Heavy equipment or heavy machinery refers to heavy-duty vehicles specially designed to perform construction work, often involving earthmoving operations or other large construction works. Heavy equipment generally consists of five equipment systems: application, traction, structure, powertrain, control, and information. [one]

When the ancient Roman engineer Vitruvius described a crane operated by human or animal labor in De Architectura, heavy equipment had been in use since at least the 1st century BC.

Heavy equipment works with the mechanical advantage of a simple machine, multiplying the ratio between applied input force and applied force, doing jobs that may require hundreds of people and weeks of labor without much less intense heavy equipment by nature. Some equipment use hydraulic drives as their primary source of motion.

The term "facility" is used to refer to any mobile type of heavy machinery.

Until almost the twentieth century, the basic earthmoving machine was a simple tool: the hand shovel - sleds, barges and wagons moved by animal and human power. This tool was the main method by which material was tilted or raised for loading. a cart or wagon usually pulled by a wheelbarrow or an animal. In ancient times, a hand shovel or an equivalent of a hoe and head basket and masses of people were used to move the soil to do construction work. Builders used the inclined plane, arms and pulleys for a long time to place solid building materials, but these labor-saving devices were not suitable for earthworks that required digging, lifting, moving and placing loose materials. The two elements required for mechanized excavation were an independent power source and land mobility, as it is now, and none of these could be provided by the technology of that time.