Heavy equipment or heavy machinery refers to heavy-duty vehicles specially designed to perform construction work, often involving earthworks or other large construction work. 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 the primary source of motion.

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

Until the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, heavy machinery was pulled under human or animal power. With the advent of portable steam engines, towed machine predecessors were restructured with new engines such as combines. The design of a core tractor can be configured as a pull engine, steam tractor and steamroller, where a new machine core is concentrated new steam power supply. In the 20th century, internal combustion engines became the main power source of heavy equipment. Kerosene and ethanol engines were used, but diesel engines dominate today. The mechanical transmission was in most cases replaced by hydraulic machines. In the early 20th century, new electrically powered machines such as forklifts were also seen. Caterpillar Inc. Starting off as Holt Manufacturing Company, it is today's brand these days. The first mass-produced heavy machine was the Fordson tractor in 1917.

The first commercial tracked vehicle was the 1901 Lombard Steam Log Hauler. The use of pallets became popular during World War I for tanks and later for civilian machines such as bulldozers. The largest engineering vehicles and mobile ground machines are bucket wheel excavators manufactured since the 1920s.