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Crawlers I photo'd recently.

John C.

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Joined
Jun 11, 2007
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12,865
Location
Northwest
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Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
I tried to quote an earlier post on another page but couldn't. Anyway it was about earth moving prior to the 60s. My avatar is my dads brand new Koehring 405 in 1958. It has a shovel front installed in the photo and the machine was used building logging roads for the forest service to start with. There were no real wheel loaders then. Not long after the shovel front was removed and a crane boom installed and it used a clamshell for clearing land. He cleared land with it until about 1969 or 1970.
 

DMiller

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Joined
Feb 21, 2010
Messages
16,434
Location
Hermann, Missouri
Occupation
Cheap "old" Geezer
Best can remember of Grandmother and Grandfather's old brownie photos(Gone to Nephew) were men with wheelbarrows, shovels and rakes did all landscape work around houses. ONCE in a great while a Mule with a drag bucket or small drag chisel harrow was photo'd.
 

Willie B

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Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
4,040
Location
Mount Tabor VT
Occupation
Electrician
It amazes me that in my parent's lifetime these crawlers were considered state of the art. Earliest mention hereabouts of a dozer, my father & his brother in the early 1950s worked for Bellows Falls Ice Company. An old company went from ice harvesting to logging when refrigerators took over. They had two Caterpillar D7, one old, one new. Dad was in charge of the new one, his brother the old.
 

Willie B

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Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
4,040
Location
Mount Tabor VT
Occupation
Electrician
Best can remember of Grandmother and Grandfather's old brownie photos(Gone to Nephew) were men with wheelbarrows, shovels and rakes did all landscape work around houses. ONCE in a great while a Mule with a drag bucket or small drag chisel harrow was photo'd.
I've never been south of Connecticut. I have the sense deep cellar holes are less common in the south. No frost heaving to worry about. Near every stick built house here has a full cellar. Early cellars with foundation walls of irregularly shaped stones weren't very deep. Taller you build a stone foundation, less stable. Marble industry here, & slate or granite nearby, made tall foundation walls practical. Probably averaged 5' below natural grade. If dug by hand, it must have taken half the building season to dig. Later, with concrete 7' depth was more average. While I wasn't born by then, I guess bulldozers were more commonly used.

#131 is a very rare rig! I see almost no cable rigs that pull toward the machine to dig. Dozens of shovels in abandoned gravel pits here, never seen a hoe.
 

JaredV

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2022
Messages
332
Location
SW WA
When every farmer made his living with a Ford 9N/2N/8N tractor, a lot of it was done with 3pt equipment. My dad said he came home from school one day and his dad and uncle had dug a shallow basement with two 8Ns with dirt scoops for the new house. My brother has the county road department's old Ferguson TO30 (basically a meaner Ford) equipped with a loader which was an important piece of equipment for them for a long time.
 

Truck Shop

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2015
Messages
16,556
Location
WWW.
ONCE in a great while a Mule with a drag bucket or small drag chisel harrow was photo'd.
Known as a Fresno or Fresno Scraper-Those were still common in the 60's, I think you can
still buy one. We had one on the dairy-used it for hauling the silt out of the irrigation pumping
pond in the spring each year. Shoveled full then pulled it out with the 9N.
 

Tugger2

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Joined
Mar 22, 2018
Messages
1,366
Location
British Columbia
My Dad talked of Laborers that specialized in doing service trenches for houses ,sometimes 10 feet deep for water and sewer. They took thier tools seriously sharpened pickaxes and roundnose shovels.
Ive had this cable backhoe for many years now. Its a 1952 Insley K12 Greater Vancouver Water Board when it was new. I knew the man that ran it in its newer days.It did all kinds of sewer and water work in the city and in later years (70s) sewer and water here. When i got it i couldnt wait to put a boom on it and make a crane,which i sold to another fellow that was building a concrete house. Years later he offered it back to me if i could get it off the site. I recovered it ,with its cable backhoe.It sits in my Heritage collection now.(polite speak for junkyard)img864.jpg One day i hope to rig it as a backhoe again.
 

Willie B

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
4,040
Location
Mount Tabor VT
Occupation
Electrician
The three earliest backhoes I know of in my area, I don't know the exact years:
George Connors had a 3/4 swing hydraulic excavator mounted on a military 10 tired truck.
Austin Rumney bought new a Hop To Digger, a trailer mechanism he towed behind a two cylinder green John Deere dozer. He had a big contract to install guard rails on state highways. His digger has no bucket cylinder. I wonder if it never did, or if it failed somehow.
EC Crosby & Sons, local farm store had a 1940 M tractor with trip bucket loader, & a pipe framed backhoe. It passed around through various Crosby family members until I asked to buy it C. 1979. He immediately sold it for $1000. to a local.

All three of these machines are still around. I don't remember any of these being very effective as diggers.
 

Old Doug

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Joined
Oct 16, 2013
Messages
4,485
Location
Mo
I had a vcr tape of a early film of the quarry about 3 miles from here were they were loading the Jaw crusher with wheel barrows but i went to look at it a while back and it was blank. My dad helped dig his uncles basement with a model A and a slip scoop.
 

Old Doug

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 16, 2013
Messages
4,485
Location
Mo
The three earliest backhoes I know of in my area, I don't know the exact years:
George Connors had a 3/4 swing hydraulic excavator mounted on a military 10 tired truck.
Austin Rumney bought new a Hop To Digger, a trailer mechanism he towed behind a two cylinder green John Deere dozer. He had a big contract to install guard rails on state highways. His digger has no bucket cylinder. I wonder if it never did, or if it failed somehow.
EC Crosby & Sons, local farm store had a 1940 M tractor with trip bucket loader, & a pipe framed backhoe. It passed around through various Crosby family members until I asked to buy it C. 1979. He immediately sold it for $1000. to a local.

All three of these machines are still around. I don't remember any of these being very effective as diggers.
It took a person that was very skiled and patient but it was light years ahead of what they had before.I am loading #2 iron right now it takes a good half hour to load a ton with my stuff i would like to get a 7 ton loaded today. I cant scoop it up i have to throw about every thing in the bucket. I think my brother is coming tomorrow he thinks he can load me with his machine in a hour. Maybe he can but he has $59000.00 more in his machine than i do in mine.
 
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