About Trade Earthmovers

Trade Earthmovers

Overview

Trade Earthmovers (tradeearthmovers.com.au) is the online home of Earthmovers & Excavators, the long-running Australian magazine for the earthmoving industry, published from Melbourne by Prime Creative Media. The platform combines a daily earthmoving news service with what has historically been the country's best-known heavy machinery marketplace: thousands of new and used machines — excavators, wheel loaders, dozers, graders, trucks, attachments and more — listed for sale or hire by dealers and private sellers across Australia.

The magazine behind the site describes itself, in its own LinkedIn profile, as the "bible" of the Australian construction, mining and forestry industries, and its advertise pages promote the title to key decision-makers in the earthmoving, construction, quarrying and land-clearance industries. The print magazine appears 13 times a year, supported by a weekly e-newsletter and a free digital edition; the website carries the classified marketplace that has always been the title's backbone, alongside news, reviews and industry coverage.

Trade Earthmovers' inventory city is Melbourne, Victoria, reflecting the magazine's Melbourne base since its earliest days and its current publisher's Melbourne headquarters.

History

Earthmovers & Excavators began life around the turn of the 1990s, based in the Melbourne suburb of Elwood as part of the Trader Group of classifieds titles, where it sat alongside Trade-A-Boat, Unique Cars, Farms & Farm Machinery and Deals on Wheels. As the magazine itself recounted in its 400th-edition retrospective, it was the success of the earthmoving section within Deals on Wheels — which had advertised earthmoving equipment since its own launch in 1984 — that prompted Earthmovers & Excavators to become a standalone magazine.

The earliest editions were almost purely classified advertising. The November 1990 issue, examined in that retrospective, was made up almost exclusively of machinery listings, with just two pages of news; by the July 1992 edition the magazine had swelled, with colour content, news and product pages expanding around the classified core. Over the following decades the editorial share grew — machinery news, product launches, reviews and industry reporting — while the classifieds remained the engine of the title.

The Trader Group titles passed through successive owners: the title was published under Bauer Trader Media in the mid-2010s, when it reported an audited circulation of 7,364 copies a month for the six months to 30 June 2015, and later under Are Media, whose group publisher for industry, Graham Gardiner, fronted a redesign that produced a new-look, 204-page issue in 2021, after more than three decades of publication. The title then moved to Prime Creative Media with that publisher's acquisition of the Trader Group portfolio; by 2023 industry sources were identifying Prime Creative Media as publisher of Earthmovers & Excavators and TradeEarthmovers.com.au, and the site's current material carries the publisher's "PCM" credit. The magazine passed its 400th edition in 2023.

Content and Coverage

The website's coverage is built around machinery and the people who buy, sell and operate it. News reporting in October 2026 covered subjects such as new dealer appointments for Bobcat materials-handling equipment in Western Australia, progress on the Rockhampton Ring Road earthworks in Queensland, and product arrivals from Australian and international manufacturers. The October 2026 print issue, put on sale on 11 October 2026, featured the FlipScreen rotating screening bucket on its cover, tests and first looks at LiuGong's F Series excavators and a Caterpillar compact track loader variant from Hastings Deering, SANY's road-building range via dealer CEA, and classic machinery joining the Ilfracombe Machinery Mile museum in central Queensland. The same issue ranged from Adaptalift's Hänel Lean-Lift parts towers in its Melbourne warehouse to McCloskey crushing and screening equipment working on the Kwinana power station demolition in Western Australia, and from a Queensland telecoms installer's verdict on a mini skid steer combo to an infrastructure-resilience essay by IPWEA chief executive David Jenkins ahead of the publisher's Converge 2027 event.

The marketplace is the site's deepest content: a searchable database of new and used equipment for sale or hire, categorised by machine class and specification — excavators by weight class, dozers, loaders, graders, trucks, trailers, compressors, access equipment and attachments — with dealer listings from every state and territory, and tools to refine searches by location, year, hours and price. Alongside the listings sit reviews and comparisons, buying guidance, industry comment and event coverage, including the publisher's own Converge expo for the infrastructure sector and events such as the Diesel Dirt & Turf Expo, for which Prime Creative Media has been a gold media sponsor.

Audience and Reach

Trade Earthmovers serves Australia's earthmoving trade: civil contractors, earthmoving and excavation businesses, quarry and mining operators, machinery dealers, rental companies and owner-operators looking to buy, sell or hire equipment. Its advertising material describes the magazine as highly targeted at key decision-makers and suppliers to the earthmoving and construction industries, published 13 times a year with a weekly e-newsletter.

Historical audience figures are dated but documented: in 2015 the magazine reported an audited circulation of 7,364 copies a month (six months to 30 June 2015) and said TradeEarthmovers.com.au had attracted 55,143 unique visitors in June of that year; those figures are a decade old and are cited here as history, not as a current measure. The magazine's LinkedIn page, listing Melbourne, Victoria as its headquarters, had around 2,900 followers in October 2026. The live marketplace — with thousands of active dealer listings refreshed daily in October 2026 — is itself evidence of the platform's continuing reach into the trade.

Digital Presence

Tradeearthmovers.com.au is the brand's centre of gravity: it hosts the classified marketplace, daily news, the magazine's digital edition (offered free to download), subscription and newsletter sign-up, and advertising information. News stories publish continuously — items dated 15 and 16 October 2026 were among the site's latest during this profile's preparation — and listings are updated daily.

The brand also maintains social channels, including the Earthmovers & Excavators magazine page on LinkedIn, used to promote issues and stories. Digital replica editions of the magazine are distributed through the publisher's digital channels, and the weekly e-newsletter delivers industry and product updates to subscribers' inboxes.

Ownership and Organisation

Trade Earthmovers and Earthmovers & Excavators are published by Prime Creative Media, the independently owned Melbourne-based B2B publisher founded in 2002, which describes itself as Australia's largest B2B publisher. Prime Creative Media acquired the Trader Group portfolio of classifieds and trade titles — which includes Deals on Wheels, Farms & Farm Machinery and Trade-A-Boat alongside Earthmovers & Excavators — from Are Media, and operates the titles from Melbourne. The publisher's chief executive is John Murphy.

The title sits within Prime Creative Media's transport, machinery and infrastructure stable, alongside titles such as Prime Mover, Big Rigs, Deals on Wheels, Quarry and Roads & Infrastructure, and events including the Converge expo. Editorial, advertising and classifieds operations are run through the publisher's Melbourne office; machinery listings on the website are placed by dealerships and sellers nationally.

Contact and Availability

Trade Earthmovers is available at tradeearthmovers.com.au, where readers can browse machinery listings, read the latest earthmoving news, download a free copy of the latest digital magazine and subscribe to the free weekly newsletter. Print subscriptions to Earthmovers & Excavators — 13 issues a year — are offered through the site, and the magazine is sold through news outlets nationally; the October 2026 issue went on sale on 11 October 2026. Advertising enquiries, including access to the Earthmovers & Excavators media kit, are handled through the site's Advertise page and Prime Creative Media in Melbourne.