Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, dipper, bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. They are a natural progression from the steam shovels and often mistakenly called power shovels, as power shovels may have similar looking buckets. All movement and functions of a hydraulic excavator are accomplished through the use of hydraulic fluid, with hydraulic cylinders and hydraulic motors. Due to the linear actuation of hydraulic cylinders, their mode of operation is fundamentally different from cable-operated excavators, which use winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements.
A bulldozer or dozer is a large, motorized machine equipped with a metal blade to the front for pushing material: soil, sand, snow, rubble, or rock during construction work. It travels most commonly on continuous tracks, though specialized models riding on large off-road tires are also produced. Its most popular accessory is a ripper, a large hook-like device mounted singly or in multiples in the rear to loosen dense materials.
The Davenport Locomotive Works, of Davenport, Iowa, USA was formed as the W W Whitehead Company in 1901. In 1902 the company commenced building light locomotives. The Company was renamed the Davenport Locomotive Works in 1904.
Dresser Industries was a multinational corporation headquartered in Dallas, Texas, United States, which provided a wide range of technology, products, and services used for developing energy and natural resources. In 1998, Dresser merged with its main rival Halliburton. Halliburton sold many of former Dresser non "oil patch" divisions, retaining the M W Kellogg Engineering and Construction Company and the Dresser oil-patch products and services that complemented Halliburton's energy and natural resource businesses. In 2001 Halliburton sold five separate, but somewhat related former Dresser non "oil patch" divisions, to an investment banking firm. Those five operations later took the name "Dresser Inc." In October 2010, Dresser Inc., was acquired by General Electric. It is headquartered in Addison, Texas.
A loader is a heavy equipment machine used in construction to move or load materials such as soil, rock, sand, demolition debris, etc. into or onto another type of machinery.
Heavy equipment, heavy machinery, earthmovers, construction vehicles, or construction equipment, refers to heavy-duty vehicles specially designed to execute construction tasks, most frequently involving earthwork operations or other large construction tasks. Heavy equipment usually comprises five equipment systems: the implement, traction, structure, power train, and control/information.
A grader, also commonly referred to as a road grader, motor grader, or simply blade, is a form of heavy equipment with a long blade used to create a flat surface during grading. Although the earliest models were towed behind horses, and later tractors, most modern graders are self-propelled and thus technically "motor graders".
Komatsu Ltd. or Komatsu (コマツ) is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures construction, mining, forestry and military equipment, as well as diesel engines and industrial equipment like press machines, lasers and thermoelectric generators. Its headquarters are in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The corporation was named after the city of Komatsu, Ishikawa Prefecture, where the company was founded in 1921. Worldwide, the Komatsu Group consists of Komatsu Ltd. and 258 other companies.
In the 1950s, LeTourneau Inc. developed several overland trains, essentially oversized semi-trailer trucks that could travel over almost any terrain. Their intention was to be able to handle logistics needs without being dependent on local road or rail systems, allowing them to operate in back-country areas. The US Army had three experimental units built, the largest reaching almost 600 feet (183 m) long, which holds the record for the longest off-road vehicle. Road trains are in use in certain roles today, but the US Army examples and a few derivatives appear to be the only off-road examples built.
Robert Gilmour LeTourneau, born in Richford, Vermont, was a prolific inventor of earthmoving machinery, and founder of LeTourneau Technologies, Inc and LeTourneau University. His factories supplied machinery which represented nearly 70 percent of the earthmoving equipment and engineering vehicles used by the Allied forces during World War II, and more than half of the 1,500-mile (2,414 km) Alcan Highway in Canada was built with LeTourneau equipment. Over the course of his life he secured nearly 300 patents relating to earthmoving equipment, manufacturing processes and machine tools.
In civil engineering, a wheel tractor-scraper is a type of heavy equipment used for earthmoving. It has a pan/hopper for loading and carrying material. The pan has a tapered horizontal front cutting edge that cuts into the soil like a carpenter's plane or cheese slicer and fills the hopper which has a movable ejection system. The horsepower of the machine, depth of the cut, type of material, and slope of the cut area affect how quickly the pan is filled.
The Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation was founded on September 28, 1869 by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Earlier in the year he had invented the railway air brake in New York state.
The P&H L-2350 Wheel Loader is a loader used for surface mining. It is manufactured by Komatsu Limited. It holds the Guinness World Record for Biggest Earth Mover. Designed to center-load haul trucks with capacities of up to 360 tonnes, the L-2350 provides an operating payload of 73 tonnes, a 7.03 metres (23.1 ft) lift height, and an 3.5 metres (11.5 ft) reach.
The Euclid Company of Ohio was a manufacturer which specialized in heavy equipment for earthmoving, particularly dump trucks, loaders and wheel tractor-scrapers. It operated in the US from the 1920s to the 1950s, when it was purchased by General Motors. The firm was later bought by Hitachi Construction Machinery.
P&H Mining Equipment sells drilling and material handling machinery under the "P&H" trademark. The firm is an operating subsidiary of Joy Global Inc. In 2017 Joy Global Inc. was acquired by Komatsu Limited of Tokyo, Japan, and is now known as Komatsu Mining Corporation and operates as a subsidiary of Komatsu.
The Sno-Freighter is a one-of-a-kind land vehicle designed by LeTourneau Technologies for Alaska Freight Lines in the 1950s. During that decade, Alaska Freight Lines won the contract to transport construction material to build the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW) in far northern Alaska and Canada. At the time, no roads crossed the Arctic Circle in North America, there were almost no runways for air transportation, and the polar ice cap prevented seaborne transport.
Joy Global Inc. was a company that manufactured and serviced heavy equipment used in the extraction and haulage of coal and minerals in both underground and surface mining. The company had manufacturing facilities in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Australia, Canada, China, France, South Africa, Poland and the United Kingdom. In 2017, Joy Global was acquired by Komatsu Limited and was renamed Komatsu Mining Corp.
Cameron International Corporation (formerly Cooper Cameron Corporation (CCC) and Cooper Oil Tool, Cameron Iron Works) though now operating under Schlumberger, is a global provider of pressure control, production, processing, and flow control systems as well as project management and aftermarket services for the oil and gas and process industries. Cameron was acquired by Schlumberger (SLB) in 2016, and now operates as 'Cameron, an SLB Company.' At the start of the SLB acquisition in 2015, Cameron employed approximately 23,000 people and delivered $9.8 billion in revenue.
Unit Rig was a manufacturer of haul trucks, sold under the brand name Lectra Haul.
Haulpak was a very successful line of off-highway mining trucks. The name was used from 1953 until around 1999; the line continues under the Komatsu name. The name was adopted as Wabco Haulpak when R. G. LeTourneau's business was bought by Wabco, and the Haulpak name continued through Wabco's purchase by American Standard, the operation's purchase by Dresser Industries, the merger into Komatsu-Dresser, and for a time after Komatsu took over complete ownership from Dresser.
