Page 425 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
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granddaughter, Kim Wixson-May of Redding. The last one is on display on property Wixson once owned at Fife Metal Fabricating along Eastside Road in Redding, just six miles south of Peterson’s Redding store.
MORRISON-KNUDSEN (1950)
The first Twin on record is Morrison-Knudsen’s machine delivered to their Farmington Dam job in the Spring of 1950. While the SEQ logbook does not give a delivery date, it does specify
that machines 2U9800 and 2U10438 were made into a Twin with a Euclid Drawbar and blower-type fans. M-K’s in-house magazine places it in the dirt near Stock- ton, California, in June 1950. “A total of 2,150,000 cubic yards of earth were moved between mid-June and late September by M-K’s dirt demons at a tremendous rate of 28,000 to 34,000 cubic yards per day. . . . A new wrinkle adapted to the job was the use of a ‘Twin 8’ combination of two Caterpillar D8 tractors joined side-by-side with inside tracks removed.This super-tractor provided the extra grunt to pull a Euclid loader.”7
Two years later, the M-K Twin was at Is- abella Dam near Bakersfield, California. According to the September 1952 issue of the eM-Kayan, “The men and machines of Macco-M-K began work on the auxiliary dam in October 1951. Construction of the auxiliary dam featured two pieces of equip- ment not often seen on earth-dam projects. One was a ‘Siamese’ tractor—two Caterpil- lar D8 tractors connected side-by-side to give greater pulling power. This behemoth pulled a specially built 15-ton ripper back and forth in the borrow area to cut furrows, allowing water to sink as deep as possible
into the fill material to increase its moisture con- tent for maximum compaction when placed in the dam.”8 Thus, Morrison-Knudsen held onto its Cat Twin D8 at least through August 1952. By 1954, Caterpillar introduced the 286 hp Cat D9—its own solution for more power—negating the need for the Twins altogether.
In 1952, M-K was also experimenting with the much-touted HD-19 Allis-Chalmers dozer, like Buster had with his prototype.Trying to nail down whose came first has, so far, been elusive. Or if they
   7 “Earthmoving Magic: Presto! And Here’s Your Dam”, The eM-Kayan, November 1950, p15,19.
8 “Main Isabella Dam Begun on the Kern”, The eM-Kayan, September 1952, p12-13.
Page from Peterson’s SEQ log book
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