I just found a facebook page dedicated to snow removal, vintage to modern

https://www.facebook.com/groups/290218184362615

this is a hoot... what being in construction was like when building Disneyland in the 50s, before safety and OSHA

 

Need Lumber Quick? 1920 Federal (pinstriped and lettered) in front of the business, and notice in the upper left corner of the photo, on the building corner, under the eave, is a clock. Intriguing.

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/178/

https://www.shorpy.com/node/18816?size=_original#caption  this was posted on Shorpy 12 years ago

I bet that the lumber company had just taken delivery and wanted to take a celebration photo of the new truck, that they could hang on the company president's office wall

if a politician champions a project, you can be sure they profit from that. A 1.5 mile section of Rt 66 was paved with bricks, a job‑creation effort championed by an influential Illinois politician who owned Post and Brick on South Grand Ave Springfield

https://www.facebook.com/Route66Postcards/posts/pfbid02cxjVWsQ9CE5DT2qJDsKp5NbgB9ZDrSaLsGVwg85iBL9MgNtjsVSbdEinpk56N2F2l

vehicles that hauled parts up to the Mt Wilson observatory

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/517/

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/410/

what is in this photo is not obvious right away, but it's got a great story from Jackson county Georgia

Zach bought a mobile home park that had 4 big piles of dirt spaced around the property. The previous owner had intended on using them to fill holes before he had his stroke. 

Zach loaded his tractor up and filled stump holes and ruts, but didn’t need the fourth dirt pile at all, and intended to push it into the woods.

But then found… the tenant who had just leased one of the units at the back had a five year old son. That little dude had turned that last dirt pile into a VERY busy construction site.

 So, of course, that dirt pile got to stay!

We won't know how happy all the dirty hands and feet have made his mom, but it has sure made me smile! 

Keep digging, little man. Hopefully someone sees your joy and teaches you how to use a dozer, excavator, and a back hoe

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10163562001552962&set=a.437607217961

Funniest thing I've seen in months... the crane manufacturer Böcker, which was the brand used by the Louve jewelry burglars, made a HILARIOUS marketing campaign " the crane pays for itself many times over in minutes "

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1389379269863358&set=a.608405591294067

https://boecker.de/de/

https://www.instagram.com/boeckermaschinenwerke/?hl=en

great desk paperweight!

https://bids.aumannauctions.com/auctions/43853/lot/6864850-brass-clamshell-bucket

Felicitas mine in northern Germany, flooded very unexpectedly, and is full of abandoned mining equipment

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4246194485600331&set=a.1652036835016122

https://divernet.com/scuba-diving/a-tale-of-two-mines/

https://xray-mag.com/content/felicitas-mine

https://minediving.de/locations/felicitas-germany/

impressive progress on the rebuild of the Clinchfield Railroad, (wiped out by Hurricane Helene) it's simply cool to watch the process of the boulders getting delivered, dumped, arranged, and the truckers going to get more

for the rebuild after hurricane Helene, select any of the videos to see the before and after videos of this river area, and the rapid reconstruction progress at https://www.youtube.com/@designsinorbit/videos

the excavators and dozer at the county public works project site that were vandalized, last weekend, to no one's surprise, were wrecked by a former employee of the excavation company

Guthrie has a long criminal record, Robinson said, with 25 arrests in the past 20 years. (It really can't be so damn hard to find guys willing to operate dozers and excavators, that you hire someone whose been arrested 25 times already!! 

JFC, just TRAIN people to operate the gear, it ain't that effing hard, nearly everyone born since 1975 has played video games and has dual hand to eye coordination and can learn)

Included in establishing the timeline was footage from an Arkansas State Police trooper who wrote a ticket to Guthrie the night of the vandalism after a traffic accident, Robinson said. That allowed investigators to establish a timeline as Guthrie was on his way back to his Cabot home. It also showed Guthrie being muddy and wet, as were the conditions where the vandalism took place.

Records show Guthrie is still in custody in the Saline County Detention Center.

County Judge Matt Brumley said the damage to the area was extensive and not just to the equipment but the fuel and hydraulic fluid that was spilled into the creek, forcing the county to “abate the damage.”

the county’s Office of Emergency Management was successful in containing the spill and protecting nearby homes, but the final costs for equipment repair or replacement and environmental damage will range from $500,000 to $750,000, and a one-month delay in the project.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/saline-county-deputies-construction-equipment-175818663.html

they buried a 550 John Deere dozer, and ripped the cab off one excavator and buried it with another. The reward is around 64k for the info that leads to the conviction of the people that did this to James A Rogers Excavating in Arkansas

Anyone with information about what happen Friday night 5-23 between Vimy Ridge rd and North Sardis

call 501-455-2439 and saline county sheriff’s office at (501) 303-5609

https://www.facebook.com/jarexcavating

I think I must have posted excavators using roller skates before, but if you've never seen it....

