Page 400 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

IN THE OPERATOR’S SEAT—RANDY KRIEG
Randy Krieg operated Wilder’s Quad No.79 on three different projects in Alaska between 1994 and 2000.
“Back in those days, that thing was a powerhouse. The D9 was the biggest dozer made. And now you’ve got two coupled together. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that that thing was going to be excellent at push- ing scrapers. It could push just as good around a corner as it could straight ahead. With other dozers, you had to manipulate the steering clutches, and as soon as you did, you started losing power to that one track and the scraper wouldn’t get pushed smoothly. But with the Quad, once you had braked the tracks enough to get the hitch in posi- tion, you could let off the steering brakes and it would stay in that position.”
Krieg’s skill as a blade operator earned him the privilege of running scrapers and quads when finish work wasn’t the priority. “I loved running the Quads. The best I ever did was 586 loads in a ten-hour shift, even though Quad No.79 was 25 years old by then. On a really aggressive scraper spread, if things are really clicking, you can get loaded in twenty seconds. Wilder used the same philosophy as Kiewit: 600 loads in a ten-hour shift—a load every minute. The night I did 586 loads was a perfect situation. It was a big sliver cut. We had a real short haul. And I had eight scrapers. They were just dropping down, crossing the highway, and dumping like a figure eight. We had about twenty minutes left when the front unit ran out of fuel. I wanted to cry. And I never got that close again.”
According to Krieg, “a lot of people didn’t understand how the Quad’s steering worked. It was all air controlled. You had all these little slave pucks hooked onto the linkage that acted like miniature brake cans. As you moved the joystick around, you opened up the air passages to the different brake cans. You would put the lever into a certain position and then just tap on the brake pedal lightly to get those diaphragms to actuate. When you wanted to steer right, you pushed the lever to your right, and as you tapped on the brake pedal, it put on the steering brake to the right track on the front machine, and the left track on the back machine.”
When you pushed the hitch to the left just a few degrees, you could let off the steering control and both tracks were under full power again on both machines. Once you got it turned, you could pretty much just keep it floored and push under full power with both units. That’s what was so unique about the Quads. To this day, I still say there is nothing that can push a scraper around a curved cut like the Quads.”
398 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG