Production Heroes: Crawler Dozers

Steep hourly cost makes operating efficiently more important to crawler dozers than most otherconstruction equipment. The cost is largely associated with undercarriage wear, so the best dozer operators make every move count whether they’re doing production earthmoving, finishing or clearing land.Some of the best ideas for improving dozer productivity defy operators’ assumptions.
“A lot of operators who are doing production dozing think they should make long cuts. They want to see dirt boil or roll in front of the blade,” says Brad Van De Veer, senior product consultant at Caterpillar’s Edwards Demonstration/Application Center. “In reality, the blade will only hold so much dirt. Once it’s full, you start losing dirt off both sides of the blade, leaving windrows that will have to be moved again. It wastes horsepower and fuel, and it can cause track slip and undercarriage wear.
“You should be able to get a full load on the blade in two lengths of the tractor at the most — and that applies to any size tractor. Once the blade is full, you stop cutting and slide the dirt in front of the blade.”
Short, aggressive cuts set up what is perhaps the most energy-saving way to doze dirt — what Caterpillar calls “front-to-back or slot dozing.”
“You start one to two tractor lengths back from where you’re going to move the dirt, instead of on the opposite side of the field,” says Van De Veer. “Fill the blade and start a pile or fill the area.”