Biggest cat dozer1/5/2023 The challenge of beating the competition in our core product was a tremendous incentive,” recalls Ron Krolak, track-type tractor chief engineer, retired. It was highly successful because of the total team effort. “The development and product introduction involved every discipline of the company. To address the market’s needs, Caterpillar tapped a team of Research and Engineering personnel to develop a new, more powerful dozer, the D10. “It worked great for dirt operations, but interstate and heavy rock applications were hard on the solid bottom tracks that were a part of all dozer designs of that era.” “The D9 dozer was the best track-type tractor of the day,” adds Alexander. Contractors working in predominantly hard rock applications also demanded a design that improved track longevity and durability. Power was supplied by the 700-hp D348, V12 diesel engine.Ī changing industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s stretched the D9 to its productivity limits, and the mining industry led the charge for a dozer with more and more horsepower. Offering 50 percent higher productivity than Caterpillar’s largest dozer of that era, the D9 dozer, the D10 weighed over 190,000 lbs and measured 15 ft tall, 12 ft wide and slightly more than 31 ft long. The result of the team’s out-of-the-box thinking was a machine with no rival for weight, power or productivity. “We bucked conventional wisdom with the D10 and tinkered with a centerpiece that was a part of the Caterpillar product line since the company was formed in 1925,” says George Alexander, a retired Caterpillar engineer who served on the D10 research team and one of four individuals named on the patent for Caterpillar’s elevated sprocket design. The Cat D10 dozer’s radically different design, high weight and horsepower, and resilient undercarriage answered the growing calls from large mining and big heavy construction operations for a more powerful dozer. Forty years ago this September, Caterpillar rolled off of its production lines 10 pilot models of the world’s largest, most powerful dozer, destined to leave a lasting legacy on the industry.
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