The hydraulic shovel excavator has found significant applications in surface mining, construction, and geotechnical operations due to its flexibility and mobility. The key to high availability and utilization of this shovel is adequate understanding of machine dynamics and machine-formation interactions among other technical, operating, safety, and economic factors. These shovels are capital intensive, complex in design and operation within severely constrained environments. Detailed dynamic modeling and analysis are required to understand their effective utilization for achieving efficient operating performance and economic useful lives. Previous attempts at solving these problems are limited because they do not provide knowledge on the resistive forces and moments for efficient excavation. In this paper, the Newton-Euler techniques are used to develop hydraulic shovel dynamic models with numerical examples. Detailed analysis of the results shows that: (1) the kinematics of the stick-bucket joint (joint 3) is the most critical and effective control of this joint and is important input into efficient excavation design and execution; and (2) the highest resistive moments occur between the duration of 1.5 and 2.0 s after the start of formation excavation and the highest magnitudes are 1,500 Nm (for stick), 900 Nm (for bucket), and 600 Nm (for boom). Based on these results, the path trajectories, dynamic velocity and acceleration profiles, and dimensioned parameters for optimum feed force, torques, and momentum of shovel boom-bucket assembly can be modeled and used for efficient excavation. The optimum digging forces and resistances for the hydraulic shovel excavator can also be modeled and used to predict optimum excavation performance.