Page 430 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

PATENT FOR TWIN D8
Patent US 2,678,105—Tractor with Twin Power Plants filed Jan 18, 1951 / granted May 11, 1954
by R.A. “Buster” Peterson
big bunker underneath the coal pile full. From there, the coal went out on a short conveyor belt and into the plant to fuel the boilers. When they were on full loads during the day, they had to have that big Twin out there. They needed it seven days a week, in two shifts. And when the load was down at night and into the wee hours of the morning, they would build that coal pile up using that D8 Twin. It worked like a charm.”
KING RANCH HI-CLEARANCE TWINS (1950–1952)
The most well-documented of Buster’s Twin D8s is the King Ranch Hi-Clearance Twin. It is the second and only other Twin recorded in Peterson’s SEQ logbook. The record shows that the Twin D8 Hi-Clearance job utilized machines 2U12911 and 2U12912 and was shipped to the Wm. K. Holt Company of San Antonio, Texas. The 52-ton, 270 horsepower, double-wide machine had a 36-inch ground clearance and cost around $55,000.14 But that’s just part of the story.
For years, Bob Kleberg Jr., president of the King Ranch, had been collaborating with Wm. K. Holt Machinery on brush control methods for the ranch’s 825,000 acres in south Texas. He and Holt’s top executives had already developed and refined the Holt-branded root plow back in 1946. In 1949, Kleberg came up with an idea that would become the funnel dozer, also branded by Holt. These two custom implements were larger and more depth-penetrating than anything else previously seen. And, when installed on Buster’s Hi-Clearance Twin D8, the combination yielded results unheard of in the cattle ranch industry.
“They scratched out the plans for that first root plow and funnel dozer with chalk on the shop floor,” says Howard Hicks, VP of Marketing for
14 The first Hi-Clearance Twin D8 cost $55,000 according to an as-yet unpublished manuscript by Howard Hicks about the history of the Wm. K. Holt Company.
428 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG