Mike Pearson's Adventures on a Pale Blue Dot

No, not a pussy cat. A friend of mine told me about this machine when I asked if he knew of any great old iron laying around. This is the same guy who took me into see the Doriston trucks...obviously the right fella to know. This great old dozer in a perfect setting is only a few feet from an active road ( a quiet road ) Before hydraulic excavators became the construction tool of choice, the push cat ruled the roost. With lots of low end torque and a heavily built frame, the cat would push great heaps of dirt, dig up stumps, and  pull logs with it's winch. It was common not so long ago for a small  cat to get dropped off at a work site to clear a lot for a house and dig the basement. ( this is done by cutting into the level ground and ramping down deeper on each pass. The material gets stockpiled outside the basement footprint. ) Dozeers are still a popular tool in mining and road building applications. These days of course they come with glassed in cabs, stereos and air...

The idea of a belt of traction treads goes way back in the history of mechanical movement. In the 1770's there were experiments with a system dubbed the "endless railway." Inventors and manufacturers all over the world helped to shape the design process. Mainly what people were trying to do, is avoid getting stuck in soft ground conditions like mud, tundra, snow and farmland. The linked tracks that that form a continuous belt, offers a larger footprint to the ground This larger footprint delivers less ground pressure, allowing the machine/contraption/invention to "float" on the soft surface. The Caterpillar Tractor company did not invent steel tracks, or even the machine that rolls on steel tracks. The Caterpillar company formed to take over the assets of the struggling Holt Manufacturing Company...and went on to create a legend. The standard steel tracked, diesel engine, push blade...and sometimes a winch machine is called a "cat" Like Xerox, ...