Heavy equipment repair sits in a strange corner of the search auction: lower volume than over-the-road diesel, but every single click is worth more. A blown final drive on a CAT 336 is a $14,000 job. A pin and bushing rebuild on a wheel loader can hit $22,000. The shops that win in this category aren't the ones spending the most — they're the ones bidding heavy on the right 30 keywords and ignoring the 300 cheap ones.
The buyer is different. Bid like it.
An over-the-road truck owner-operator buys repairs the same week the truck breaks. A construction or earthmoving company buys repairs against a project schedule — sometimes a week out, sometimes a month, but always against downtime cost on a job site. That changes everything about the funnel:
- The decision-maker is a foreman or fleet manager, not the operator. They pull up your shop on a phone in a job trailer.
- Mobile service capability matters more than location. "Will you come to the site?" is a binary qualifier on every call.
- The window is wider than diesel-trucking. You can quote, follow up, and still close 8 days later. That changes how we structure call follow-up sequences.
Keywords that actually pay.
We've run heavy equipment campaigns for shops servicing CAT, Komatsu, Volvo, John Deere, and Bobcat. The keyword list is shorter than diesel-trucking but more lucrative. Here's the bid logic:
Final drive repair near me
Average click cost. Job size: $8K–$18K. We bid expensive because the auction sorts itself by intent.
Hydraulic pump rebuild
High-intent. The phrase "rebuild" is the buyer signal — they've already triaged.
Excavator track repair [city]
City-modified terms shut out the digital-marketing junk and surface only buyers near you.
Skid steer hydraulic leak
Lower ticket but higher volume. Volume keeps your phone ringing between the big jobs.
Mobile service is a paid-ad asset.
If you offer field service, your ads should not look like every other shop's. The headline "We come to you. 24/7. Same-day in [region]." converts at almost double the rate of a generic "Heavy Equipment Repair" headline in our test data — and in the call recordings, the very first question 6 out of 10 callers ask is whether you'll come to the site.
The job is on a job site.
Sound like you know that.
Why we're a fit for heavy-equipment shops.
- We track mobile service vs. shop-floor calls separately so you know which ads earn which type of work.
- We bid heavier on commercial intent ("[brand] dealer alternative," "non-dealer rebuild," "fleet PM contract") because those are higher-LTV customers.
- We exclude DIY, parts-only, and rental search terms aggressively — they look like leads but they aren't.
Heavy equipment shop in an open market?
We sign one heavy-equipment shop per metro just like our diesel shops. Check if yours is open.