Tonite at 11pm there is a new episode on national geographic channel. It will be on the illinois plant making the 797b mining truck. It will be on again 2/2/08 if you don't read this or can't see it tonite since I am posting this 5 minutes before it starts.
I seen the show eariler tonight and its sweet watching everthing go togather, they also show alot of the oil sands
We got the Winnebago plant.....:beatsme...never mind I'll catch it on the 2nd Thanks
If you wanna see a cool plant go see the Dole foods plant in Phoenix. Also for you guys in KS go see IBP slaughter house, that place is awesome!
I go tto see it in person 2 years ago, and it is quite the place. The same plant that graders and scrapers come from. The 797 is impressive. They would not let us take any pictures, so I bet they were carefull with the editing for a TV program. I got to see whats now the 770 and 772 truck about 6 months before they were introduced. I toured several plants, and I have to say the Decatur plant where these trucks, graders, and scrapers come from had the best employee pride in their workmanship of any of them, even the track type tractor plant in Peoria, at the heart of CAT. These people know they build the best product in the world, and take a great deal of pride in the workmanship. The engine plant, thats another story though
If they are having trouble at the engine plant that would give me confidence in buying their product.
sorry this is an old thread but they are showing them on speed chanel today,this is the first i have seen or heard of this show.i caught the last part of the deere combine,and watched all of the 797B build.
LOL, I'm still watching! What a great show! I think they're a lot more informative than the Mega Machines show on History Channel. The 797B show was awesome!
Yeah I saw it for the first time today on Speed, good stuff.
I'll definitely be watching that. Peterbilt and John Deere are on before that also.
Mega Machines on Discovery with that Tony Goose..whatever, irritates the %^$* out of me. Everything the guy touches seems to break! And how dare he say that a grader is "ugly"?!
Ya, watched a few of them last night. The Peterbilt factory was pretty cool, as I've been thru the Kenworth plant in Chilicothe, Ohio. Really cool to watch all the stuff come together as ONE truck in the end.
I have worked in the Cat factory where the 797's are built (for an outside contractor) about 20 years ago and I pass by it all the time, at one time nearly 50% of my neighbors worked there as well. A friend of my fathers worked many years as an engineer for Cat at the Decatur plant and was involved in the big trucks as well. He made several trips to the oilsands as well as other projects where the big trucks were being used. Back in about 1977 or 1978 my father contacted Freightliner about plant tours so we made a trip to the short lived Indianapolis Freightliner plant. It was just our family and a plant rep, about half way thru the tour the rep asked what model Freightliner we had bought or had on order. We still got the full tour even though we were not buying a new truck. Somewhere I still have Freightliner brochures from that tour. tim
Our tour thru KW was made by our truck club. Not sure who the contact was but we had full access as the line was not moving. We could get up close and personal with everything.
I am still young, and I would love to go through one of those huge factories where they build stuff like that. I've been in lots of door hinge factories, electrical installment factories, and I've even been lucky enough to see the Komatsu SA parts warehouse. It was huge, and had those tray elevators, where you just press in the part number, or the tray number that the part is in, and it brings the parts down, etc. I've also seen the track workshop there, and Komatsu SA even redoes Cat tracks. At the time I went, they were turning the links (is that correct? :beatsme) on one of the tracks off Sishen's big hydraulic excavators, as well as one of they're 475A dozer's tracks.