Interesting Film Clip From 1952

Hi, Paso Bob.
Thanks for the 'ride'. It is interesting to see how they did it way back when. I'm with TOGNOT and GP on the sore backs, etc.. What some people will do for a crust.

Just my 0.02.

I also have to add a comment here.

In the video where they were showing the cotton picker machines, it reminded me of when I was a teenager and working on my family ranch. It is my job to ride in the basket of the machine and move the cotton around to clear the way for the elavator to bring up more cotton.

WOW, such memories!

Have never seen anything like this clip before! Loved it.

Trish

What is interesting is that the practices used in the video would never be used today due to computer modeling and stress analysis.
Real world hammering and banging brings on the REAL stresses associated with metal fatigue.
Cool Video!

That's an interesting film clip, that I've never sighted before. What I find interesting, is that nowhere did I see the crawlers being tested on rock!
We have lots and lots of rock here in Oz, and it really sorts out the girls and the men in the crawler tractor lineup!

The brother and I started off in earthmoving in the early 1960's with an A-C crawler - and that unreliable A-C crawler was the major reason we went over to Cats!
A-C built very well engineered crawlers in the 1950's, and A-C were often at the forefront in design and new ideas.

Unfortunately, A-C fell by the wayside because their marketing people over-ruled their engineers and demanded higher and higher power outputs, against the A-C engineers recommendations.
Not a lot of people know that A-C produced the first sealed and lubricated track - but the A-C design failed because of poor seal design.

Cat picked up and ran with the A-C SALT undercarriage idea, but put a lot more thought into the seal design - and Cat included a collar to prevent the seal being crushed by side thrust, thus turning the idea into a hands-down winner.
I can still recall the first set of SALT tracks I fitted to one of our D7F's, I was blown away at how easily the tractor rolled, as compared to the old-style dry tracks.

I cannot believe how such huge, powerful and wealthy U.S. corporations, with a long track record of great products and good engineering, could end up being destroyed by poor management - A-C, GM, International, just to name a few.
Caterpillar seem to survive by constant re-invention and re-orientation of their focus - but there have been periods when Caterpillar have gone wrong, too, and lost serious amounts of money.
I often wonder what would happen if Caterpillar ever followed A-C, GM or International. No corporation is immune to destruction by poor management, or an inability to re-focus when the market changes.

The greatest paradigm shift is coming upon us rapidly with the changeover to electric motive power. There's little doubt the Oil Age is coming to an end, and even many of us older folk will see it happen.
As Sheik Yamani of OPEC noted in 2000, with a far-sighted statement; "The Stone Age did not end, because of a shortage of stone - and the Oil Age will end, long before the world runs out of oil!"

Hi, OzDozer.
Well, HELLO there and welcome back. I hope all is well with you and yours as it is with me.

I agree totally with your post but I would add that none of those companies that you mentioned put as much work into their spare parts and service back-up as Cat has done over the years either. What little experience I had with any of them didn't exactly encourage me to buy any of their products, IH in particular. I have also seen Kummagutsa machines standing for over 2 weeks waiting for parts - - - which seemed to come 'overnight, 14 days from Tokyo'.

I have a thread on here with some old videos, including some put together by Morrison-Knudsen but, unfortunately, none of the iron ore railways.

http://www.acmoc.org/bb/showthread.php?28471-Some-Old-Videos

Just my 0.02.