Bulldozer Blues

When we bought our land we were so happy to have been able to afford it. It was an incredible combination of a seller who loved us and a bank president who trusted us far more than our credit rating deserved. We got started: the first thing we needed was a flat area to start building the house on.

We didn't have any money for materials for the house; but things like that had never stopped us in the past, so we weren't worried. We did get a quote for grading the flat area: $15-20,000 "or so". The "or so" kind of unsettled us, so we went looking for other alternatives.

Grandma Isabelle, who was living with us, came to the rescue when she said: "Why don't you just buy a tractor and bulldoze the pad yourself? I'll help you some with the money". We looked around, found a couple of pretty sad, ancient bulldozers, then finally located a 1948 Caterpillar D4 that was only 54 years old; it ran really well.

With Isabelle donating the $6,700 that our new 1948 Cat D4 dozer cost, we were ready to go!

We went up on the hill and I pointed out to Susanne where the front of the house would be, the back of the house, and tried to explain how far underground we would be going to make a nice big flat area for the house. It was just a big hill at the time, all covered with grass, so I could see it didn't make much sense to her. We got the dozer hauled over to the property by a friend with a dump truck and big trailer, and we were off!

I started spending some quality dozer time on the property, between having to do real work to earn money for the family. After a couple of weeks of part-time work a couple of hours a day, the pad started to take shape: we could see the approximate location of the house, as I cut deeper into the hill in the back, and pushed the dirt and rocks out to fill the front of the pad.

We were pretty much hand-to-mouth then; we hadn't sold the house we were living in yet, and we had a mortgage payment on it to pay, as well as a mortgage payment on our new land, plus all the normal expenses of a growing family. When we had an extra $50 or so, we filled the 'dozer's fuel tank and I was able to do another five or six hours of grading.

One day as I was wrestling the D4 around on the new pad, it started raining. My response was to put on my rain jacket and hat and keep going;

I could still see OK because the drips were all falling off the brim of the hat and not blowing into my face. It got a little cold, but I figured I would be home in an hour or so in a hot bath, so I just kept going. I still had an hour or so of light before it got too dark to work. I was pushing a pile of rocks, and realized I had to get on the other side of it, so just went over the top.

I'd done moves like that before, and I did this one carefully and gently, but got a different result this time: the front end of the bulldozer sat down onto the ground right after I cleared the rock pile. I could see I wasn't going anywhere with the engine pan and the radiator in the mud, so I got off to figure out what had happened.

Looking under the dozer, I could see that the mainspring had snapped in half. This was like a car leaf spring on steroids; it was five times thicker and wider, but it had still just broken in half.

Later, when I got the bulldozer jacked up and removed the spring, I found the spring had broken along some old cracks that were obviously there when we bought the machine; I just hadn't known to look for them.

Tired, wet and cold, and definitely finished for that day, I slipped and slid back to my truck, got in, and drove home. The next day, I got up early and called Cat dealers on the mainland, looking for a mainspring for my 54-year-old dozer. I finally found one; it only cost $750, but as it weighed 200 pounds, it cost another $450 to ship to Hawaii, for a total of $1,200. I think we had $700 in the bank at the time.

Susanne and I got a little despondent, but only for a short while. I got back on the phone and started ringing the "Coconut Wireless". After five calls, I had found a guy with a running D4, that not only had an intact mainspring, but also brand new tracks and all kinds of other good stuff, and he only wanted $500 for it. Oh, and he said he'd deliver it to our farm for another $120. This was when the "standard" charge for hauling a bulldozer or backhoe was $300.

The total bill was $620. We had $80 left! I had a few difficult moments getting the 200-pound spring off the other dozer, through the mud, and onto our D4, but got it nicely installed without any pinched fingers or other incidents. She (her name's Katy) started right up with her bulletproof new mainspring, and we tackled the rest of the pad together.

PS: This story happened in 2002; Katy our D4 is now 74 years old and still going strong; I just graded our driveway with her last week.