Just a bunch of oldschool pictures I found on the internet. A few of Buster Peterson's contraptions! I would have loved to meet the man.
Some big rigs he had tied together.
a few more
how wide is that blade
that a big'en fore sure!
Peterson Tractor is still selling Cats in California...but I guess Buster is long gone. Oh well, would love to see what he would create out of today's beasts!
Peterson Tractor Peterson Tractor has a portion of their website dedicated to Buster and Howard. Check it out at: http://www.petersonholding.com/about/Archives.DigPast.php My favorite is his Triple 657's...
That's some pretty sick stuff they've invented over the years.
Triple 657. Hi, Firecat11. Buster made a tandem 657 set-up for Peter Kiewit. Then he built the triple arrangement for Kiewit on the same job. As I understand it, the two rigs were worked until the end of that job, after which Kiewit bought another 657, took 'tail-end Charlie' off the triple, leaving it as a double and used that third scraper to make a third double with the new 657, giving them 3 double 657's. Buster and Howard both started their careers in machinery with their brother-in-law, Bob LeTourneau, otherwise known as R. G. LeTourneau. Bob married their sister, Evelyn. Howard started Peterson Engineering in 1936 and Buster joined him several years later. If my memory serves me right, they started in San Francisco and then moved to San Leandro. It was after that move that they started Peterson Special Projects, which was where all the 'monsters' came from. I think Buster, aka Robert, was the youngest of the Peterson children. Buster made a LOT of different bits of gear based on various Cat machines over the years. You can see quite a bit of it documented in Eric C. Orlemann's book, "Caterpillar Chronicle". If you go back the post #171 in 'Equipment Trivia' in the TGIF forum, you will see a question that nobody even tried to answer, if indeed they even saw it. Can you figure it out?
Deas Made me look. I will take a wild guess and say a little outfit we have over here that goes by the initials NASA
Not NASA. Hi, JDOFMEMI. Nope. It was Peterson Special Projects. Cat caught on to the fact that Buster could put new ideas into iron FAR quicker than their own engineers could so they exchanged design protocols with Buster. This helped make sure that the 2 teams were always on the same page when discussing any of the many projects which Buster worked on for them as well as those that Buster developed and Cat took over. Here is one Buster patent that many folks here will recognise immediately: http://www.google.com/patents?id=J6RdAAAAEBAJ&dq=Tractors+with+twin+power+plants&num=30 And another: http://www.google.com/patents?id=w0cuAAAAEBAJ&dq=Tractors+with+twin+power+plants&num=30 And yet another: http://www.google.com/patents?id=Eu...tors+with+twin+power+plants&num=30#PPA1961,M1 And still more: http://www.google.com/patents?id=46...act&zoom=4&dq=Tandem+tractors&num=30#PPA62,M1 It's amazing where Google's tentacles reach. LOL. Try typing your own name into a Google search sometime.
ole buster was a very smart guy. It's the pioneers like him and his family that have literaly shaped the world. I did my last english paper this semester on buster and his inventions and how thinking like him and other pioneers will help shape space colonization. I would love to be the first dozer operator on the moon, doing the jobs Heinlen and the other greats only pondered. Have dozer will travel. very inspiring stuff. Kooky? yep. Gotta dream big or not dream at all.