BUILDING: New Tools

• Share

In the desert ten miles south of Phoenix, Ariz., International Harvester Co. showed 600 distributors from the U.S. and 20 foreign countries its new line of equipment at work. In the roundup were 70 pieces of heavy machinery, 29 of them completely new. They were the latest evidence that machines for construction work and farms have become so specialized that there is a different one for almost every job. Star of the show was a new 200 h.p. diesel crawler tractor with torque converter, only tractor in the world that can turn with power on both tracks (price: $30,000). Equipped with a pusher plate and working in combination with Harvester's new rubber-tired, high-speed earth mover (up to 25 m.p.h. across rough terrain), the tractor can load 48 tons of dirt in 60 seconds, a job that would take a man with a shovel ten days to do.

Among the other machines:

¶ A grubber that tears up trees and underbrush, grinds them up, then works the mulch deep into the earth behind it with a disk harrow.

¶ The Lodover, an ingenious little tractor loader designed for work in close quarters, such as in mines. It can swing a load of dirt overhead from front to back.

¶ Six-cylinder auxiliary power units that run on natural gas and turn out up to 200 h.p.

¶ A bullgrader with a blade that can be tilted or turned in any direction, whereas the ordinary bulldozer blade moves only up or down.