Inside Arm Dozer
Peterson's Inside Arm Dozer was a significant innovation that allowed Push CATs to push a scraper and still stay within the scaper cut. The wider standard dozers cut outside the scraper cut, leaving a pile of cast-off material. Buster and his crew designed the dozer arms to attach to the tractor frame on the inside of the tracks. "The first Inside Arm Dozer was rigidly welded to the arms, which were hinged rigidly to the tractor frame so that when you made contact with a scraper, you knew you had hit the scraper," explains Peterson engineer Don Stroot. In 1956, Stroot worked on a revision - the Cushioned Inside Arm Dozer and Push Blocks - that incorporated a shock-absorbing mechanism so the operator didn't jar his teeth everytime he hit a scraper. The Cushioned Inside Arm Dozer and Push Blocks were patented in 1972 and later adopted by Caterpillar.