The two tractors were physically connected with ball and socket joints at the rear and at the two inside crawlers, and they pushed a 24-ft. The concept was similar to the Dual D9G, but instead of end-to-end these worked side-by-side (SxS). introduced the Dual D9G for pushloading, it also introduced the SxS D9G. In 1969, the same year that Caterpillar Inc. And while modified dozer designs such as the concave U- and semi-U dozers gave a single tractor increased blade capacity, there was still room for improvement. The Euclid TC-12, for all its power, was still only a single-width dozer and lacked the higher dozer capacity of its experimental predecessors.
Various experiments were attempted – and failed – in creating a more powerful, higher-capacity dozer by combining two large crawler tractors onto one undercarriage. As with other large-scale earthmoving operations, efficiency, cost reduction and other issues were best addressed by machines designed for the task.īuster Peterson combined two Cat D9Gs end-to-end to create a single pushloading tractor with twice the power, but for high-volume material handling with a crawler tractor, the issue wasn’t so much the horsepower as it was blade capacity. Not only must the mineral be uncovered, but the overburden must be replaced to reclaim the land. Strip mining, by its very nature, requires massive amounts of earthmoving.
