Jr. and Willard Keding
June 2002
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The milestones of earthmoving history
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Unlike most tractor books, Yellow Steel features more words than color photographs - and consequently, it requires more than a casual couple of hours' time turning glossy pages.
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That's because Yellow Steel is the - let's make that THE - encyclopedia of the history of earthmoving equipment in this country and the world. Subtitled The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry, this book records the history, problems and triumphs from earliest times of the equipment manufacturing companies and captains of the industry with great care and objectivity.
The author, William R. Haycraft, is a retired 35-year Caterpillar Inc., international marketing executive. In the book, he concentrates on particular time periods and how each affected the industry. After detailing the beginnings of the modern earthmoving industry, from 1831 to 1945, he moves forward in decade-sized hunks to 1995. The final, post-1995, chapter, 'Perspectives,' describes the state of the industry today, and forecasts its future.
The author points out that there has been a slow but steady, and now accelerating, convergence in product design, and in the less-tangible and less-measurable characteristics of product quality.
The histories and development of all the major earthmoving equipment companies are laid out against the background of their times. Caterpillar, Allis-Chalmers, International Harvester, J.I. Case, Deere & Company, Massey-Ferguson, Euclid, lesser-known companies, and later on, foreign competition all are documented.
The book, in just the right amount of detail, calls attention to interesting earthmoving milestones, including:
Robert G. LeTourneau, who got his start land leveling in California, made the greatest contributions to 'the art and science of earthmoving,' according to Haycraft. LeTourneau is credited with making the crawler tractor both a pusher and a puller. He also invented what he called a 'rooter,' now widely known as a ripper. He developed a cable winch for a crawler that raised and lowered a heavy blade, inventing what is now known as the bulldozer. He devised a large, cable-controlled crawler-drawn scraper and the first integral-wheel tractor-scraper, and as the author points out, this crawler tractor-towed scraper combination made up the first one-man mechanized system for moving earth in huge quantities.