Excavator

It first looked like a D-9 Caterpillar but instead of the traditional earth moving blade there was a huge 50 cubic foot bucket.

It had hardened steel teeth to rip through the hard pan as well as a great load capacity. The land at the foot of the mountain range beside the Quon Nhon Army Depot was a composite clay caliche.

We were going to build this depot by elevating a valley by at least forty feet to a man-made plain. This is a soil common to the jungle countries of the Far East.

It was formed from the leaching of predominantly clay soil and was called laterite. The monsoon season occurred twice a year in the highlands of Vietnam and was almost upon us. Its' massive rainfall made the soil this hard by percolating through it, carrying away nutrients and minerals and leaving the cement residue.

This created a hardpan of many inches to feet which often took the toughest steel machinery to break through. Sometimes it required drilling and explosives to loosen the rock hard soil and heavy machinery.

However, the tracked loader dug easily into the laterite making the creation of the supply depot that much nearer to completion. In third world countries most of the heavy earth moving equipment was tracked rather than wheeled.

This gave them traction in terrain where it often was difficult and muddy. The large tracked loader worked well in the cramped and narrow places where the future supply dump would abut to the hillside.

Taking huge large bites of the loosened laterite it piled it in the center of the depot storage facility. There were three of these heavy duty tracked loaders working on the project and without them the supply depot would have taken longer. Here the depot had been terraformed into a flat area to accommodate stacks of military supplies consisting of everything from motor oil to soft drinks

. Here wheeled earth movers could scoop up the piles of laterite and spread them evenly across the man-made plain. Other machinery like wheeled road scrapers and earth rollers would compact the soil into a stable subsurface. The final surface was approximately 6-8 inches of asphalt. Modern landscaping and design has taken the classic design of a larger machine and reduced it to an earth tracked loader of about 2 cubic yards.

Just like its' predecessor it can accomplish great earth moving projects. Those in the building industry have found that it can create outstanding garden beds, sculpture new features such as fish ponds and new hedgerows.

It also can back fill foundation trenches and finish the installation of new grass lawns much easier that other wheel vehicles.

Wherever the terrain around a home or estate needs to have its' landscape designed into something new or unique, then the track loader is used. Whether it is used to cut earth so stone walls can be laid or if a water feature is desired. It is preferred because of the track which provides power under adverse terrain conditions.

Excavator |