Nige, thank you for all the great pictures and the narrative.
So many things to address, hijack alert
The transport carriage, that was brilliant.
The sliding trucks and things, I was always aware of the costs of rubber so I was careful, but the 6 wheel articulating trucks are easy to get into a situation. One day I met a fellow operator in the JD400 on a reverse camber corner with a skiff of snow on it, and I knew he was losing it. I got over and stopped and watched him slide by out of control with big eyes and a worried expression. He got out of the 400 after lunch and it was given over to me for the next few months.
The only time I intentionally got squirrely on a rubber tired machine was a 980. We were capping a landfill with clay. It poured that morning and the haul trucks could not get in from the highway and the offroad trucks could not climb up on the dome that is a landfill. The wet clay made for one good doughnut, then park it and go home.
The Liebherrs and the drive motors, brought me back to a dam job in 1992 with one of those with the drive motors just hanging out there to get knocked off. It happened. Also had a 245 long stick that broke a boom at the lift cylinders and dumped the whole works in the back of a terex.
/hijack.
PS hablo espanol