As I had promised in my thread 'some of my jobs' I wanted to show a friend's fleet of older iron. He's a bit of a legend in these parts as he's built many of the roads, lagoons, drainage ditches, and water retention structures. He is in his '70's and is still going but starting to slow down a bit.... He let me photograph his collection which is mostly International dozers unlike some of the other outfits in the area run by younger guys he runs older equipment paid for in cash and always turns a profit. Anyway before I go on a rant...
The traditional Cat and Scraper combination is one of the most effective in use here due to our wet and gummy soils he tried using a couple of Payscrapers a few years ago but didn't have much luck as they needed to be pushed through the cut and out of the borrow pit or excavation and often through the fill or dump and usually when building roads in these parts all the fill needed is dug by side borrow as the land is as close as you can get to being perfectly flat so no hills to cut through or very few of them, drainage and finding good clay is a bigger challenge.
Glen buys and sells machines fairly frequently and at one point had 30 IHC TD-20's in his fleet. He said this Komatsu dozer is the best for working in soft sloppy conditions due to its wide tracks and long undercarriage and often outperforms many same size Cat machines.
I spent many hours on a 68 just like that one when I was working with my dad. Ours had the NA220 Cummins. You could walk that dozer into stuff where you'd sink past your knees trying to walk, load the blade and push it out. They have 38" wide pads, when you're sitting on it, all you see is track. We used it mostly for wetland restorations, but it would push right next to our 7H on solid ground. Quite a few times I got into trouble in soft ground with the 7, and dad would get right in front and push me out. Only problem we got into was Komatsu is overly proud of parts, and take a looooong time to get. We went through several steering pumps to the tune of $2500 apiece, they were not available anywhere aftermarket. Transmission was tough as nails, had over 13,000 hours and shifted like a new one.
Yeah I was just talking to Glen and he said that thing is perfect in soft ground conditions he digs a lot of big land drains around here and said its perfect in the white mud or yellow silt loon sh!te around here and like you said a Cat machine can't hold a candle to it. When I use to work for Sureway Construction in Edmonton, Alberta I spent quite a bit of time running a Cat 245 trimming ponds and working in soft ****** places where buggies couldn't go and they would bring in similar Komatsu dozers like D85's with wide pads and at the time they didn't own a single Cat D6 or D7 wide pad they went right to a Komatsu to get the job done.
The logging equipment is used in the winter for cutting firewood at least the Case Feller Buncher is.
Wow. That 4586 might be worth a dollar to somebody.....
I'll take the old school versatile There's a local farm that runs 2 or 3 of them old versatile for all of their tillage.
The 3984 was a machine he bought as he needed an excavator he got it for cheap he said because it had fallen through lake ice and he was going to fix it up and put it to work but then came across the Komatsu PC200 you see in earlier pictures that only needed an undercarriage and despite having around 10,000 hours is still going strong.
At a certain point i think this becomes disease A lot of neat history but good grief that's a lot of iron to sit there
The Ford 1 ton I've been bugging him to sell it to me it's got the 7.3L diesel in it but turbo'd not sure what it was used for but it had been taken care of the cab is quite clean and there is little to no body rust. I'd like to use it for pulling a future mini-excavator or skid-steer and as a bit of a service truck as opposed to always using my 1/2 ton for transporting fuel and tools to job sites. He was thinking of putting a deck with a hoist on it for making small deliveries of firewood but he said he's got so many other projects on the go he's not sure if he'd ever get to doing it.
As you can likely tell I've made a few trips to Glen's in the last while and every time I do I find more stuff to take pictures of and I'm hoping that in the new year I can learn some estimating from him and other techniques and tricks as guys like him are dying breed.
Yes it is a disease. Incurable at that. One can only get another fix t.o carry us to the next 'find'. Still beats a lot of other addictions.
That 12e with a snow wing looks sweet!
That 12e with a snow wing looks sweet!
I love roaming through bone yards. I do hate seeing the weeds growing through iron though. Thanks for the photos!
No problem guys I'll upload some more.
The bigger dozers are still used although not as frequently the past couple years and he said he's got one of his TD-20B's for sale as he has completely rebuilt it. He told me when he first started out on his own he had a TD-20 and was clearing farm land during the winters and one particular winter it got down to -40C and without anything to pre-heat the machine it still started without assistance he said its still the best dozer to have for bush work.
Yeah as you can tell I have a thing for this TD-25G he apparently bought in Dryden, Ontario but he said its got the wrong tracks as they are meant for a D8K and he said it actually needs D9G or H tracks or at least that's how I understood what he was telling me. The previous owner just didn't want to put any money in to it.
My last photos of Glen's equipment I'll be back there one of these days and I know he recently bought an Allis-Chalmers 645 wheel-loader with a couple attachments including a log grapple recently and a TD-25 with a large winch. He also is selling or has sold a skidder recently and has up to 400 cords of firewood to slash this winter.
first off thanks for sharing your pic's with us love them. not sure if i should ask but what province are you in? looks like some very nice stuff there.
Right next door to you I'm in Southeastern Manitoba.
wow that's very bad new's for my bank account. way too close as i got land and new shed in the turtle mountains looks like it would be a fun day trip to check out some nice iron. i got a friend that's selling is 85 and looking for a HI 25
I know he rebuilt a TD-20 so he could sell it. So far I don't think he's selling any of his TD-25's and that could possibly be because of a couple jobs coming up this summer but you never know. He's always buying and selling and mentioned recently he's going to buy another TD-25 with a heavy winch on it. Once spring comes and he's not cutting or hauling firewood and spring road restrictions are on. I'm going to help get an old 1 ton I'm interested in buying running and I want to try starting his old International 3984 excavator so maybe I can have my own excavator finally.
What an awesome lineup of machines , thanks for posting. I spent many hrs on 15B, C 20 B C & E and 25 B, C and a TD 30 that the boss had on his farm. He also had E 200 / 211 and 412 and the only 444 that went to NZ.
Whats with all the angle blades, never seen a whole fleet with angle blades these days.