A crew refreshes lane striping on the Yolo Causeway in 1939

 

Found in a magazine of Caltrans, online. I had no idea Caltrans has a magazine

https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/risk-strategic-management/documents/mm-2016-q2-a11y.pdf

A special edition compact track loader from CASE was at the Helping Hands charity concert, organized by Metallica’s All Within My Hands charitable foundation.

The winning design was submitted by John Piper, a rising design talent at CNH. 

Piper crafted a concept that recalled one of Hetfield’s tattoos, a skull with wings, together with the sharp iconic font reminiscent of his band’s graphics and album artwork.

 He also drew from the pinstriping in Hetfield’s private hotrod collection. All these elements were integrated atop a sandy camouflage pattern reminiscent of Hetfield’s signature Snakebyte electric guitar – a direct request from the artist.

https://www.casece.com/en-us/northamerica/inside-case/articles/2024/cnh-designs-special-edition-case-compact-track-loader-inspired-by-metallica-frontman-james-hetfield

Volvo's entire product range in 1973.

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=8535163266538062&set=gm.1215867093051870&idorvanity=435603497744904

I've never seen an excavator that's been sitting around unused so long it gets graffitied

and why the hell is balloon font so damn hard to read? I can't make out a single letter

Bill Deutsch has what could be the only one of its kind left, a 1930s prototype of the Trackson Traxcavator attachment on an International I-30 tractor, called the International TracTracTor.

Bill Deutsch uses a lot of the machines in his operations as the owner of Deutsch Excavating in Northfield, Minnesota. That includes 1950s-era cable Cat dozers, scrapers and motor grader.

Using the vintage Cats came about from a need for bigger equipment during the Great Recession, when he didn’t have enough money to buy new or even operable used ones.

Since then, he’s grown to love the pre-hydraulics machines, appreciating their history, unique feel and simplicity.

“It's old-fashioned mechanics,” he says. “It's a joy to work with because it's virgin steel. There's no garbage in it like we have today.”

“It is the simplicity of it,” he adds. “If it doesn't work, it's because there's literally something broken, not because there's a broken wire or sensor.”

About eight years ago, Deutsche saw a photo of the TracTracTor prototype with the Trackson Traxcavator on an online equipment chatroom. He didn’t know anything about the owner other than the town where he lived. So he drove around the town trying to find the building in the photo.

“And that's how I found the guy and pulled in the driveway and knocked on a door and asked him questions, and we were right,” Deutsche says. “I’ve had some pretty good luck doing that kind of thing.”

Turns out the owner had bought the prototype tractor by accident. He thought he was bidding on a different one at auction but mistakenly bought the tractor next to it.

“It didn't fit his collection. He's a John Deere guy,” Deutsch says. “He was willing to sell it to me because I have a better Trackson collection.”

The three prototypes were sent to iron mines in northern Minnesota to be tested. International eventually sent a truck to pick up the prototypes, but only two of the prototypes fit on the truck. So one stayed at the mine and over time went to auction, then ended up with Deutsch. 

 Bill Deutsch built this 50-year-old D6C using parts from two of the vintage dozers, which he still runs for Deutsche Excavating, along with 1950s Cat pull-type scrapers.

Deutsch’s hobby of finding and restoring vintage equipment became a necessity during the Great Recession when his excavating company – of which he is the sole owner, operator and employee – fell on hard times.

He had formed the company in 2000 and was doing well. But in 2007-2008, like most of the construction industry, things took a drastic turn for the worse.

“I needed some bigger machinery, and I didn't have a ton of money to spend,” he recalls.

He uses his Cat No. 12 motor grader to plow snow each year for a nearby town.

“It is the main piece of my winter income – from 1958,” he says and chuckles.

“People don't know how old it is. They know it's older because a lot of my stuff is older. But they don't have a clue that it's almost 70-some-odd years old. It still looks nice.”

https://www.equipmentworld.com/collectors-corner/article/15684159/contractor-saves-rare-traxcavators-runs-vintage-cat-equipment

The world headquarters of JCB is a very cool looking place, with a nice display of construction equipment scattered around

 https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-qIstnppyy/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I can't find a you tube video of it though

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To firefighters across California, the threat of tires to blow out in a fire, was essentially unheard of ... until June 14th, when Andrew Pontious, was killed while battling a front end loader fire, and a 7 foot tall tire exploded due to heat

https://www.firehouse.com/safety-health/news/55136306/exploding-tire-that-killed-los-angeles-county-firefighter-was-rare

https://www.firehouse.com/lodds/video/55089092/veteran-los-angeles-county-firefighter-killed-in-explosion

I'm probably not the only one that remembers the cages at SEMA for inflating earthmover tires safely to prevent one from exploding... https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2012/11/earthmover-tire-inflation-cage-proof-of.html 

skip the first 25 seconds, get right to it