Wheel Dozers Dismantled Machines

About Wheel Dozers

Wheel dozers, sometimes called “wheeled bulldozers,” use rubber tires and often articulated steering to maneuver instead of the steel tracks of a crawler dozer. With much faster travel and lower maintenance costs than tracks, wheel dozers provide good pushing power with lighter material loads on compacted ground where traction is not problematic. They can also travel more quickly to multiple worksites and play multiple roles. Finally, unlike steel-tracked dozers, rubber-tired models suffer less wear from abrasive soils and sands and can be used on pavement without damaging the surface.

Multitaskers

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Caterpillar 824K Wheel Dozer

Wheel dozers are much rarer than tracked dozers these days, but can still be found zooming around construction and especially mining sites. A flat blade lets a wheel dozer push and spread loose soil, gravel, sand, and other materials. However, other blade types can scoop, lift, and dump materials like a wheel loader. In fact, many early wheel dozers were based on modified wheel loader chassis. Caterpillar makes a 56.4-ton (51.2-metric-ton) version of its model 834K optimized for scooping coal and wood chips.

Wheel dozers are often used to quickly clean up spilled material to allow haul trucks and other machinery to be more productive. They can help to keep haul roads clear and clean up loading and blasting areas in surface-mining applications. Wheel dozers are excellent at stockpile duties, reclamation projects, berm construction, and pushing scrapers.

Smaller wheel dozers—which are still quite large compared to low-end crawler dozers—currently start out at 248 net horsepower and weigh around 48,390 pounds (21,950 kilograms). At the high-capacity end is the Caterpillar 854K, with 907 horsepower and an operating weight of nearly 225,000 lbs (102,000 kg).

Early Beginnings

The wheel dozer’s roots trace back to Morrowville, Kansas, in late 1923. Farmer James Cummings and draftsman J. Earl McLeod patented an “Attachment for Tractors” consisting of a front dozer blade and supporting arms. The inventors’ patent included a diagram of the blade mounted on a wheeled tractor.

However, the wheeled dozer’s heyday didn’t come around until after World War II. R.G. LeTourneau’s mechanically driven, skid-steering Model C Tournadozer, introduced in 1947, used an electric-powered cable mechanism to raise its blade or let gravity lower it. Much more popular than its stablemates the A, B, and D, the C version of the Tournadozer and its Super C variant continued to be developed and sold under the LeTourneau-Westinghouse and Wabco brands until 1972. In the 1950s, LeTourneau devised other, larger inventions with up to five drive wheels powered by electric hub motors run by a diesel generator.

LeTourneau’s efforts were followed by Caterpillar wheeled tractors that were outfitted with dozer blades, often by Cat dealers by customer request. Notable early wheel dozer models included the experimental Euclid Model 1FPM in 1949, Clark Equipment Company’s Michigan (later Clark-Michigan) model 180 in 1955, the 600-horsepower International D-500 in 1961, the giant 75-ton (68-metric-ton) Allis-Chalmers Model 555 in 1962, the even more colossal 1,850-horsepower Western Contracting Corporation one-off called the Western 2000 (1963), and Caterpillar’s articulated 824 and 834 models in the same year. By the late 1960s, the industry was moving on to diesel-electric drive systems, articulated frames, and hydraulic blade controls.

Other wheel dozer brands of note included Hough (later International-Hough), German marques Zettelmeyer and Terex, Australian manufacturer Tiger, FWD-Wagner, Allis-Chalmers, Harris, International Harvester, Raygo Wagner, Melroe, and M-R-S (Mississippi Road Supply). Many of these ultimately sold their wheel dozer designs and manufacturing to Volvo, Komatsu, and Caterpillar.

Modern Features

Today, wheel dozer models fall into the medium and large size categories. The advent of wireless telematics is as important a development to dozers as it is to other modern heavy machinery, keeping fleet managers apprised of machine location, productivity, and status. Cat’s Product Link remote monitoring and Vital Information Management System (VIMS) are examples of technologies currently in the field. The Cat MineStar System, meanwhile, combines multiple modules to factor in safety, equipment health reporting, and machine guidance, as well.

Find The Right Wheel Dozer

Current manufacturers of wheel dozers available on MachineryTrader.com include Caterpillar, Komatsu, and several others. Cat’s 824 and 834 are among the most plentiful models on the site.