Page 275 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

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CUSTOM FABRICATION INNOVATION—PETERSON’S FIRST LOVE
Innovation has always been at the heart of Peterson. Founder Howard Peterson grew up in a dirt-poor family with big ideas. His oldest sister, Evelyn, married R.G. LeTourneau, who became one of the great heavy-equipment innovators of the twentieth century. Each of the Peterson boys started off working for
R.G. before going on to make his own mark on the industry. Ray, the oldest, stayed with R.G. his entire ca- reer, working as an engineer and coming up with several of his own designs. George Howard, the middle son, was a welder, fabricator, and construction boss for R.G. before launching his own company, Peterson Tractor & Equipment Co., in 1936. The youngest, Robert (Buster), was an engineer for R.G., then Peterson Tractor starting in 1943. Buster pioneered and later patented many innovative earthmoving ideas, which Caterpillar then bought and incorporated into their own product line. Together, Howard and Buster took machine design to a whole new level, distinguishing Peterson Tractor Co. among the Cat dealerships as the de-facto West Coast engineering department for Caterpillar during the 1950s and 60s.
Buster’s team became known simply as SEQ, for Special Equipment Services. He outfitted his shop with special machinery like the Giddings & Lewis horizontal boring mill and five-hundred-ton press brake for forming steel. Buster would come up with the ideas, and Howard would fund them. Some of the more notable designs include the Quad D9s, Twin D8s, D7 SnoCats, Triple 657s, U dozer, and off-set D9 Pipelayer. Each customized machine grew out of a need for something that didn’t exist before. They were, in effect, pioneering.
Fast-forward to Peterson’s fourth generation. “When I got here after college, I noticed we were losing our momentum in custom fabrication,” says Duane Doyle Jr., Howard’s great-grandson. “In 2011, I asked to take over Special Services to get it back on track. It had slipped a lot over the years because of liability concerns, the poor economy, and other focuses. It was no longer a priority. And we didn’t have a continuity plan in place for our engineers.” To infuse it with new direction he brought back Jack Ravazza, then San Leandro’s general
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