Page 433 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

They out-produced anything built at that time in history as far as a tractor in the brush country. It was just massive—the biggest one in existence at the time as far as horsepower to the ground.
– Bill Kammer, general service technical adviser, Holt of Texas, retired 2011 (regarding
the King Ranch Hi-Clearance Twin)
(L-R) Ken Martin with Bill Kammer at Holt’s 85th anniversary event in Texas in 2018
a goldmine for the dealer because the undercar- riage wore out about every 400 hours. The King Ranch Norias section, where they spent most of their time, was nothing but blow sand and brush. And that sand was very abrasive, just like sandpa- per. It just wore everything out,” explains Martin, who retired from Holt in 2002. “So we would have to rebuild the rollers every 400 hours. The under- carriage on those old tractors was very primitive, so you had to grease the rollers all the time. They pulled a grease trailer around with them because the rollers would get so hot that the grease would run out.” In the mid-1960s, Caterpillar came out with a product improvement called Sealed Life- time Lubricated Rollers, which helped mitigate that problem.
The other issue was the drive line. “They would break the cross shaft off the steering clutches be- cause it was so high-powered,” recalls Martin. “You had the weight of two tractors and two engines pushing through there, which doubled everything as far as load. So those would break off regular- ly.” Martin also recalls watching the Twins operate out on the ranch. “That root plow would pull about two feet below the surface and cut the stump off and kick it up out of the ground. It was amazing to see those implements work. That was a time, let
me tell you. It was a time when people just didn’t see things that large.”
Sometime in the late 1960s, King Ranch sold the two Twins back to Wm. K. Holt Co. By then they had already gotten Caterpillar to build them a special King Ranch D9G high-clearance single that could out-produce the Twins with its higher horsepower and thoroughly vetted, factory-tested capabilities. Bill Kammer, who helped assemble it in Holt’s shop, recalls hearing that the Twins were shipped off to Mexico at some point and were nev- er heard of again.
THE HARRISON CONSTRUCTION TWIN (1949)
Other Cat Twins previously unknown to Peterson, have surfaced in recent years. Some were found through association forums, pictures circulating on the internet, or word of mouth. Others showed up in newspapers or trade journals. The Harrison Construction Twin first turned up while Edgar Browning was researching his book on road con- struction in Pennsylvania.15 A former Beckwith Machinery employee gave Browning pictures of the Twin from when it was being assembled at Beckwith’s shop in Pittsburgh.16 All the photos are
15 Edgar Browning, Roadbuilding Construction Equipment at Work in the State of Pennsylvania, Collierville, Tennessee, InstantPublisher.com, January 2019.
16 Beckwith Machinery was the Cat dealer for Western Pennsylvania until Cleveland Brothers acquired them in 2005.
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