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By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

Bulldozer Explained

It appears that the word bulldozer came from the habit of stronger bulls pushing their lesser rivals backwards in not-so-serious contests of strength outside of the mating season. These contests take on a more serious note during the mating season.

A bulldozer is a large and powerful crawler tractor that is usually equipped with a front blade that is used to move large amounts of soil, rubble and rock. A bulldozer can even be used to push equipment such as tractor scrapers. The term bulldozer is typically used to describe the crawler tractor variety of equipment and not the rubber tired variety.

Bulldozer digging

Compare how a bulldozer digs -- forward and up. A backhoe, on the other hand digs by dragging the shovel through the dirt in a backwards motion. Backhoes are not just confined to construction sites. In fact, when it comes to small and medium landscaping projects, it is often the only heavy piece of equipment that is needed, since it has the ability to work like a bulldozer and excavator as well.

What is a Bulldozer

The term bulldozer technically refers only to a shovel-like blade, over the years people have come to associate the term bulldozer to the entire vehicle both blade and crawler tractor combined.

Deas Plant added that "There is also some debate about who first fitted a bulldozer blade to a track-laying tractor, perhaps the La Plante-Choate company, one of the early manufacturers of bulldozer blades." Again, there are various claimants for the title of first to fit a power control to one of these bulldozer blades with Robert Gilmour Le Tourneau probably being the leading contender.

CONCLUSION

The tracks for the bulldozer were invented in the early 1900’s by Benjamin holt. The tracks of a bulldozer put the entire invention in motion. Without tracks obtaining maximum traction in soils was a challenge. The development of tracks solved this problem by means of better weight distribution.

Important things to consider when buying a bulldozer are the means of transportation. Bigger machines are heavier and in turn demand a bigger truck and trailer. This is why matching the right machine to what you need to do is so important to cut down on cost. On most jobsites the bulldozer is not the limiting machine. Because its not the most used machine on a given jobsite and its also usually not the most expensive.