700 hydraulic excavators braving 50°C daytime temperatures to build a 256km-long highway stretching from Saudi Arabia to Oman.
In addition to its 1,017,313 views (correct at the time of writing), the clip has garnered more than 3,200 YouTube likes, approximately 630,000 Twitter impressions, and the project has featured on the covers of 10 Middle Eastern trade publications.
Commenting on the project, which is still ongoing, Amal Almizyen, managing director of FAMCO Saudi, said: “What we’re doing is truly art, like painting a masterpiece. I thought a road should be something easy to construct, but sometimes, a small section of this highway can take anywhere from days to months to complete.”
As Volvo CE’s authorised dealer in the Kingdom, FAMCO Saudi supplied 95 brand-new machines to the project’s main contractor, Al-Rosan Company. Fayez Subbaheen, the contractor’s project manager for the road built, is convinced that in the form of Volvo CE, he and his colleagues selected the best machinery for the job.
“We are grateful to Volvo CE and FAMCO, our partners with whom we discussed the project in terms of heavy equipment and support,” he said.
“We quickly discovered that they are the very best. These units use highly advanced engineering, and with close to 170 heavy machines on site in total, we have been using the Volvo equipment to perform the most demanding jobs,” Subbaheen added.
The road build, which Al-Rosan won at a price of $250m, is scheduled to complete during the fourth quarter of this year.
