Many of the readership will identify the name Carco as being associated with logging winches and forestry equipment. However, Carco’s roots go much further back in history to the dawn of the track-type tractor. By Richard Campbell
Originally founded in 1905 in Seattle, Washington, Carco (originally known as the Seattle Car Company)...
Grand-daddy of all the scrapers (apart from the horse-drawn, wheel-less Fresno type), the single axle scraper has a niche in the history of earthmoving and this type of scraper has seen a resurgence within the last decade. By RICHARD CAMPBELL
Developed from the early drag scrapers and designed as a utility land leveling tool, the single...
The Bucyrus-Erie Company was world famous for it’s range of face shovels, draglines, cranes and other mining and quarry equipment. However, it also made a wide range of tractor equipment that was popular through the 1930s to the middle 1950s which is now largely forgotten. By RICHARD CAMPBELL.
The Bucyrus Foundry Company of Bucyrus,...
Back in time when the track type tractor was still considered a new tool for earthmoving, there were dozens of companies offering attachments to outfit these machines for work. Isaacson were one of them. By RICHARD CAMPBELL.
With the end of the great depression in the early 1930s, those tractor manufacturers who had survived the...
Established in the 1880s, Eimco designed and built underground mining equipment. In a surprising move, it decided to go above ground and enter the track type tractor market. By Richard Campbell.
Eimco (Eastern Iron and Machinery Co), was not a widely known name in the track tractor industry.
The reason being that the period in which...
By the end of the 1950s, International’s “jack of all trades” TD-18 was getting beyond further economical development. The TD-20 was the result. By Richard Campbell
The International TD-18 had been first introduced in 1939 after a couple of years of development and was itself a logical progression of International’s previous...
Tracing its roots back to brothers Vern and Wilbur Schield’s original prototype manufactured in 1946, the Bantam, or more properly the model C-35 cable excavator, was an astonishingly popular machine by the standard of the day selling over 15,000 units. This figure is even more remarkable when one considers the amount of competition...
As soon as material constraints were removed prior to the end of WW2 the major earthmoving machinery companies set about designing new equipment to cater for the expected post war machinery boom and International Harvester was no exception.
International had achieved a measure of success with their first large track type tractor, the...
Wooldridge is not a name many of our readers will be familiar with and yet it was an important evolutionary branch of the motor scraper ‘tree’. RICHARD CAMPBELL EXPLAINS.
Mack Wooldridge (1890-1962) was a contemporary of Robert LeTourneau and was trained as an auto mechanic. He was fascinated by heavy equipment and was one of...
After years of planning and testing in secrecy, Caterpillar finally unveiled its first hydraulic excavator a fair bit later than a lot of the competition. By Richard Campbell
Caterpillar’s first hydraulic excavator, the model 225, was launched in 1972 after a lengthy testing period.
Caterpillar was quite a late entrant into the...
