Page 431 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Top, clockwise: Hi-Clearance Twin being built at Peterson in 1950; Hi-Clearance Twin working on King Ranch with Holt Plow & Funnel Blade attachments in the early 1950s; Rear view of Hi-Clearance Twin
Holt Cat (of Texas), who retired in 2014. “That was their blueprint.” According to an as-yet-un- published history Hicks wrote for the company, “the front was equipped with a knockdown bar capable of pushing over trees 12 to 40 feet high and up to 20 inches in diameter. The funnel dozer consisted of two [V-shaped] blades ... forming an 18-foot-wide mouth that funneled the trees be- tween the tracks under the machine and piled it into windrows.” Mounted on the back of the Twin, Holt’s root plow cut a 16-foot wide swath—16 inches below the surface of the bud zone, which ensured the mesquite wouldn’t re-sprout and come back thicker than before. A seed blower was also attached on the back to re-seed the land as it was being cleared.
The highly-specialized Twin made history on the Texas ranch for several years. Nothing came close to its output. It performed so well that they or- dered a second Twin from Peterson a year later. According to a King Ranch letter dated January 17, 1955, “It’s performance is a thing to behold. The first machine has operated 7,500 hours. The second one, delivered in March 1952, has operated 6,500 hours as of this writing. They have cleared 54,000 acres of virgin mesquite at approximately four dollars per acre.” Two years later, the two had accumulated a total of 18,750 tractor hours. “The [root plow] blades of these two machines have traveled underground more than 25,000 miles—a distance greater than the circumference of the earth at the equator.” Clearly, Kleberg was pleased.
CHAPTER 26 | 429