Boring (literally) machine.

Here's a unique piece I picked up in central Vt. 2 weeks ago from the manufacturer. It is a "geoscience soils testing probe machine." It's basically a set of Strickland crawler undercarriage, made in the UK, and a typical 14 ft. truck body mounted on top of them. There's a John Deere powerplant, various pumps and valve bodies, a set of outriggers, and inside is empty except for a hydraulic ram assembly, and a hole in the floor where they send a "probe" down through a trap door, anywhere from 2 feet deep to 50 ft., depending on what they hit for subsurface. The thing weighed 40K lbs., so it's downforce is only equal to it's weight. I brought it to downtown Houston, Texas to a company that specializes in geoscientific research. The controls are in that black box pictured sitting on the truck floor. It hangs around your neck, and you steer it like an RC car. Not something you'd want to have hanging around your neck walking down the street...people would get the wrong impression in a hurry. In my opinion, it'd make one HECK of a deer camp. If you didn't like where you were, just hit the joysticks and go to the next better place. Make a nice ice fishing shanty too, but the ice wants to be pretty thick. From there I loaded 2 new Massey Ferguson ag tractors, one dropped in De Leon, Tx. (Near Abilene,) the other in Plainview, near Lubbock. On that overnight, hot run to get to Denver for the following afternoon, I almost ran over a 3-400 lb. wild boar, a mule deer, and a bobcat, all within a 20 mile stretch of a lonely, dark F.M. road (don't know what that stands for...Farm Maintainence, maybe?) Had to be on that back road because of the tractor being 120" wide at the axle stubs, but Texas never got me my overwidth permit on time, so it was out in the tumbleweed and puckerbrush for me once again to get the job done. At about 3 a.m. on a dark US highway, I stopped for a nature call momentarily. I no sooner got down on the ground and walked 5-6 paces when I came onto a reflective yellow sign with big bold black letters that read, "Watch For Snakes". Within reading the last word and it registering, I was back onto the batterybox of that Peterbilt with one backward leap motion, as far as I recall. There was no extraction of fluids as planned, and suddenly the urge was completely gone to do so in the first place. Enough said... Next pics are just of a 320C from Richmond, Vt. to Buffalo, NY a couple of weeks ago, and the fancy way I chained it to win the hearts of the DOT guys that saw it.:drinkup NJoy...