Salvage Crawler Dozers in New Zealand

Referred to as dozers or bulldozers, crawler dozers differ from wheel dozers through their use of steel tracks to move around, a feature that provides better traction and weight distribution on various surfaces compared to wheel models. Crawler dozers are common to construction, agriculture, landfill, and other job sites, in part for their ability to move sizable amounts of soil, gravel, rocks, sand, and other materials. They’re used to prep sites, scrape surfaces, clear debris, demolish structures, and more.

The crawler dozer’s roots trace to the early 1920s when James Cummings and J. Earl McLeod created the first dozer designs in Kansas. Today, models using hydrostatic, mechanical, and hybrid drive systems fall into small, medium, and large size categories. At the high-capacity end, select Caterpillar and Komatsu models now top 850 horsepower and 104,300-kilogram operating weights. Other top dozer manufacturers and brands include John Deere, Case, New Holland, Liebherr, and LiuGong.

Advancements in dozers have included the implementation of intelligent, automated, GPS, and other systems aimed at machine, power, grade, and blade control systems to help better match a dozer’s operation to the operator’s experience level; remote control abilities; automatic traction control; and the use of extra-wide tracks (known as “swamp” tracks) to combat soggy or unstable terrains.