Good morning everyone. Me being an old DD9G Quad operator I often wondered it there was ever a contractor any where around the world that coupled three D9G's push cats together making it a threesome, and how did it work? I've been around a lot of triple pushing and I always thought running the Quad how neat it would be to add the third push cat. I was running a triple 6 back in the early sixties stretched 22inches with 4' side boards it must of carried 90 yards and it took 5 push cats to get it heaped, three push cats couldn't get it done, and I'll tell you what a difference, as soon as the push cats hooked up pushing the scraper the operator would stuff the cutting edge a good foot and a half in the ground and in about the length and a half of that triple 6, then I would lift the apron up until the dirt would start to fall out then I pushed the apron lever over into the floating possition letting the apron shut automatically and this would load the apron shutting and by the time the apron shut its self leaving it looked like the dirt was stacked 4' above the 4' side boards, and we wouldn't of gotten the scrapers loaded in 30 seconds with this much dirt just using three push cats. I spent a lot of time pushing 651's with the Quad wishing for more power wanting that third cat hating it. So thats why I asked the Question this morning. Mike Nebergall
Mike I have seen some pictures of 2 sets of quads teamed up. I forget where I seen it though. I doubt that any were tripled up though. Could you imagine how hard it would be to set up the steering? Like you, I have seen the triple pushing, and it really heaps the dirt in there. The loads may not look a lot bigger than with 2 cats, but they are much more dense. The best sets of triple operators I seen would swap the lead and tail tractor every pass, with the middle cat staying in the middle always. The rear cat would pull back early, while the front 2 were boosting the scraper out of the cut, then the rear would become the lead for the next scraper. he would already be pushing when the second, then the third cat would tag up. The scraper would drop the can a little more with each bump, then, maybe 5 seconds after the third tagged up, he would start to pull out. To those who don't understand, it seems like a waste having the third one there, since he pushes for such a short time, but if you measure the production, that third cat is worth 3 to 4 times his hourly cost in added dirt loaded into the scrapers.
Good morning JTL and everybody else. To your question JTL,yes I knew Fred Fridley, and we talked about the time he washed that D9H in the Couer d' Alane lake when we worked together on the 395 job. I thought it was pretty interesting talking he told me he thinks the reason he's alive, when the D9H went into the water, the water was around 25 degrees and he was still sitting in the seat when it went under, and when the water ingulfed him and the D9H it happened so fast just before his head went under water he gasped taking in a huge amount of air, the tractor and the mud drug him down I can't remember if he said he was fighting the seat belt but he said the water was so merky he didn't know which way was up or down, he thought he was under at least 2 minutes or more. The thing I thought was so interesting was the guy in the rowboat fishing, when Fred finelly got to the top fighting the rowboat was about a 100 feet away from him, Fred said the wait from the Walls soaked, and he wore the bibb overalls, and the jacket, the wait being soaked it was dragging him back down and the row boat was there so fast, thats what saved him the guy fishing and the rowboat being so close. Is Fred still alive? Mike Nebergall