Page 390 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

rear unit were added by Alaska Unlimited [second owner] because the hard nose had started to crack. You could also see the gauges that Wilder’s [third owner] master mechanic put on the hardnose of the rear unit. Those were all still there.”
Back home, Krieg did more research and con- firmed that Peterson’s restored Quads were the real deal, although not a Buster original. “When I took pictures of them at Peterson’s picnic, I zoomed in on both serial numbers: 90J079 and 91J079. And those matched Caterpillar’s records for Quad- Tracks built in 1969. That year they built eight sets with serial numbers #78 to #85.”
Peter Kiewit & Sons bought Quad No.79 some- time in 1969 and shipped it to Alaska in 1970, along with a second set. Krieg suspects that the other set could be an original Buster Peterson Quad, but there is no proof positive, and the set was subsequently split up and parted-out. Peterson records do show that Peter Kiewit & Sons owned three Peterson-built Quads in the mid-1960s—
units No.102, No.103, and No.108. The log also indicates that No.103 was originally sold to Cat Research, then bought back and sold to Kiewit. In all, Peterson built ten Quad D9Gs, along with an unknown number of conversion kits for customers upon request.
EVOLUTION OF THE PUSH-CAT
Even before Buster debuted his first Quad D9 in 1964, he was experimenting with ideas on how to increase load cycle times for scrapers. As a student of the industry, he would often go out to jobsites and sit in his car for hours studying the operation, looking for more efficient ways to speed up the process. Then he’d go back and try out different configurations in Peterson’s backyard.
“There have been push-Cats around for as long as there’s been scrapers,” says Duane Sr., another life- long student of the earthmoving industry. “Scrap- ers don’t have the power to load fast and efficiently
Left to right: Buster’s pre-Quad experiments in the 1950s included a stiff-armed, outside armature linking two 14A D8s together, still requiring two operators; Buster’s Quads were featured in multiple publications—here in the Caterpillar Folks newspaper January 8, 1965 issue
388 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG