Not a lot of imagination went into building this grader. It appears to be a direct knock off of a Caterpillar #12 of the 1950's, presumably done so that they could bid against Cat on government spec bids and meet the spec's which were often written to attempt to exclude anything except a Cat grader.
http://www.vannattabros.com/road5.html
when I worked for the state of Georgia, if you wanted a particular tractor or lawn mower, you had to write the bid specs so that no other tractor would meet the specs.
ReplyDeleteotherwise some bean counter in the Atlanta office would send you the cheapest crappy tractor that had 4 wheels and an engine.
Clever! Thanks!
DeleteJesse, it's because many govt procurement specs are/were written by the suppliers themselves.
ReplyDeleteAnd Dan was just telling me why.. it's a system with some limitations and shortcuts. If you know those, you can get what you need
DeleteBut every so often it is pure nepotism and/or protectionism (or, in the worst cases, corruption). For decades only Harleys and Indians got police contracts, as they PD's specified 16" wheels and engines with v-configuration cylinders. Only Ducati tried to play by those rules with a large V4, but for other reasons it came to naught:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducati_Apollo