At 11:16 AM -0400 7/29/97, Peter Galbavy wrote: ...
For those of us who have not grown up with the (what sounds like) delightful vagaries of US road management - what is a backhoe ?
Simple answer: a mechanical shovel. More precisely: a relatively small-size outdoor excavation machine, petrol-energized and driven, that is used for digging trenches of the order of a meter wide and up to several meters deep. The digging apparatus is a toothed box with a trapdoor in the bottom which is placed at the end of an articulated boom.
From my on-line dictionary: An excavator whose bucket is rigidly attached to a hinged pole on the boom and is drawn backward to the machine when in operation.
Backhoes have [inadvertently, one would hope] been a major factor in network disruptions throughout the United States (weed-whackers and sharp-shooting good ole boys hunting in the southern-state bayous, notwithstanding). --Steve