Komatsu


Outside of the Tonka trucks I played with as a kid, I never gave a shit about anything related to construction equipment until I saw this company's trucks. The only reason I took notice was because I love everything Japanese and I recognized the name as Japanese as soon as I saw it. This ME is weird for me because the logo changed within a week. 

Oftentimes last summer, I went to the local university's student center with my computer to write because it was nice and quiet. There was a new building being constructed next to the UC, so every time I sat at the bus stop across the street to go home, I stared at the Komatsu excavator, which would be parked there in the evening after the construction workers had gone home.

One day, as usual, I glanced at the excavator, noticing the logo, but when I came back to that bus stop a week later, I saw that the top bar of the "T" was broken off and situated above the rest of the letters, almost making it look like an apostrophe. I also noticed that the "A" looked like the Greek letter lamda, which seems to be a trend with ME changing logos. I probably wouldn't have even immediately recognized it as Japanese had it been written like this the first time I saw it. 



               The logo from 1985 is familiar.



According to the Komatsu website, the "new" logo has existed since the 90s, but I only saw it for the first time in 2017, after many years seeing this brand of construction equipment. 

 
                  This toy truck looks like the real equipment I remember. 


 

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